Dangerous Navajo power plant emissions documented in EPA interactive map

Navajo coal-fired power plants, oil and gas industry, poisoning Navajo atmosphere, major source of greenhouse gases

By Brenda Norrell

Photo: (R) Louise Benally, Navajo, with Riley, Choctaw, speaking out against the corporate beast and coal fired power plants at the ethnic studies rally in Tucson on Tuesday.

The US EPA has released an interactive map showing the greenhouse gas emissions from the Navajo Nation’s three power plants and other poisonous large facilities in Indian country.

The dangerous toxins released by Navajo power plants at the Navajo Generating Station at Page, Ariz, and the Four Corners Generating Station and San Juan Generating Station in northwest New Mexico, are documented on the map.

There are other dangerous toxic releases on Navajoland that people are unaware of. These include the El Paso Natural Gas station in St. Michaels near the Navajo capitol of Window Rock, Ariz., and gas emissions in the Bloomfield, N.M., area. The Bloomfield area is inundated with oil and gas drilling, and power plant emissions. This area is the sacred Place of Origin, Dinetah, of Navajos.

The EPA map reveals carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide and methane emissions. The graphs reveal the Navajo power plants, and other power plants in the US, are responsible for the largest portion of greenhouse gases.

Louise Benally, Navajo resisting relocation at Big Mountain, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation urged Navajos and their supporters to bring a halt to the massive coal fired power plant industry responsible for disease, the depletion of the aquifers and destroying the quality of life for Navajos.

On the Navajo Nation, there have been no studies which analyze the combined health dangers to Navajos of coal mines, power plants, gas plumes, toxic dumping and the radioactive uranium mine tailings from the Cold War.

These multiple health dangers are concentrated in the Four Corners area and the region of Page, Monument Valley and Black Mesa near the Arizona and Utah border. Another area of toxic contamination is the Gallup, N.M., region due to the current oil and gas releases, and the radiation that flowed down the Rio Puero after the Church Rock, N.M. uranium tailings spill.

"It is to time to slay the beast," Benally told those gathered in Tucson on Tuesday, Jan. 10, rallying to save ethnic studies. Benally said the same corporate beast responsible for the racism and imperialism that now forbids Mexican American studies in Arizona, is the same corporate beast which targets Navajos with genocidal coal mining, power plants and oil and gas drilling.

Benally and other Navajos recently joined O'odham to protest the Salt River Project, which operates the Navajo Generating Station. SRP is also responsible for drying up the waterways which O'odham depended on for their way of life and farming in southern Arizona. The protest was during the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC, described by protesters as corporate profiteers coopting Arizona legislators, promoting private prisons and targeting Indian country with genocidal coal fired power plants, mining and drilling.

The interactive map reveals the dangerous emissions in and around Indian country throughout the United States.
EPA interactive map:
http://ghgdata.epa.gov/ghgp/main.do