Navajo Generating Station: 'Lets put it in our backyard'

By Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- In a sudden change of heart, the editor of the Arizona Daily Starr said he would like to offer his neighborhood for the Navajo Generating Station.
After encouraging the EPA to forget about new clean air standards, he said he realized that this was an act of environmental racism. He said he realized that his desire to continue this polluting power plant on the Navajo Nation was wrong.
"I'm sorry I joined the environmental racism parade," he said. He said it had never occurred to him that Navajos were human beings and that the people who live on the land deserve to live out their lives without respiratory diseases.
Further, he said he looks forward to having the large toxic ash ponds from regional coal-fired power plants, on and around the Navajo Nation, in his backyard. He recommended the ash ponds for wading pools in Tucson city parks.
As for polluting the sky around his southern Arizona neighborhood, he said, "The haze will offer some shade. Besides, we have plenty of hospitals here to treat bronchitis and asthma."
The editor said in a show of good faith, all the radiation from the abandoned uranium mines around Monument Valley could be stockpiled in his back yard as well.
"It is time that those of us profiting from the energy produced by these disease-producing power plants take a turn at becoming sick and disabled. We look forward to sharing in the diseases caused by power plant emissions and abandoned radioactive tailings."
"Besides, how can we continue to steal the water of Arizona Indian tribes for the cities of Phoenix and Tucson without disease-producing power plants and the Central Arizona Project," he pointed out.
"To continue stealing Arizona Indian water and the electricity it produces, we need power plants, attorneys and Arizona Congressmen in our pockets."
The editor said, in any case, the pristine view of the Grand Canyon is highly over-rated.
"The canyon is far more glorious draped in a grey cloud of dark and dingy smog in the morning light. There's nothing I enjoy more than standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon and choking and coughing from a big puff of coal-fired power plant smog."
The editor encouraged the leaders of Tucson and Phoenix to offer their own backyards for nuclear and toxic dumping as well.
"In the true spirit of 'be here now' lets not worry about our future generations, or about radiation deconstructing our genetic matter." He said the Western Shoshone, Goshute and other Indian tribes shouldn't have to spend their lives fighting nuclear dumping in their communities.
"Lets put it in our backyards."

Yes, its satire.