MacDonald talks on Navajo energy development

By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — Long before Desert Rock Energy Project was ever thought of, the Navajo Nation had its own plans to build a power plant. But that was scuttled in 1982 after Chairman Peter MacDonald lost his bid for re-election.

"One of the things that we had going back in the late 1970s was to build a 250-megawatt power plant over by Standing Rock (N.M.)," he said Tuesday following a Monday evening presentation on the history of Navajo Nation water rights in Dilkon.

Standing Rock
"Standing Rock is between Coyote Canyon and Crownpoint. It's a small chapter there, but they have huge reserves of coal right in that area. The coal seams run about 30 feet deep. That's how thick it is. We had a great deal of geology work done there for coal seams and also for water. Then we hired a power engineering firm out of Kansas City to design a 250 megawatt plant," MacDonald said.

"We went to the chapter and after a lot of negotiation with the chapter they approved it, and then we started doing design work. This would be a 100 percent Navajo power plant. Nobody else involved. The first customer would be Navajo."

At that time, he said, the Navajo Nation was using somewhere around 50 megawatts of power. Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, "if I remember right, is using about 80 megawatts of power. So this 250-megawatt was designed to be sufficient for a number of years, and the excess coming from that plant would be sold to whoever wants extra energy."

"We had the engineers design it and we were just about ready to launch it. At that time the big question was who was going to run it, NTUA or somebody else.

"On the generation side we wanted to set up a separate entity of NTUA to be responsible for generation. The other part, the distribution part, they have always been doing that. They buy the power and then distribute it," MacDonald said.

NTUA
In this case, NTUA would get its power from the generating plant that was going to come on line in Standing Rock.

"We were lining up the coal mining part as well. Part of the effort of Navajo Engineering Construction Authority was to do major engineering projects as well, but that's another story," MacDonald said.

"When I left in 1982, this thing was right at the point of putting the final touches on it to go to the tribal council for approval. All of the ecological clearances and environmental impact and all those were done."

Mickey Dalton was NTUA general manager at the time and was very much involved with the Standing Rock project, MacDonald said. "Of course, I left in 1982 and when I came back that project was scuttled and in its place they had set up this DPA.

"They scrapped the Standing Rock thing and they were going to joint venture with the state of New Mexico along with some other major companies like Bechtel and Southern California Edison Co., New Mexico Public Service Co., GE, and I forget who else. They had a consortium and they were pitching in their monies to support DPA, Din Power Authority," he said.

When he came back into office in 1987, MacDonald stopped it.

"I had a meeting with the major principles in Denver and I said, 'No way are you going to do that, because you are just taking advantage of the Navajo.' They wanted Navajos to kick in the right-of-way for a 500 KV line and things like that. I said, 'No. The right-of-way is separate. We don't even want to talk about that.' "

Coal use
The coal they were going to use was on land the Navajo acquired in Eastern Navajo Agency by Chaco Canyon, according to MacDonald.

"We picked that land back in the 1970s because it also had a lot of coal. There's a huge coal reserve underneath it. We picked that land when we were in the process of dealing with Congress on the Navajo-Hopi land dispute.

"When they decided for us to give some land to the Hopis, we said that we've got to get some land in return. So that's one of the lands that we picked over there. What New Mexico discovered was that that land had a lot of coal in it, so then I guess they came to the tribe when I was out and said, 'Let's make a deal.'

"So they scuttled the Standing Rock project," MacDonald said. "Everything just went downhill after that. When I came back, it was gone and DPA was there. I stopped it, but of course, I was only in two years after that."

MacDonald said there also are many natural gas deposits under Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, which is rapidly being leased out in chunks to oil and gas companies now doing business on the Navajo Nation, and for which the Nation is receiving little royalty.

"A fault line runs diagonally across into Colorado, all the way up to Wyoming. Along that fault line, there's all these oil and gas deposits. That's why the San Juan area has been a good oil producer for many years, and there's still a lot of oil in there.

"On the NAPI property, on the southern end, the fault line runs underneath there. We made some preliminary drilling in those areas and there is natural gas in there.

"At one point we were talking about having a cogeneration plant there. It was a smaller one, like 30 megawatts. Of course, you could increase it as much as you want. But those were possibilities."

Because it was on Navajo Agricultural Products Industry property, it was decided that NAPI should benefit from it.

"The idea was, trying to become self-sufficient instead of just sitting and waiting for the federal government to give you money," MacDonald said.