Competing proposals being reviewed by Navajo leaders could bring online 500 megawatts of new wind generation over the next decade. Turbines to be built east of the Grand Canyon in Greenwire tells us Arizona would have the capacity to generate tens of millions of dollars for cash-strapped tribal governments and about 180,000 people on the Navajo reservation covering 27,000 square miles in four states. Wind energy promises to be particularly viable along a high ridge known as Gray Mountain where winds blow consistently enough to turn as many as 100 or more large turbines.

The Crux of the Competition

This wind farm renewable energy initiative would provide a chance for one of the tribe’s poorest sections, the Cameron Chapter, to become economically stable. As a result, leaders of the Cameron Chapter fear their interests will be undermined by the Navajo Nation’s central government dealing with private-sector suitors. This mistrust and suspicion has lead the Cameron Chapter to side with International Piping Products / Sempra Energy (which has set up in the area an office and five monitors to measure wind speed and consistency) over Citizens Energy Corp. of Boston, the nonprofit headed by former Rep. Joseph Kennedy. According to recently elected Cameron Chapter president Ed Singer, the chapter has agreed in principle to a $6 million annual revenue share that would be split between local needs and those of the larger Navajo Nation, Singer said.

By contrast, Citizens Energy is offering an estimated $7.5 million annual revenue share and a direct ownership stake for the tribe’s energy development arm, the Diné Power Authority, valued at $10 million.

“It’s not a minor difference, it’s a difference in order of magnitude,” said Brian O’Connor, a spokesman for Citizens Energy.

But Cameron officials fear Citizens Energy’s offer will vest considerably more authority in the central government, resulting in fewer direct benefits to those living closest to the wind farm. “The thing is, this community feels like they’re forgotten by the central government,” Singer said. “They don’t hear what the local people want, and we’ve been left out of all decision-making at Window Rock.”

The acrimony reached new heights last month, when the Navajo central government opted not to renew a permit allowing contractors to continue collecting wind data from monitors set up by the IPP/Sempra team at five sites on Gray Mountain. And the Cameron Chapter turned away Kennedy during his visit, saying chapter members are not interested in his proposal.

Singer wrote an open letter to Kennedy earlier this month, accusing the scion of slain civil rights champion and U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of using his family name and political connections to steer the Navajo wind power project toward his company.

“If you are honestly committed to helping communities such as ours, please stop interfering with the Cameron Chapter so that we can move forward with the development of our Navajo Wind Project,” Singer wrote. “Instead, we suggest you support wind development elsewhere, including the Cape Wind Project in Massachusetts.”

Meanwhile, Citizens Energy spokesman O’Connor, contests that “The situation is one where it’s gone from [tribes] being steamrolled, in many cases, by the white man trying to seize control of their destiny to one where the nations like the Navajo are trying to manage and control their own resource, and own it rather than just receive some lease payments over the life of a project.”

The Dirty (not-so) Secret: Dependence on fossil fuels

For five decades the tribe has generated revenue from dependence on dirtier forms of energy, including coal, oil and gas:

The Navajos own some of the largest coal reserves in the Southwest, and since the 1960s the tribe has maintained revenue-sharing contracts with mining giants BHP Billiton and Peabody Coal Co., to provide upward of 23 million short tons of coal annually to four large power plants in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada. When one of those plants, the 1,580-megawatt Mojave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev., closed in 2005 due to environmental problems associated with its 275-mile-long coal slurry pipeline, a new mouth-of-mine coal plant proposal emerged for a Navajo-owned site near Farmington, N.M., where two plants — the Four Corners Power Plant and San Juan Generating Station — already produce a combined 3,840 megawatts of coal-fired power.

The upshot is that it is proving difficult to dislodge the old way of doing things — so what else is new?

via Greenwire (subscription required)

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