The Dilemmas of Power

More than a decade ago, it became clear that the booming West and Southwest would soon need far more electric power. But people in Phoenix or Los Angeles did not want to live next door to generating plants that spew soot and noxious gases, discharge hot water and spawn unsightly transmission lines. As a result, the area's electric utilities decided to build new plants as far away from people as possible--in the desert shared by Arizona, Utah, Nevada and New Mexico. Eventually, a consortium of 23 public and private organizations in seven states were involved in planning the distribution of energy from what will be the second largest power project in U.S. history. When completed, at least six huge coal-fired plants* will produce 14 million kilowatts of electricity--slightly less than the Tennessee Valley Authority and 41 times as much as Egypt's Aswan Dam.

The first power plant to go into operation in 1963 near Farmington, N. Mex., turned out to be a tremendous polluter. The gray plume from its smokestacks has been tracked by plane over 215 miles and was easily visible to the Gemini 12 astronauts from 170 miles in space. Now the whole complex has become the focus of the biggest environmental controversy since the discovery of Alaska's oil. Last week the Senate Interior Committee held hearings in each of the affected states to sort out the conflicting arguments.

The power consortium's position was clear: its main task is to provide inexpensive energy. William P. Reilly, president of the Arizona Public Service Co., argued that making electrical appliances creates employment as well as demand for electricity. "The primary thing we need is jobs," he said. "That's how people get what they need to live." Howard P. Allen, vice president of the Southern California Edison Co., added that electric energy runs sewage pumps, mass transit and junk compressors: "The inescapable conclusion from these facts is that more, not less electricity will be needed if we are to save our environment."

One step toward a solution, industry experts testified, is to equip the plants' stacks with electrostatic precipitators and wet scrubbers that would cut air pollution by 99%. But environmentalists retorted that even 1% of the huge plants' gases and soot will constitute much more pollution than New York or Los Angeles power plants now produce. Each day, according to environmentalists, the complex will emit 1,970 tons of poisonous sulfur dioxide, 1,280 tons of nitrogen oxides and 240 tons of fly ash. Obscuring the nation's clearest skies, the soot would cripple the region's astronomical observatories. Particles would also rain down on six national parks, three national recreation areas, and 28 national monuments--visited last year by 16 million people in search of pristine nature.

Sluice and Sacrilege. Both environmentalists and industry agree that the power plants' steam generators would gulp about 250,000 acre feet of Colorado River water a year. This would cut the river's flow and thus increase its already high salinity content downstream. To add to water problems, the Mohave plant in Nevada gets its coal in a half-coal, half-water slurry form piped 275 miles from a strip mine at Black Mesa in Arizona. The water for the sluice comes from geologic reservoirs as deep as 3,500 ft. beneath the Hopi and Navajo Indian reservations. Peabody Coal Co., which runs the operation, insists that the water removal has no effect on the Indians' wells. Geologists disagree, citing increasing aridity on native farms.

Representatives of the Native American Rights Fund testified that strip-mining arrangements--yielding the tribes an average $3,000,000 a year in royalties plus up to $3,000,000 in wages--were made illegally. They said that improperly constituted tribal councils, urged on by the U.S. Interior Department, acted on behalf of only the "progressive" Indians. To the "traditional" tribesmen, however, the land is a religious shrine, and to mine it is desecration. On the verge of tears, Mina Lansa spoke for many Hopis: "We don't want money from coal companies. We love all earth and all nature. We get life from earth. We get food. Money go away fast. Then you have nothing left. We have no land, then we have nothing."

Hard Questions. The hearings produced few solutions. New Mexico's Governor Bruce King and Senator Joseph Montoya suggested a moratorium on new construction of power plants until all side effects could be independently studied. In Washington, Interior Secretary Rogers C.B. Morton agreed with the suggestion, adding that he was "not in a position" to stop construction in progress. More important, the hearings exposed some hard national questions. Are power companies and environmentalists sufficiently sensitive to the desires of the people? Should some of America's wide-open space and skies be preserved intact? Should minorities like the Indians be allowed to live without interference? Perhaps the first priority is to formulate a national energy policy to keep the use of electricity from doubling every decade.

* The Four Corners and San Juan plants near Farmington, N. Mex.; the Navajo plant near Page, Ariz.; the Mohave plant in Clark County, Nev.; and the Huntington Canyon and Kaiparowits plants in Utah. Four Corners and Mohave are now operating.

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