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Mesa Indigenous Support
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By Bill Donovan
Special to the Times
WINDOW ROCK - The Mohave Generating Station in Nevada may be able to stay
open past Jan. 1, 2006, but company officials are urging people not to get
their hopes up too high.
A recent decision by California utility regulators paves the way for the
company to look at alternative ways to solve the plant's many problems and allow
it to stay open.
"It was very good news for the plant," said Don Hendren, a spokesman for the
utility consortium that owns the plant.
Regulators authorized the spending necessary to look at various technologies
to develop a new water source for the coal slurry line, for years a point of
contention by Hopi officials as well as many Navajos who live near the Black
Mesa Mine, the source of the plant's fuel.
The tribes want plant operators to stop tapping the underground aquifer for
the slurry line, contending it has caused water levels to drop. The company
is investigating another aquifer, the Coconino, as a possible water source and
a feasibility study is underway by the Bureau of Reclamation.
The problem is that water availability isn't the only problem facing the old
generating station, which supplies electric power to millions of
Californians.
In fact, company officials say it would cost about $1.1 billion to address
all the problems and, so far, California regulators haven't given their OK to
pass on these costs to utility customers.
The $1.1 billion includes $400 million for new scrubbers to reduce air
pollution from the plant's smokestacks.
Environmentalists have argued for years that the Mohave plant causes some 85
percent of the haze that can be seen on some days over the Grand Canyon.
Plant officials, however, cite their own studies that say most of the haze comes
from auto exhaust fumes and only about two percent comes from the plant.
The Mohave generating station is a major employer in the region with about
500 employees, many of them Navajo.
President Joe Shirley Jr. and other tribal officials have been working with
the plant to try and keep it open, saying that its closing would cause the
layoff of hundreds of Navajos at the plant and the coal mine, near Kayenta,
Ariz.
A closing also would cost the tribe millions of dollars in lost royalties
and tax revenues from the mine, Navajo leaders say.
The Mohave plant is on course to close permanently within a year, unless its
problems are solved. Company officials say it's too early to say whether
they will be able to resolve its problems and keep it running.
But because of the recent decisions by the California utility regulators,
said Hendren, the plant now has a better chance.
_http://navajotimes.com/_content/mohave.php_
(http://navajotimes.com/_content/mohave.php)