Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment
(“C.A.R.E.”) and the San Juan Citizens Alliance were forced to take
legal action against the Federal Office of Surface Mining (“OSM”)
today over the agency’s approval of a massive mine expansion for the
Navajo Mine. OSM’s decisions have already led to the permanent removal or
relocation of numerous tribal members from their homeland and resulted in the
permanent dumping of millions of tons of hazardous wastes. OSM recently issued
mine permits to BHP Billiton, an Australian Corporation, which would
significantly expand these practices.
BHP’s Navajo Mine is a
massive 13,000 acre surface coal mining operation located in the Four Corners
Region on the Navajo Nation. The two mine permits challenged by the groups
authorize BHP to mine coal for the Four Corners Power Plant and to permanently
dispose of Coal Combustion Waste (“CCW”). CCW consists of toxic solid
wastes (including fly ash, scrubber sludge and bottom ash) from the power
plant’s coal-fired generators.
“Over 1.5 million tons per year of coal combustion waste
from the power plant is backfilled into the Navajo Mine,” said Mike
Eisenfeld of the Alliance, “Despite legal requirements, OSM hasn’t
required protections for ground or surface water. It doesn’t even require
monitoring—even though the mine is part of a major river
drainage,” said Eisenfeld. The Navajo Mine lies within the Chaco River
drainage which drains north into the San Juan River. “OSM is creating a
massive superfund legacy for the residents of the Four Corners. This is an
irresponsible dumping practice and has to stop now.” “OSM’s
permitting actions will result in the permanent removal and relocation of
Navajo Nation tribal members including elders.” said Lori Goodman of
Diné C.A.R.E. and Navajo Nation tribal member. “The agency and BHP
treat this area as if it is uninhabited. OSM must understand that community
members live or graze livestock in these areas. OSM fails to recognize that
this is our homeland.”
View Navajo mine site from
satellite.
Hunt’s not upset about global warming or the
pollutants that pour out of the plant’s smokestacks.
He’s mad about coal combustion wastes - CCWs, as activists
call them - the solid remnants left over from burning coal. Hunt says
they’ve sickened his family and neighbors, even killed his sheep. Each
year, power plants in the U.S. collectively kick out enough of this stuff to
fill a train of coal cars stretching from Manhattan to Los Angeles and back
three and a half times. It’s stored in lagoons next to power plants,
buried in old coal mines and sometimes just piled up in the open. It is the
largest waste stream of most power plants, and a recently released study by the
Environmental Protection Agency found that people exposed to it have a much
higher than average risk of getting cancer. Yet the federal government refuses
to classify the waste as hazardous, and has dragged its feet on creating any
nationally enforceable standards. And with new attention focused on coal
power’s impacts on the air, this great big problem may get worse, and
continue to be ignored.
The power
plant generates approximately 2 million tons per year of CCW. CCW from
generating units 1, 2, and 3 is managed on the power plant site, while CCW from
generating units 4 and 5 is placed in mine pits at the Navajo Mine (the second
site visited).
The venturi scrubbers on generating units 1, 2, and 3
remove fly ash and flue gas desulfurization (FGD) sludge simultaneously. This
wet mixture is pumped through a cement-lined ditch to onsite ponds. Ash pond #6
currently is the only active pond on site. The discharge point into the pond is
moved around to disperse the slurry evenly. Slurry pumping to the pond is not
continuous, but rather occurs only when there has been enough material
collected in the bottom of the thickeners to send to the pond.
New Mexico coal can not easily compete with
Wyoming coal because of the tremendous difference in seam thickness and the
lack
of an integrated rail network, particularly in the San Juan
Basin.
Experienced observer pointed out that rail service from
Gallup to Farmington should have started long ago. 
San Juan June 2007 through December production.
Working, housing and living conditions at Broken Hill were appalling in the early days as the population soared from virtually nil in 1886 to 20 000 in 1891. Dysentery and diseases like typhoid were a problem due to the unsanitary conditions and lead poisoning was rife. 360 men were killed in the mines between 1894 and 1913, with many more dying subsequently of lung disease. BHP employees even had to pay the company four shillings out of their first pay for the shovel they were to use.
| Elouise Brown, Hank Dixon, Nez and a
few of their Navajo elders have gathered in the rustic hut to figure out how to
block the new construction. Brown found out about the project in December when
she came on a man drilling a test well on her family’s grazing land. She
cornered the worker and forced him to leave. That same day she established a
blockade at the site now known as
the
Dooda Desert Rock vigil (Dooda means “no” in the Diné
language). Even without the new project a dense curtain of brown smog hangs
over the desert between the site of the vigil and the distant silhouette of
Shiprock peak. The plant would burn 5.5 million tons of Navajo coal per year and produce 1,500 megawatts of electricity for the fast-growing cities of the Southwest. "You will hear that the Navajo Nation supports this power plant, but grassroots people do not support this," said Nez, who lives 20 miles from the site of the proposed plant. ... Even if activists manage to derail the new plant, the Four Corners region is already “a national energy sacrifice area,” says Mike Eisenberg of the San Juan Citizens Alliance, a local community group. His group has been protesting the Four Corners power plant and the San Juan generating station, located within sight of each other just outside Farmington in San Juan County, which are two of the most polluting plants in the western U.S. American Lung Association figures show that 16,000 people in the county, or close to 15 percent of the population, suffer from lung disease, most likely from plant emissions. The 2,040 megawatt Four Corners plant emits 157 million pounds of sulfur dioxide, 122 million pounds of nitrogen oxides, 8 million pounds of soot and 2,000 pounds of mercury a year. The 1,800 megawatt San Juan generating station releases over 100 million pounds of sulfur dioxide, more than 100 million pounds of nitrogen oxides, roughly 6 million pounds of soot, and at least 1000 pounds of mercury. Add to this the 18,000 oil and gas wells spread throughout the region and you have “massive cumulative impacts that will never be reversed,” says Eisenberg. ... Air pollution is not the only problem. Waste from the area’s two coal mines has destroyed ground water with high sulfate content that kills livestock, “wiping out ranching as a viable business on this part of the reservation,” according to Jeff Stant, a consultant with the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based non-profit group. Some “70 million tons of coal combustion waste has been dumped in the Navajo coal mine, making it the biggest dump of mine waste in the country," Stant continues. "Between this and the nearby San Juan mine there’s 150 million tons of waste sitting there. That’s more fly ash and scrubber sludge than the entire nation generates in one year.” This waste, heavily laden with cadmium, selenium, arsenic, and lead – byproducts of coal-burning – leaches into groundwater turning it poisonous to people, livestock, and vegetation. A forthcoming EPA report released to the national environmental group Earth Justice indicates that groundwater contaminated with coal ash leads to a cancer risk as high as 1 in 100 – 10,000 times higher than previous EPA estimates. ... “You cross that dirt road over there,” says Nez, “and there’s a little Hogan [traditional Navajo house] and a little sheep corral, no running water and no electricity, and in the backyard there’s a big behemoth power plant sending electricity down to Tucson, down to Phoenix, or Las Vegas.”       |
New Mexico had a decrease of 2.6 million short
tons in 2006 to end the year with a total of 25.9 million short tons, a decline
of 9.1 percent, which was attributable to
the decreased production levels at BHP’s Navajo and San
Juan South mines.
The electric power sector (electric utilities and
independent power producers) accounts for about 92 percent of all coal consumed
in the United States and is the driving force for the Nation’s coal
consumption.
2006
2005
New Mexico 4
25,913 4 28,519 - -9.1
Underground 1 6,993 1 7,905 -
-11.5 San Juan coal mine.
Surface
3 18,919 3 20,613 - -8.2
How do I find production data for coal in New Mexico?
The deep coals of the San Juan Basin are the result of numerous
transgressive and regressive sequences of the Cretaceous epeiric sea.^The
Cretaceous coals originated from related landward coal swamps with a general N.
50--60/sup 0/ W. trend.^Each landward coal swamp contains a few million to a
few tens of millions of tons of high volatile subbituminous to bituminous
coal.^The Fruitland Formation represents the last regressive sequence of the
Cretaceous epeiric sea and contains some 200 billion tons of coal in beds more
than 2 ft thick at depths to 4,500 ft.^As received,
Btu values are from 9,000 to 13,000 with a low moisture
content ranging from 2 to 6 percent.^The ash content of the coal is high (10
percent to more than 30 percent).^A total resource of 12 billion tons of coal
is established for the Menefee Formation, in beds more than 2 ft thick with
depths of as much as 6,000 ft.^The average heating value is 9,860 Btu per
pound, with an average content of 12 percent.^Under present economic conditions
underground mining of the deep coals of the San Juan Basin is not
practical.^Some form of in situ gasification or liquefaction appears to be the
most promising method of economic development.
Coal Can't Fill World's Burning
Appetite
With Supplies Short, Price Rise Surpasses
Oil and U.S. Exporters Profit
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 20, 2008; Page A01
An untimely confluence of bad
weather, flawed energy policies, low stockpiles and voracious growth in Asia's
appetite has
driven international spot prices of coal up by 50 percent or
more in the past five months, surpassing the escalation in oil prices.
Coal News and Markets.
Saturday March 8, 2008
Central Appalachia 12,500 Btu, 1.2
SO2
Northern Appalachia 13,000 Btu, <3.0 SO2
Illinois Basin
11,800
Btu, 5.0 SO2
Powder River Basin 8,800 Btu, 0.8 SO2
Uinta Basin
11,700
Btu, 0.8 SO2
