Navajos Launch Direct Action Against Big Coal

27 June 2013 Nava­jo Nation mem­bers launched a cre­ative direct action Tues­day to protest the mas­sive coal-fueled pow­er plant that cuts through their Scotts­dale, Ari­zona land.

After a wind­ing march, approx­i­mate­ly 60 demon­stra­tors used a mas­sive solar-pow­ered truck to pump water from the crit­i­cal Cen­tral Ari­zona Project (CAP) canal into bar­rels for deliv­ery to the reser­va­tion.

Flanked by sup­port­ers from across the Unit­ed States, tribe mem­bers cre­at­ed a liv­ing exam­ple of what a Nava­jo-led tran­si­tion away from coal toward solar pow­er in the region could look like.  

Par­tic­i­pants waved col­or­ful ban­ners and signs declar­ing ‘Pow­er With­out Pol­lu­tion, Ener­gy With­out Injus­tice’.

“We were a small group mov­ing a small amount of water with solar today,” declared Wahleah Johns with Black Mesa Water Coali­tion. “How­ev­er if the polit­i­cal will pow­er of the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion and SRP were to fol­low and tran­si­tion NGS to solar all Ari­zo­nans could have reli­able water and pow­er with­out pol­lu­tion and with­out injus­tice.”

The demon­stra­tion was not only sym­bol­ic: the reser­va­tion needs the water they were col­lect­ing.

While this Nava­jo com­mu­ni­ty lives in the shad­ow of the Nava­jo Gen­er­at­ing Station—the largest coal-pow­ered plant in the West­ern Unit­ed States—many on the reser­va­tion do not have run­ning water and elec­tric­i­ty them­selves and are forced to make the dri­ve to the canal to gath­er water for cook­ing and clean­ing.

This is despite the fact that the plant—owned by Salt Riv­er Project and the U.S. Depart­ment of Interior—pumps elec­tric­i­ty through­out Ari­zona, Neva­da, and Cal­i­for­nia.

Yet, the reser­va­tion does get one thing from the plant: pol­lu­tion.

The plant is “one of the largest sources of harm­ful nitro­gen oxide (NOx) emis­sions in the coun­try,” accord­ing to the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency.

While plant prof­i­teers argue it brings jobs to the area, plant work­ers describe har­row­ing work con­di­tions. “We are the sweat­shop work­ers for the state of AZ, declared Nava­jo tribe mem­ber Mar­shall John­son. “We are the mine work­ers, and we are the ones that must work even hard­er so the rest don’t have to.”

These prob­lems are not lim­it­ed to this Nava­jo com­mu­ni­ty. Krys­tal Two Bulls from Lame Deer, Missouri—who came to Ari­zona to par­tic­i­pate in the action—explained, “We’re also fight­ing coal extrac­tion that is right next to our reser­va­tion, which is direct­ly deplet­ing our water source.”

The action marked the kick­off to the nation­al Our Pow­er Cam­paign, under the ban­ner of Cli­mate Jus­tice Alliance, that unites almost 40 U.S.-based orga­ni­za­tions root­ed in Indige­nous, African Amer­i­can, Lati­no, Asian Pacif­ic Islander, and work­ing-class white com­mu­ni­ties to fight for a tran­si­tion to just, cli­mate friend­ly economies.