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Mojave Station Closes, Negotiates to Rise Again
February 7, 2006
The West’s last large, high-emissions coal-fired
power plant closed on January 1, and with it, the Black Mesa Mine in
Four Corners. Southern California Edison had agree to retrofit the
Mojave Station Power Plant in Laughlin, Nevada, with scrubbers to
reduce emissions by 2006 as a settlement to a 1999 lawsuit over the
plant’s emissions. But the utility failed to install the equipment,
preferring to shutter the plant instead. Edison will receive $20
million in sulfur dioxide credits from the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) every year in perpetuity.
That agreement also shuts the mine near Kayenta,
Arizona on the Navajo Reservation. The mine was the primary employer
for hundreds, and a major source of revenue for both the Navajo and
Hopi tribes. Black Mesa Trust, a Hopi group, wants the EPA and
utilities to share some of pollution credits with the tribes so that
they can invest in renewable energy systems.
For more information, see an article by Daniel Kraker
writing for the Indian Country News Bureau in Flagstaff that
High Country News published in its January 23 edition; see:
http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=16040# . |
