Posted on 10/02/2022 10:19:30 PM PDT by Olog-hai
The clamor of second graders breaking away from lessons to form lunch lines has gotten quieter in a rural New Mexico community, where families losing coal jobs have been forced to pack up and leave in search of work.
At Judy Nelson Elementary, 1 in 4 students have left in an exodus spurred by decisions made five years ago to shutter a coal-fired power plant and mine that sit just up the road from the school in a largely Navajo community. The plant and mine had provided electricity to millions of people across the southwestern U.S. for nearly a half-century.
The San Juan Generating Station burned its last bit of coal Thursday. The remaining workers will spend the coming weeks draining water from the plant, removing chemicals and preparing to tear down what has long been fixture on the high-desert horizon.
It’s part of the latest wave of coal-burning units to be retired as New Mexico and other states try to fight climate change by requiring more carbon-free sources of electricity. President Joe Biden also has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. […]
Realities of shuttering the San Juan plant are setting in for surrounding communities, including the Navajo Nation, where poverty and joblessness already are exponentially higher than national averages. Hundreds of jobs are evaporating along with tens of millions of dollars in annual tax revenue used to fund schools and a community college.
“A lot of the Native American families have multi-generations living in the home so it doesn’t just affect the husband and wife. It affects their children and their grandchildren,” said Arleen Franklin, who teaches second grade at Judy Nelson. Her husband purchases equipment for a coal mine that feeds another power plant scheduled to close in 2031. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
A Navajo, a Mic-Mac and a Penobscot.
They all very conservative.
It would be interesting to find out the political leanings of the various tribes.
I am quiet sure Washington has a plan for the Navajo Nation.
Sort of like their EPA clean up plan for the Animas River.
Or maybe one like they had for the Sioux at Wounded Knee.
Oh yeah, I am sure Washington has a plan for the Navajo.
When I lived there in 1973-1977, the plants were belching smoke all the time. The San Juan plant cleaned up by putting scrubbers or electrostatic precipitators on their exhaust in the 1980s, to remove fly ash.
The Waterflow plants on the Rez still belched smoke.
Last time I was through there(2015) I followed a light stream of redish exhaust from Farmington clear to the Waterflow plants.
Anyone remember the attempt by the electric industry, around 1968-1972 to prevent scrubbers from being installed? Before those dates all stacks belched smoke.
In various magazines of those years TIME, LIFE, POST, LOOK magazines were advertisements showing some sort of disaster and some cartoon guy saying,...”Have you hear a good joke about scrubbers?” in an attempt to discredit scrubbers.
The San Juan plants and the Waterflow plants(this one on the reservation) were running when I lived there in 1973-1977.
There were plans to build other power plants on the Navajo Reservation but the American Indian Movement (AIM) of 1975 got that shut down.
The Page AZ plants, being built in 1974, have been decommissioned and destroyed.
Perhaps they need to see about building mine mouth plants on the Kaiparowits Plateau, planned fifty years ago but never built. Great coal fields there!
Meanwhile our coal fired plant, in Arkansas, built in 1977, is still running using low sulfur Wyoming coal. Obama tried to get it shut down but they simply rebuilt the plant to remove the less than 3% sulfur still in the coal. One of the most cost efficient plants around.
“It would be interesting to find out the political leanings of the various tribes.” —
Wow, even complaining about communistic abolition of the family occurring. That’s what happens when one votes for the Democratic Party here.
The moronic voters of NM in a statewide referendum paid the utility PNM over 300 million dollars to shut this plant down and replace it with wind and solar power. It was supposed to be shut down last year but of course the wind and solar produce a fraction of what was promised so they kept it one more year to prevent rolling blackouts in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
There is no gubernatorial election next year so I guess folks will simply swelter in the dark.
Hey, watch it! The word “tribal” is offensive. No reference to the Injuns’ culture is permitted!
Are you series?
Who is the congressclown?
Rep. Melanie Stansbury, an Albuquerque Democrat
“During discussion and debate on a bill that would, among other things, establish deadlines for the state to achieve specific reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, Montoya asked Stansbury, who sponsored the legislation, what people employed by the oil and gas industry would do for work.
“What do they do to provide for their families when their jobs go away?” he asked.
“If you’re in a rural Diné (Navajo) community, that could be selling your art or your wool using the internet,” she responded at one point.
“Why were these comments not plastered all over social media or in local news?” Montoya wrote in a letter to leaders of both parties. “I can only surmise that her comments were ignored because she is a ‘well-meaning,’ white, progressive Democrat who is running for Congress.””
I used to buy cheap cigarettes from their operation in Gallup. I wonder if the government killed that too. I heard the Gov bullied the Senecas out of business by stopping USPS shipments and then forcing UPS to stop shipping.
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