As Black Mesa Mine sends layoff notices, and the Mohave Generating Station seeks workers to do mothball work, the stark reality is setting in throughout the Hopi and Navajo reservations and the Bullhead City area.

The region, representing a good chunk of northern Arizona, is on the verge of a major economic hit beginning Dec. 31, with what is expected to be at least the temporary closing of the huge power plant in Laughlin, Nev.

That will mean the loss of nearly a third of the Hopi's $21.5 million operating budget and huge slashes in programs affecting the elderly and young. It will mean the loss of more than 600 jobs - some directly tied to the plant, some not - in the Bullhead City area and the loss of about 500 jobs in the north-central Navajo region.

The Mohave Generating Station provides nearly 20 percent of the electricity that Southern California Edison delivers to its customers, said Gloria Quinn, an Edison spokeswoman.

The economic storm has been brewing for six years, since Southern California Edison agreed to install more than $1 billion of equipment to clean up emissions at its Mohave Generating Station by the end of this year. It was the culmination of a lawsuit that claimed the plant, which often blankets Bullhead City in soot, violated the Clean Air Act.

The anti-pollution devices the company agreed to put in take at least 1 1/2 years to install. Southern California Edison has done no work on them.

Unless the company violates the consent decree, wins an extension or works out a compromise, Mohave will close as the rest of the world rings in the new year. The ripple effect will be huge.

Black Mesa Mine, which supplies the coal the generating station uses to make electricity, will have no reason to operate. Peabody Energy Co., which excavates and pulverizes Black Mesa Mine's coal, mixes it with water and slurries it 273 miles to Laughlin, also will shut down. Both have exclusive contracts with Mohave.

 

Hopi's limited options

 

The effects of a shutdown would be most profound among the Hopi.

The northern Arizona tribe of about 10,000 - many living in high-desert, mesa-top villages, where they conduct ancient religious ceremonies - has limited economic options since tribal members twice rejected proposals to build casinos.

The reservation is located far from major transportation corridors and has only a limited tourist industry centered around its finely carved kachina dolls. It also owns a few businesses in Flagstaff and Sedona and ranch land in the Winslow area.

Much of the mine tax money has been funneled into the tribe's 12 villages to propagate the traditional customs and combat the rapid loss of the Hopi language among young people.

But 18 percent across-the-board cutbacks of what Hopi tribal officials said are all programs go into effect Jan. 1 to help deal with the revenue shortfall.

It's almost too much to bear for residents of Shungopavi village, where adobe homes cling to the side of a mesa top 500 feet above the desert floor.

When Delores Komaquaptewa, 77, shuffled into the community center for the monthly meeting for the village on Second Mesa, her handmade shawl was pulled tightly around her stooped shoulders and her ire was up. She slumped into her seat as she listened to the big item on the agenda: why the budget was cut from $30,000 last year to $20,000 this year to $6,000 next year for the Shungopavi elderly center.

"We'll be lucky if that even pays for the lunches next year and forget about socializing with other towns," Komaquaptewa said.

Carrie Watahomigie, a Hopi tribal member, said that each village should be asking for "18 percent more" from the tribal government rather than accepting the cutbacks for next year.

"We are just now getting our youth and elderly programs going across the reservation, and this is the first thing the tribal leaders have decided to cut out of the budget," she said. "This is creating unbelievable stress on families."

But Perry Honani, leader of Sipaulovi village on First Mesa, said he would just as soon see the coal money go away and Hopi society revert to its foundations before World War II.

"We were self-supporting then, and today all you hear is bickering over this coal money," Honani said. "The problem is that coal money should come to the villages and not the tribal council because it just adds to all the controversies. We need peace for our religious ceremonies."

Meanwhile, the Hopi Reservation is full of second-guessers about why the tribe is so vulnerable to the outside economic forces.

"This should have been dealt with eight years ago and bold decisions made," said former Hopi Chairman Ivan Sidney, administrator for Sichomovi village. He is running against Hopi Chairman Wayne Taylor Jr. in Tuesday's tribal primary.

Sidney said the tribe should have taken a "good-faith effort" from a Japanese corporation in the early 1990s to build a railroad line from the mine to link into the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad track east of Flagstaff and wean the coal from water transportation.

"Then, four years ago, there was a proposal to build an electric generation plant on site, which also died on the vine," Sidney said. "Now, here we are in the 11th hour, with potentially devastating effects to our culture. This certainly didn't have to happen the way that it did."

Taylor, however, said all the current problems could be resolved quickly and that Hopi, Navajo, Peabody Energy and Southern California Edison could reach an accord by mid-November.

"If we can reach that milestone, Edison would then be amenable to go to the state of Nevada and the environmental groups and ask for an extension, and it would give them the ability to move forward to get the money for the smokestack scrubbers," Taylor said.

 

Keeping hope alive

 

After years of sending mixed messages about the future of the power plant, including filing a request with the California Public Utilities Commission last year to begin the process of shutting down Mohave, Edison now wants to keep the plant open.

"The most appropriate Mohave scenario is the continued operations scenario," wrote Russell G. Wordan, Edison's manager for regulatory policy and affairs, in a filing with the commission last month.

Worden wrote that sharp price increases in natural gas and the lack of reliability in other electricity producers in Southern California "has underscored the high importance and value of Mohave to fuel diversity."

In testimony this month before the commission, however, Edison official Harold Ray said that there are no plans to keep the plant open in violation of the consent decree. Miners at Black Mesa also have begun receiving layoff notices effective Dec. 15.

Beth Sutton, a spokeswoman for Peabody Energy, said all of the company's employees had received the notices, along with tribal leaders, and "we are transitioning into at least a temporary closure of the mine at the end of December."

Even if Southern California Edison pushes to keep the plant open or to reopen after a temporary closure another problem could force Mohave out of business.

For years, water has been pumped from the "N" aquifer, beneath the Hopi and Navajo reservations, to move coal to Mohave. But that has been criticized as causing the drying up of Hopi springs. It will cease by the end of the year, along with the lease for the Black Mesa mine.

A proposal is being examined to build a water pipeline 120 miles across the Navajo and Hopi reservations from pumps between Flagstaff and Winslow in the Coconino aquifer to the coal slurry preparation plant at Black Mesa.

But Navajo and Hopi officials have had snags in negotiations during the last month on the route of the pipeline, and intense negotiations continue concerning the price paid for the coal. They already have resolved lingering issues over the quality and quantity of coal.

Ultimately, environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Grand Canyon Trust hold the future of the plant in their hands. They say that unless there is an ironclad agreement to install the anti-pollution equipment, there will be no deal.

"The only thing satisfactory is for them to install the scrubbers. That has to be a concrete proposal," said Richard Mayol, a spokesman for Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff.

Rob Smith, a representative of the Sierra Club in Phoenix, said he would be "skeptical" if Edison would honor any more agreements to install the anti-pollution equipment.

"They've got tens of millions of dollars of sulphur dioxide credits and can make money running that plant or doing nothing," Smith said. "Plus moving the coal that way has always been a Rube Goldberg kind of scheme, which no one else has done, for good reason."

Smith also speculated in a memo to Sierra Club members that Edison would offer "some environmental goodie" in an attempt to extend the deadline of the consent decree.

"I don't know if they'll have a done deal to present or simply be seeking to buy more time while they haggle out the rest of the details with Peabody and the tribes," Smith wrote.