Neo,
A recent article about the plant:
Four Corner power plant fouling Navajo air
By Brenda Norrell
Today staff
FARMINGTON, N.M. - A new EPA report shows that two power plants and their coal mines in San Juan County released 13 million pounds of chemical toxins into the Four Corners' air in one year alone - toxins breathed by Navajo, Jicarilla Apache, Southern Ute and other residents.
"Exposure to small amounts of toxins daily will add up to a lot - enough to kill - in a lifetime," said Anna Frazier, Navajo member of the grass-roots Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment.
The EPA's Toxic Release Inventory reveals that two power plants 15 miles west of Farmington at the Navajo Nation border - the San Juan Generating Station and the Four Corners Power Plant - produced the vast majority of toxins such as hydrochloric acid, xylene and benzene.
A refinery in Bloomfield operated by the San Juan Refinery, southeast of Farmington in the vicinity of the Navajo Nation and Jicarilla Apache Nation, also released a large amount of toxins.
The EPA study for 1998 is the first of its kind.
"The only way to clean up or lessen the toxic emissions in the Four Corners is to have the power plants clean up their act or shut them down completely," Frazier said.
"Our Navajo Nation government is certainly not going to do that. They would rather have the revenues coming in from the coal companies and the power plants."
Frazier said Navajos are paying with their lives so residents of Phoenix and California can reap the benefits of Navajo coal-powered electric power plants.
"In Phoenix and California, they run their air conditioners full blast day and night at the cost of Navajo lives.
"There are five electrical power plants surrounding the Navajo Reservation that spew sulfur dioxide and NOX (numerous noxious oxides) day and night along with the coal companies raising black dust day and night.
"It's no wonder the health of the Navajo people is declining rapidly.
"My blood boils when I think about these things."
Frazier said dollars are the bottom line and polluting sources of energy provide the revenues on which the Navajo Nation operates.
The Navajo Nation receives the bulk of its annual $100 million operating expenses from royalties, leases and taxes from its coal, oil and gas. Those revenues provide operational expenses for the tribal government, including the salaries of the 88-member Navajo Nation Council, the tribe's annual budgets show.
Frazier said the EPA's findings should wake up the Nation. "This ought to wake up the Navajo Nation Council Resources Committee and Navajo EPA. They need to put more pressure on San Juan and Arizona Public Service power plants."
She said the Navajo Nation government offers many excuses for failing to make power plants clean up emissions. And she points out that the Navajo EPA has even said that chronic respiratory diseases can also be caused by dirt and dust from unpaved roads and dust storms.
"That's like burying your head in the sand because you don't want to admit or know the truth.
"Many livestock owners live down river from the power plants. I know sheepherders in the Red Valley and Rattle Snake area who used to get soot on their clothing when the wind shifted their way," she said of Navajo communities southwest of the power plants.
"Many of those people died from different types of cancers, but mostly respiratory - lung cancer.
"The Navajo people living in the rural area of the Four Corners are outdoors people. They tend to their livestock, have out-houses, cook and eat outdoors in the summer because they do not have air conditioners."
Navajo environmentalists point out that the Four Corners region, recently visited by President Bill Clinton to promote Internet technology, has attracted mining companies that used Navajos as human guinea pigs. The pattern began with uranium mining in the mid-20th century for the production of the first atomic bomb, they say.
In nearby Cove and Red Valley on the Navajo Nation, where most of the men worked in uranium mines, at least one member of every family is reported to have died from respiratory illness or cancer.
But few health studies have been conducted by the Indian Health Service or Centers for Disease Control correlating the rise in cancers and respiratory diseases with mining, existing uranium tailings or the widespread release of toxins from power plants.
Chris Shuey of the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque said the EPA's report is lacking and fails to address the pollution caused by the oil and gas industry clustered in areas like the Navajo community of Aneth, Utah, in the Four Corners, the site of 350 oil and gas wells.
"No one can tell you how much benzene local people, especially Native people, are breathing daily."
Shuey said the typical response of health officials is: "Of course, cancer-causing chemicals, heavy metals, radionuclides, particulates, sulfur dioxide, etc., in your air and on your land can't be good for your health, but gee, we don't know how bad it really is... ."
In addition to the airborne toxins, the two San Juan Country power plants reportedly buried 6.5 million tons of solid waste on their sites or at nearby coal mines. The reported airborne toxins released were in addition to more than 300 million pounds of other emissions such as particulates and nitrogen dioxide. Earlier reports showed San Juan County power plants among the worst polluters in the nation for these pollutants which can travel hundreds of miles.
Meanwhile, the Navajo Nation Council pursues energy development as a primary source of economic development and the state of New Mexico expresses no alarm over EPA's report.
Max Johnson, New Mexico's hazardous materials bureau chief for the state Office of Emergency Management, said toxic releases have not skyrocketed.
"It's just that now we're seeing the numbers," Johnson said.
Julie Grey, spokesperson for the Public Service Company of New Mexico, which manages and partly owns the San Juan Generating Station, reflected the sentiments of other energy producers.
Grey said that no one knows the actual health risks associated with the EPA numbers.
Frazier, however, points out that highly-paid, non-Indian management at the Four Corners power plants have always claimed that the toxins in the air and soil are not life threatening.
"They can move to another area if they feel their health is threatened - but our Navajo people can not move to another location.
"That is the difference here."
Diné CARE was cofounded by Navajo environmentalist Leroy Jackson, found dead in 1993 after his life was threatened in his successful fight to halt clear-cutting of the Ponderosa Pines of the Navajos' Chuska Mountains. Diné CARE became the genesis for the Indigenous Environmental Network.
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