“I pray that this power plant won’t be
built,” Louise Benally told the crowd in the Burnham
Chapter House – a sort of Navajo version of a town hall – on July
24. Benally and more than two dozen others, mostly Navajo men in
big cowboy hats and older women in velveteen dresses and turquoise,
spoke against the plant in their native language, punctuated by
English words like “climate change,” “megawatts,” “greed,” and
“Alternative A.”
Alternative A is the “no action” option
for the coal-fired Desert Rock Power Plant, which would churn out
power for more than a million homes, mostly in Nevada and Arizona.
Its smokestack would rise up from the desert just five miles north
of Burnham, N.M. Whether Benally’s prayers will be answered remains
to be seen, but her doubts about coal power seem to be spreading
far beyond the Navajo Reservation: Over the past weeks, coal has
taken big hits, from Wall Street all the way to Hollywood
Boulevard.
Major coal company stocks fell after Citigroup
urged investors to put their money into other energy sources and
metals, saying coal companies are “perceived as
landscape-disfiguring, global warming bad guys” and mourning the
fact that “prophesies of a new wave of coal-fired generation have
vaporized.”
One such vaporization occurred when six
municipalities in the greater Los Angeles area put the kibosh on
plans to build a 900-megawatt addition to the Intermountain Power
Project in Utah. The California cities have veto power because,
combined, they buy 75 percent of the plant’s electricity.
And in Nevada, a first: A politician shows scruples. Sen. Harry
Reid, the Democratic majority leader, said he’ll do “everything I
can” to stop three coal-fired plants from being built in his state,
including one proposed by Sithe Global Power, the company behind
Desert Rock. Though Reid acknowledged that it might be smarter for
him, politically, to support the plants, he said his “conscience
wouldn’t let me.”
Back in New Mexico, Desert Rock still
seems on the path to being built: Navajo Nation officials – who
hope to buy into the plant – like it because of the economic boost
it will provide, and because it will spew fewer pollutants and use
less water than most existing plants of its size. But now Desert
Rock has a more powerful opponent than just a handful of pissed-off
neighbors. Democratic presidential candidate and New Mexico Gov.
Bill Richardson spoke against the proposal in July, saying that
each new conventional coal power plant “is a step backward.”
Shortly after the Burnham hearing began, the electricity
cut out, killing the lights and the public address system.
Electricity was quickly restored – from the sun, not from coal: A
hearing participant happened to have his solar generator on hand.
If the sun alone can’t power the world when coal
is forced to retire, there’s always nuclear. A provision
in the energy bill just passed by the Senate could be a boon for
companies hoping to build nuclear reactors. The bill gives the
Department of Energy power to approve unlimited loan guarantees for
all clean power, which could include nuclear, since it doesn’t
directly emit greenhouse gases.
In other nuclear news,
Department of Energy officials announced that the cleanup of
Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington is progressing nicely.
Meanwhile, workers on that project were told to “take cover” in
late July when a pipe spilled between 50 and 100 gallons of highly
radioactive waste. A study recently found that Los Alamos National
Laboratory released nearly 60 times more plutonium just after World
War II than previously believed. And Rocky Flats, the former nuke
facility in Colorado, has officially become a wildlife refuge.
Almost as hot as plutonium: The real
estate market in and around Aspen, Colo., where residential home
sales are on pace to set a new record. Considering that the U.S. is
in a housing slump, and that Colorado has the second-highest
foreclosure rate in the nation, this boom may seem surprising. But
it also indicates who’s sailing unscathed through the current
economic crosswinds. Apparently, the rich are still holding their
own, since they’re the ones who are buying up the Aspen area’s
multimillion dollar homes. The energy industry also seems to be
thriving, since the “down valley” portion of the Aspen market,
smack-dab in the middle of the gas and oil boom, is doing quite
well.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Two weeks in the West.
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