Navajo Faction Urges Edison to Shut Down Power Plant

Half a dozen Navajo Indians staged a demonstration Thursday to demand that Southern California Edison shut down its Mohave Generating Station near Laughlin, Nev., saying that the plant’s operation is draining local ground water and imperiling their way of life.

The enormous coal-fired power plant, which lights more than 1 million homes in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, is the single largest source of sulfur dioxide pollution in the Southwest, making it a prime target of environmentalists. It is partially responsible for haze over the Grand Canyon, about 75 miles away.

But Edison, which owns a controlling interest in the plant, has generally counted as allies the Hopi and Navajo--tribes that depend on the Mohave plant for jobs and royalties. Now, a small Navajo faction that makes its home on Big Mountain in the Black Mesa area of northeastern Arizona is calling for the plant’s immediate closure.

“More than 3 billion gallons of aquifer water are being drained every year. All the surface water is gone. And that’s all so that Southern California Edison can do business,” said Sharon Lungo of the Action Resource Center, an environmental group that helped organize the demonstration at Edison’s Rosemead headquarters.

The problem is how the coal is transported to the Mohave plant.

The Peabody Western Coal Co. crushes coal, then mixes it with drinking-quality water pumped from aquifers. The so-called slurry mix is transported via a 273-mile pipeline--the only one of its kind in the world.

Edison officials note that the pipeline avoids pollution that would be created by transporting coal via trucks or trains. But protesters say the slurry line is also drying up this Navajo community’s water supply.

“We’re talking about life here--about trees, about animals. The whole life of Black Mesa,” said Leonard Benally, one of six Navajo Indians, including two elder grandmothers, who drove from Big Mountain for the demonstration. “You’re talking about ecology devastation. When I was a kid, I remember flowing streams. Those things dried up.”

Benally said that to retrieve water these days, he must drive 25 miles to a school operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Benally’s community also bemoans the power plant’s assault on its ancient way of life. The Navajo regard coal as the “liver of Mother Earth,” and are dismayed to see it mined on the land they have inhabited for generations.

Most Navajo, however, aren’t complaining. Many work at Peabody’s Black Mesa coal mine, earning as much as $60,000 a year in a region of high unemployment and poverty-level wages. The Mohave plant also pays tens of millions of dollars in royalties to the Navajo and Hopi each year.

Demonstrators said the royalties are too small, and they complain that tribal councils fail to distribute the money fairly. “They pay $45 million a year to the Navajo Nation, and I don’t see a red cent of that,” said Benally.

Nader Mansour, Edison’s manager of environmental regulations, said the utility is committed to finding another source of ground water for its slurry pipeline. He said all parties--including the Navajo and Hopi--have agreed in principle to a long-discussed plan that would use water from Lake Powell. The utility is awaiting funding from the U.S. Department of Interior, Mansour said.

Edison, which owns a 56% interest in the Mohave plant, is considering bids for its stake in the facility. The value of the plant is estimated at $150 million.

Last year, to settle a federal lawsuit filed by environmental groups, Edison agreed to clean up the plant’s sulfur dioxide emissions. That agreement is designed to hold up regardless of the plant’s ownership.

But whatever their benefit to the environment, pollution control devices at the Mohave plant will do little to help the primitive living conditions of many Navajo.

“The best thing right here and now is for Southern California Edison to shut down the [plant], to say ‘OK, we’ll pull our shares off the auction block,’ ” Lungo said.