Tri-Cities

‘Fire in the hole’: Four smoke stacks demolished at San Juan Generating Station

Former employees and area residents watch decommissioned power plant’s smoke stacks fall on Saturday
The San Juan Generating Station’s four smoke stacks fall in unison upon implosion on Saturday, August 24, 2024, north of Waterflow, New Mexico. (Curtis Ray Benally/Special to the Tri-City Record)

WATERFLOW – “Fire in the hole,” could be heard before the explosion that rocked San Juan County, bringing down the smoke stacks at the San Juan Generating Station in Waterflow.

Former employees and area residents began arriving around 7 a.m. Saturday to find a place to park in a dirt lot opposite the decommissioned power plant so they could witness the 9 a.m. Aug. 24 destruction of the stacks.

“I don’t know what I’m feeling now,” Justin Yazzie said, with tears in his eyes as he watched the towers fall to the ground.

Yazzie, 70, worked at the plant for 40 years and retired as a fuel and water analyst in the water laboratory.

The implosion of the San Juan Generating Station’s smoke stacks starts Saturday, north of Waterflow, New Mexico. (Curtis Ray Benally/Special to the Tri-City Record)
The implosion of the San Juan Generating Station’s smoke stacks starts Saturday, north of Waterflow, New Mexico. (Curtis Ray Benally/Special to the Tri-City Record)

“I was practically raised there,” he said.

Working shifts, which included 12-hour days, he spent more time with co-workers than with his family.

Yazzie said he has a lot of “good memories” that he shares with his former co-workers and other retirees. Despite the loss of the plant, he said he still favors fossil fuel and accessing it “ethically.”

“We need it. The people need jobs,” he said.

Yazzie said he lives his tradition and culture. He farms the land and has cattle, which he “under grazes.”

“I want to take care of the land, take care of Mother Earth,” Yazzie said, adding he did his part by putting solar panels on his house.

Yazzie said the San Juan Generating Station “provided a good life of growing up for our kids.”

“It also saved and left a good pension and 401-K to live comfortably,” he said. “I mostly feel sad for the next two generations that won’t have the opportunities I had.”

As a single mother, Coral Singer also found opportunities to support her child by working at San Juan Generating Station. Singer worked as a server before she attended San Juan College for welding. She got a job as a boilermaker at the plant as a member of Local 627.

She said the staff was 75% Native American, and “it was their bread and butter.”

“Now we have to travel to find work,” Singer said. “It’s a sad day.”

Coral Singer, a former boilermaker at San Juan Generating Station, shared stories on Saturday about working at the plant just before the stacks went down that morning. (Debra Mayeux/Tri-City Record)
Justin Yazzie, a retired fuel and water analyst at San Juan Generating Station, said it was a melancholy day seeing the place where he worked for 40 years come down. (Debra Mayeux/Tri-City Record)

Singer’s son, Franklin Miller, watched the stacks go down while he was by his mother’s side. He said he will be happy to see the land reclaimed.

“We don’t get precipitation like we used to, and the native plants used in ceremonies and medicinal purposes don’t grow here like they used to,” Miller said, adding he believes this is because of the coal-fired plants.

“We have to go deep in the forest to find the medicinal plants,” Miller said, adding the plant’s demolition will “help clean up the air and bring back the native plants.”

Tom Harper worked at the plant for 10 years in the computer department working on a 40-year-old PBX system and network switches. He said he had “mixed feelings” about seeing the smoke stacks go down.

“It was a fixture for so long in the area,” Harper said.

The plant opened in 1973 and originally had four coal-burning units. Units 2 and 3 were closed in 2017, and Units 1 and 4 continued operating until September 2022, when those two units were retired.

Units 1 and 2 were jointly owned by PNM and Tucson Electric Power, according to a news release from the Western Clean Energy Campaign.

Units 3 and 4 provided power to PNM, plus a mix of municipal utilities and rural electric cooperatives in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and as far as California, the release said.

The San Juan Generating Station’s four smoke stacks are absent after demolition on Saturday north Water Flow, New Mexico. (Curtis Ray Benally/Special to the Tri-City Record)


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