Hard Rock ready for mine, plant to close
Navajo Times | Cindy Yurth
Dolly Manson and Levi Blackhat address the crowd at a town hall meeting on the future of the Navajo Generating Station at Hard Rock, Arizona, last Friday.
HARD ROCK, Ariz.
After 50 years of fighting Peabody Western Coal Co. and the effects of relocation, residents of Dzil Lizhiin are ready to “take our armor off,” as one woman put it.
Of the 35 or so people who spoke before 3 p.m. at a town hall meeting at Hard Rock Chapter last Friday, only five men came out in favor of keeping the Navajo Generating Station and Kayenta Coal Mine open — and all of them worked at the mine. Residents spoke of depleted springs, respiratory problems, coal ash falling “like snow” from the smokestacks of NGS.
“We’ve carried this Nation on our backs for 50 years,” said Germaine Simonson, a local entrepreneur. “What did we get? There’s nothing out here. We want to take our armor off.”
“I’m the one that’s signing your checks,” said Mary Katherine Smith, a relocation resister living on the Hopi Partitioned Land. “But yet I live without electricity and running water.”
Others said they feared the Navajo Transitional Energy Company, if it takes over the plant and mine, will have to raid the Permanent Trust Fund to cover the cost of reclaiming the land, since the plant’s operator, Salt River Project, has insisted the Navajo Nation guarantee the cleanup cost.
To read the full article, pick up your copy of the Navajo Times at your nearest newsstand Thursday mornings!
Are you a digital subscriber? Read the most recent three weeks of stories by logging in to your online account.
Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow