MARSHALL JOHNSON
Co-creator of To Nizhoni Ani (Sacred Springs Speaks) and member of Black Mesa Coalition asked, “where does the Central Az Project get its energy?” It’s a long ways from Ellis Island.
To Nizhoni Ani’s sole mission is to preserve and protect the sacred sole source aquifer of Black Mesa, the Navajo Aquifer, which has been integral in energy development for more than four decades in Arizona.
You have over drafted the N aquifer and as a result Black Mesa is suffering from fissures. Peabody’s Kayenta coal mine digs up Black Mesa coal to feed to Navajo Generating Station and before that Black Mesa coal fed Mohave Generating Station thru a 273 mile pipeline that transported the coal by mixing it with N-Aquifer water. Annually, Peabody used more than a billion gallons of N-Aquifer water. Peabody continues to use the N-Aquifer for its Kayenta Mine.
And Az’s legislators continue to support the state’s reliance on Navajo and Hopi coal and NGS’s energy for CAP/Central Az Project to push water from the Colorado River uphill 336 miles so u can have comfortable life styles.
The cheap energy and water enjoyed by Southern Az is at the expense of the Navajo and Hopi people who live near and around the pollution coming from coal fired power plant?NGS.
The time is now for EPA to stand up for Az’s environment.
I plead to the NGS stakeholders and TWG/Technical Working Group to place wat they developed in the trash.
U have left out key stakeholders, our Navajao pple. Water from natural springs where I live, which is Black Mesa, no longer comes to the surface.
Az has allowed the unwise use of water from the N-Aquifer for energy and power. Where I live there are 1,300 students that have to be bussed over unpaved bus routes, which become useless when there is a lot of rain and snow. And so the children, including my child, cannot go to school because of “mud days.” But Az tells my child, and the other children, u are under performing.
Put me at TWG’s table and I’ll give u correct numbers regarding NOx, N-Aquifer, environmental justice, etc.
ELSA JOHNSON
I’m here to speak for the Navajo elders who do not read and write and are forgotten and for those not yet born.
The metropolitan areas and Az ned to undertand that someones suffers for ur cheap power and water.
NGS must install SCR/Selective Catalytic Reduction (NOx pollution controls) and they must install SCRs just like other coal plants across the country.
Navajo and Hopi people live close to NGS and they are the most exposed to the dangerous NOx particulates spewing from NGS’s power generating stacks.
The daily unchecked pollution of NGS makes a differenc in the health of the Navajo and Hopi elders and children. And so TWG’s recommendation to lengthen the time frame for the installation of SCRs on NGS means that the federal govt can exempt itself from its own laws.
If this coal fired power plant/NGS was near Phx, u wud have shut it down or put in compliance with the Clean Air Act.
I heard from some of the people commenting here that the rate payers and other people in Az wud suffer because rates for water and power wud increase if NGS is brot into compliance and not given more time to get into compliance which is why EPA neds to recommend TWG’s BART.
We/Navajo people are suffering now. We pay 20 times more for water. We pay about $13,000 an acre feet for water on the Navajo rez annually compared to Glendale/Az metropolitan areas that pay about $500 an acre feet annually.
There is social and environmental injustice here.
We are not here with Twerk or Tweet because the Navajo people were not invited to be a part of that group which was unfair to exclude those of us that are directly impacted by the operation of NGS and Peabody kayenta mine.
NGS has created an environmental and cultural impact on the Navajo aquifer.
There is a ned for a health study on the impacts of NGS to the people living near it and around it. Since 1974, NGS has been releasing dangerous metals into the air. But so far today, no one has mentioned health studies. I urge the EPA to do thorough health studies.
