The Navajo Generating Station is one of the biggest coal plants in the country and is on Navajo land in Arizona. The Black Mesa Water Coalition, which has brought together Navajo and Hopi, are organizing to bring renewable energy to their lands.
Black Mesa Water Coalition is dedicated to preserving and protecting Mother Earth and the integrity of Indigenous Peoples’ cultures, with the vision of building sustainable and healthy communities
The Navajo Nation’s first Tribal Council, created in the early 1920s, was actually a business council formed explicitly to sign deals with large energy corporations. Nine decades later, our Nation is an illustration of a broken economy dependent on fossil fuels.
While utility lines run right over our heads, 18,000 Navajo households live without electricity. This accounts for 75% of all un-electrified homes in the United States. Furthermore, the fossil fuel economy has left us with polluted air and land, contaminated and depleted water.
They recently held a demonstration in Scottsdale and used solar power to pump water out of the Central Arizona Project canal.
After decades of coal industry on Navajo Nation, many Navajo families have not benefited; thousands still lack electricity and running water to their homes and haul water in trucks every week for cooking, cleaning, and drinking. One of those water trucks was used to bring the solar-powered pump alongside the CAP canal in Scottsdale today.
Navajos held the demonstration to send a message to the owners of the Navajo Generating Station coal-fired power plant near Page, Arizona that Navajo families want a transition away from a polluting coal industry on Navajo land that has powered CAP pumps for decades at the expense of residents’ land, health, water, and culture on the Navajo Reservation.