FARMINGTON – Shiprock, the 1,500-foot formation that towers almost 30 miles west of Farmington, is a bellwether of progress for clean air advocates in the Four Corners.
“We never had the vantage points like this and the clarity when the coal plants were in operation,” said Mike Eisenfeld, energy and climate program manager at San Juan Citizens Alliance, over the crackling headset inside one of EcoFlight’s six-seat planes.
To the north, the Weminuche Wilderness and the La Plata Mountains peaked with whitecaps on the horizon. Shiprock, clearly visible miles away, marked the cardinal direction to the west.
It was a flight like this nearly 20 years ago that catalyzed Eisenfeld and EcoFlight’s work in the region. EcoFlight has long used aerial perspectives to educate people about environmental issues. Shiprock was barely visible then through the haze of smog from the two coal power plants, each with its own mine.
The Durango Herald accepted an invitation from EcoFlight to view the energy transition from above, but paid fair market cost for seats on the plane.
Shiprock sits within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation. To the north, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe reservation stretches from northern New Mexico into Southwest Colorado. Over the last century, the region has been a hub for uranium, coal and natural gas extraction – “the trifecta” of dirty energy, Eisenfeld said.
As the plane banked west, it passed first over phase one of the San Juan Solar and Storage Project, a 200-megawatt solar facility with 100 megawatts of battery storage sitting on 1,100 acres.
Then, it passed over the San Juan Generation Station – or what’s left of it.
The station’s four 400-foot smokestacks were blown up last August as part of an ongoing demolition effort. The last of the plant’s four coal-burning, electricity-generating units shuttered in 2022. Today, only about a quarter of the original infrastructure remains as the power station’s once-stalwart profile slowly turns to dust and metal wreckage.
“It’s done. It’s toast,” Eisenfeld said, with just a hint of delight in his voice as the plane hummed over trucks moving debris below.
San Juan Generating Station provided about 450 jobs for the community, and created about 1,683 megawatts of power when all four units operated. Investors briefly toyed with the idea of building a $1.4 billion carbon capture and sequestration project to save the plant from closure. Eisenfeld dismissed the idea as the machinations of “snake-oil salesmen.”
When the plant shut down and layoffs began, the Public Service Co. of New Mexico, the majority owner, agreed to compensate former workers and committed to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in solar power projects in the region to offset the loss in property taxes.
Phase one of the San Juan Solar Project was completed last year, and phase two is expected to bring online another 200 MW of generating power. The project relies on some of the transmission infrastructure that once carried electricity away from the coal plant. The $500 million solar project is a significant investment in the community, Eisenfeld said.
After a flyby of Shiprock, the EcoFlight turned back east toward the Four Corners Generating Station.
The five-unit coal plant (three units were decommissioned in 2013) was once considered one of the dirtiest sources of power in the country. Today, it is the last big coal power plant still operating on the Colorado Plateau, Eisenfeld said.
Arizona Public Service Co. owns 63% of Units 4 and 5, the two that still operate and can generate about 770 MW of power each; the Navajo Transitional Energy Co. owns a 7% share of the plant, and has full ownership of the expansive Navajo Mine to the south, which generates 4.7 million tons of coal annually including the 20,000 tons of coal the Four Corners station uses each day.
The mine and the power plant are major employers for the Navajo Nation, said Tony Skrelunas, executive director of the tribe’s Division of Economic Development. The two businesses employ more than 500 Navajo tribal members and have a $183 million annual impact on the tribe, according to an NTEC news release.
The remaining two units at Four Corners are slated to close in 2031, as power companies transition to cleaner energy sources and face regulatory burdens that make renewable power a more financially appealing option.
But as with the San Juan station, some want to explore whether carbon capture and sequestration could reduce Four Corners’ carbon emissions and keep the aging generating station alive past 2031.
The two operating units of the plant generated the equivalent of nearly 7.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2023 – the equivalent emissions of driving 1.7 million gasoline cars for a year, or the amount of carbon sequestered in 7.3 million acres of forest.
NTEC received a $6.55 million grant last year to evaluate the feasibility of designing a carbon capture system that would cut the plant’s emissions by 95%. The company did not respond to emailed questions as of Friday afternoon.
To environmentalists like Eisenfeld, the project would only strengthen the fossil fuel industry’s waning grip on energy production.
“It’s like retrofitting a Pinto when you could build an electric vehicle,” he said.
Eisenfeld is not as optimistic that Four Corners’ owners will contribute to the community as significantly as PNM did when the San Juan station shut down. Although NTEC is trying to hang on to the plant, Skrelunas said there are also plans in the works to ensure that the demolition and remediation create jobs and that renewable energy development is ready to step in.
“There’s a lot of jobs in decommissioning, (and) there’s a lot of jobs in reclamation,” he said. “But you’ve got to start planning way ahead to maximize those benefits.”
Whether the carbon capture project will succeed is unknown, but the tribe is preparing alternatives, Skrelunas said.
“Part of what’s driving this is really a lot of the portfolio standards and the states around us, they’re really transitioning to cleaner energy,” he said. “… The Navajo Nation is looking at several utility-scale renewable energy projects, and I think that, and a combination of things, that will really significantly make up for the future lost revenue.”
rschafir@durangoherald.com
