DOODA Desert Rock: Time to give up on power plant

IS THE PROPOSED DESERT ROCK PLANT DEAD?

IT IS TIME FOR THE NAVAJO NATION COUNCIL TO GIVE UP

By Elouise Brown
Dooda (NO) Desert Rock

On Thursday, January 22, 2009 Ron Curry, the New Mexico Environment Department Secretary, announced that the Appeals Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decided to grant review of New Mexico’s appeal of the grant of an air quality permit for the proposed Desert Rock Power Plant. In doing so, Secretary Curry said, “This is a major victory for New Mexico and for clean air. The federal Environmental Appeals Board recognized the negative effect this facility will have on air quality in the region. This decision is great news for our state. This would not have happened unless the EAB recognized there are significant problems with this permit.”

On January 7, 2009 the Region 9 EPA office withdrew part of the Desert Rock permit for reconsideration of the issue of “whether the permit should contain an emissions limitation for carbon dioxide.” Earlier, on November 13, 2008, the Environmental Appeals Board made a decision on the Deseret Power Electric Cooperative project at Bonanza, Utah that the EPA should have considered whether capping carbon dioxide emissions should be required. New Mexico has argued that carbon dioxide should be reduced by the “best available control technology” (BACT), and we agree. The EPA Appeals Board confirmed sending that part of the Desert Rock permit back to reconsider after public notice and an opportunity to comment.

In other words, the Desert Rock power plant is dead!

The Navajo Nation Council established the Dine Power Authority on January 19, 1996 for the specific purpose of the “development of a major coal-fired, mine-mouth steam electric generating station to be located within the extended boundaries of the Navajo Reservation in northwestern New Mexico” (in the words of the creation statute). That was before the U.S. Supreme Court determined that carbon dioxide is an “air pollutant” under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 and EPA was ordered to address that fact.

The question of whether the Navajo Nation should grant rights-of-way for the proposed power plant will be before the Navajo Nation Council this coming week. The reality is that Desert Rock will not go forward. Accordingly, the Council should vote the rights-of-way resolution down and dissolve the Dine Power Authority. Enough of the People’s money has been wasted on backing loans to crooks and ventures that have not gotten off the ground, and the Navajo Nation is nowhere near being “shovel ready” for monies to revive the economy.

It is time for the Council to exercise prudence.

Photo: Elouise Brown of Dooda Desert Rock and Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network at the United Nations in New York in April. 2008, opposing the power plant. Courtesy photo Dooda Desert Rock.