BY BILL HEDDEN
Early this year, the owners of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) near Page, Arizona bowed to economic reality and decided to shut down the massive coal-fired power plant by December 2019, or sooner if they cannot negotiate an agreement with the Navajo Nation to dismantle the plant after the site lease expires. Despite 40 years of efficient operations to amortize the initial investment, and despite owning a dedicated railroad that delivers the coal from a nearby mine, power from the plant today costs about $15 more per megawatt hour than electricity bought from the regional grid. Cheap natural gas and renewable energy have made coal uneconomic, even for generators, like NGS, that have yet to modernize pollution controls.
Never mind that the experts who have been operating the plant and paying the bills have joined utilities across the nation in deciding that these coal jobs are gone. Just as doom was pronounced for NGS, state officials in Utah urged President Trump to do away with much or all of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument so that they can go after the extraordinarily remote and geologically unfavorable coal deposits on the Kaiparowits Plateau. They do not have a market for the coal, but they claim that hundreds of billions of dollars are locked away in the monument.
We have definitely entered a new political era in which facts are only dimly related to actions and anyone can summon “alternative facts” from the ether. Much of the cherished commons of our democracy, including our shared inheritance of public lands, is going to be at grave risk of senseless assault. It will require hitherto untapped reserves of patience and doggedness to continue to hold up a light of reason and compassion against the darkness.
We offer this issue of the Advocate as a sort of candle for that work, reminding you and ourselves of how we came to have the blessings of public lands in America, and how that inheritance becomes richer and more meaningful when we enlarge the story, as at the Bears Ears National Monument, to include the wisdom of the Native Americans from whom the land was originally taken. The story of Navajo Generating Station in this issue reminds us that we could be at a historic transition point where clean energy is cheaper than dirty. The stakes in rebuilding our democracy and public discourse have never been higher.
Sincerely,
Also in this issue:
John Leshy on how Utah “land grabbers” misread history, as well as the dictionary. Read now ›