No Blackstone Coal - Desert Rock

From CNN

Months after ash spill, Tennessee town still choking

HARRIMAN, Tennessee (CNN) -- Pamela Hampton stands at the kitchen sink, her gaze trained out of the window of her family's small hillside home. The disaster site is not visible from where she stands, but she knows it is there, down the hill, around a short stretch of highway, less than a mile away.

Desert Rock - New Mexico

The four corners region is an area plagued by coal and coal power plants. Near Farmington, NM, on the Navajo Reservation sits the Four Corners Power Plant, a 2040 MW behemoth that is considered one of the country’s dirtiest coal-fired generating units. Fifteen miles to the north is the San Juan Generating Station, is an 1800 MW coal power plant. To the west near Page, AZ sits the Navajo Generation Station, a 2250 MW coal plant. All of these plants serve up a toxic stew of air pollutants, making the air quality of the Four Corners region some of the worst in the country. In addition, this area contains some of the most concentrated mercury contaminated waterways in the lower forty-eight states.

The reservation also happens to be where fifty years worth of toxic coal ash from the Four Corners power plant is stored. There, huge piles open to the reservation’s constant desert winds serve up a continual dose of particulate poison to anyone or anything that breathes.

This is why the proposed 1500 MW Desert Rock coal-fired power plant will only serve insult to injury. This is a region that has been transformed into an “industrial energy zone” in a span of 50 years, all at the expense of the local population’s health, their cultural heritage, and the beauty of region. The site intended for Desert Rock would only be 35 miles from Shiprock, a sacred 12 million year-old geological landmark that is steeped in Navajo spirituality.

The pollution from Desert Rock would also impact Mesa Verde National Park only 65 miles to the north. Chaco Canyon and Canyon de Chelly National Monuments are only 55 and 60 miles away, respectively.

Navajos for Clean Renewable Energy, not Dirty Polluting Coal

Desert Rock is being proposed by Sithe Global, LLC, an international developer of large-scale energy projects. While Sithe attempts to paint itself green and socially responsible, the fact remains that only two of their projects have any remote connection with renewable energy, two separate hydro-power dam facilities. The rest are either coal or natural gas projects. Sithe also claims to be a partner in trying to improve the well-being of the Navajos. But two separate in-person invitations to Sithe executives (in their NY offices) to visit the reservation have been ignored.

Sithe and Blackstone remain adamant that Desert Rock will be built. They used their friends in the Bush administration to push through an air permit by the EPA in 2008 without adequate environmental oversight. But the agency, in a remarkable turn-around, recently requested to its own appeals board that the permit be remanded back to the agency for further analysis. This action was based on an appeal filed by a collection of citizen groups.

To make things tougher for Sithe and Blackstone, the proposed 470-mile Navajo Transmission Project hit a rock this spring when the Department of Interior remanded the environmental impact statement over analyses deficiencies. Without the transmission, Desert Rock would have no way to send its power to the grid.

It goes without saying that Blackstone’s CEO Steven Schwarzman likely hasn’t lost nor will he lose a minute’s worth of sleep over the 50 years worth of pollution that Desert Rock will inflict upon the Navajo people and the entire Four Corners region. But you can make him think about it. More specifically, as one of the country’s largest investment organizations, the Blackstone Group has a unique opportunity to use it’s immense capitol, resources and clout to lead the way in developing clean renewable energy projects and finally put the Navajo Nation on the road to true prosperity. Let’s let him know what we think.