The Navajo Generating Station near Page. (Photo: R. J. Hall.)
PHOENIX (NAZ Today) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed rules that would require the Navajo Generating Station and the Four Corners Power Plant to install new emissions equipment which could potentially put power rates out of reach for users.
The plant supplies low-cost electricity for the Central Arizona Project Canal to pump water to Phoenix and Tucson. Though the supply of electricity comes at a price, the EPA ranks Navajo as the nation’s third largest emitter of nitrogen oxides and Four Corners as the second largest.
Some fear the cost of curbing these carbon emissions will have a great impact on the Hopi and Navajo Indian reservations. The coal burned to produce electricity is mined on these reservations and tribal members provide a large portion of the labor needed to keep the plant running. There is the possibility that many tribe members could lose their jobs if the plant closed.
The rules being proposed by the EPA would force the plant’s owners to install complex new air scrubbers that use ammonia to break down pollutants. The cost of the project could range between $600 million and $1 billion. As an alternative, plant owners were considering installing more efficient burners to reduce nitrogen oxides at a substantially lower cost of $43 million.
The suggested scrubber system would add on an additional $13 million a year to the plant’s operating budget as estimated by Salt River Project, the plant’s managing partner. These raised expenses would, in turn, be passed on to users.
The proposal has been appealed to Arizona’s congressional delegation by the plant’s partners and Governer Jan Brewer has been enlisted. The EPA will accept comments from the public through the end of the year before making a final decision that is expected by the middle of 2010.
“We do not have an alternative,” said Susan Bitter Smith, president of the board that oversees the canal. “This is a survival issue for us. We need the EPA to work with us in a rational, logical way that takes into consideration all of the consequences.”
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Related story: Navajo Nation Receives 5 Million Dollar Grant to Improve Electrical Services
More information on the Navajo Generating Plant: http://www.srpnet.com/about/stations/navajo.aspx
More information on the Four Corners Power Plant: http://www.pnm.com/systems/4c.htm
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