Feds Deny Permits for Hydro Projects on Navajo Land, Citing Lack of Consultation With Tribes

Federal officers Thursday denied preliminary permits for a number of pumped storage hydroelectric tasks proposed on the Navajo Nation that might have required huge sums of water from restricted groundwater aquifers and the declining Colorado River, citing a scarcity of assist from tribal communities. 

Within the order, the Federal Vitality Regulatory Fee introduced it was implementing a brand new coverage requiring that any venture proposed on all tribal land should achieve the respective tribe’s consent to be accredited, a transfer that native tribes, against the proposed hydroelectric tasks, had been calling for. The choices pave the best way for elevated tribal sovereignty in energy-related tasks searching for federal approval throughout the nation.

“This can be a federal fee acknowledging tribal sovereignty,” George Hardeen, a spokesman for the Navajo Nation president’s workplace, mentioned. “If an organization needs to do enterprise on the Navajo Nation, it, in fact, wants to speak to and get the approval of the Navajo Nation. And within the eyes of FERC, that has not but occurred.”

The Navajo Nation opposed the preliminary permits for the tasks by way of motions to intervene that have been submitted by its Division of Justice in 2022 and 2023.

Future tasks “ought to work carefully with Tribal stakeholders previous to submitting,” to FERC, company officers wrote of their choice. Earlier than this new coverage, the company had “utilized the final coverage of granting permits even the place points have been raised about potential venture impacts with no distinction for tasks on Tribal lands opposed by Tribes.” 

The choice is the most recent setback for the event of hydropower within the U.S. Whereas many see electrical energy generated by generators in dams as a key supply of renewable vitality, a rising physique of scientific proof has discovered that the reservoirs behind dams are a major supply of carbon emissions—notably methane, a potent greenhouse fuel that’s roughly 80 instances simpler at warming the ambiance than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Hydroelectric dams additionally block fish from touring upstream to their spawning grounds, which research have lengthy proven intrude with their capacity to breed. 

Hydropower dams have had main results on rivers throughout the nation, together with the Colorado River and its tributaries, the place 4 native fish species are actually endangered. Such points have led to the removing of dams alongside another river programs.

Pumped storage has been seen by some within the business as a approach to hold hydropower a related a part of the renewable vitality transition, as they don’t at all times require a river or dam to perform. Nonetheless, environmental issues, and opposition, stay. The tasks FERC denied had garnered widespread opposition from the Navajo Nation and Indigenous and environmental teams over the dearth of session builders supplied and the impacts they might have on cultural websites, endangered species and water sources within the space.

In its movement to FERC for a venture on the western a part of the Navajo Nation close to Web page, Arizona, the tribe’s Division of Justice wrote that “significant session” between the corporate and the tribal authorities, together with chapter administrations and native communities, was “unclear.”

The division additionally acknowledged that the venture may influence the tribe’s water rights or its use of water from the Colorado River system.

“The Navajo Nation’s pursuits could be straight affected by the end result of this continuing,” the division wrote.

Daryn Melvin, a Hopi Tribal member who works because the Grand Canyon supervisor with the Grand Canyon Belief, which opposed the tasks, mentioned the hydro tasks are “simply the most recent in a lot of developments that have been threatening the world in locations which can be of specific significance to Native communities.” The impacts of coal and uranium mining persist to today, he mentioned, and native tribes and environmental teams pushed to search out new methods to guard the world, together with reform within the FERC allowing course of. 

Specifically, a proposal from Nature and Folks First to construct three pumped storage hydropower tasks throughout 40 linear miles on Black Mesa drew intense scrutiny. Mission opponents say the developer by no means reached out to locals in regards to the venture and tried to pit communities within the space in opposition to each other. Representatives of Nature and Folks First didn’t reply to a request for remark in time for publication.

Nature and Folks First states on its web site that Chilchinbeto Chapter, the place one of many tasks on Black Mesa could be positioned, supported the proposal as a result of it might create jobs and financial alternatives. The corporate filed resolutions to FERC from the Western Navajo Company Council and the chapters of Ts’ah Bii Kin and Oljato that supported the venture.

How Pumped Storage Hydropower Works

Over a dozen hydro tasks have been proposed lately on or close to the Navajo Nation for pumped storage—an almost century-old expertise experiencing a surge of curiosity because the U.S. seems for methods to retailer vitality from renewable sources because it pivots away from fossil fuel-generated electrical energy. 

Pumped storage may also help retailer electrical energy from wind and photo voltaic vitality tasks for when it’s wanted and serves as an alternative choice to utility-scale lithium-ion batteries to financial institution renewable vitality. 

The tasks use two water reservoirs, one above the opposite. Water is pumped uphill to the upper reservoir at evening when vitality prices are low, then despatched again down by way of electricity-generating generators when vitality demand peaks or renewable sources can’t generate electrical energy, serving to to make sure grid stability throughout system-stressing occasions like record-hot summers. 

However to work, they want sure geographic traits, particularly a speedy change in elevation over a brief distance, main most of the tasks to be proposed within the Mountain West. However in addition they want water, and numerous it, which is one thing missing in lots of arid Western communities. 

That’s led to pushback throughout the area as rural residents look to guard their restricted ground- and floor water provides from diversion to pumped storage tasks and, probably, additional depletion.

Impacts to Native Water Provides

If all the proposed pumped storage tasks close to the Navajo Nation have been constructed, it might require over 2 million acre ft of water. That’s sufficient water for over 5 million properties in Arizona and about the identical quantity of water that federal officers are presently permitting the state to take from the Colorado River in current drought situations. 

If developed, the tasks would additional influence flows on the Colorado River and its tributaries, in addition to the degrees of native aquifers that serve tribal communities. The Hopi Tribe, for instance, is totally reliant on the identical groundwater sources a few of these hydro tasks would doubtless pull from. 

“Water shortage is an easy truth of our area,” mentioned Taylor McKinnon, the Southwest director for the Middle for Organic Range, which opposed the tasks. “Their failure to see that prompted them to run headlong into the issue of aridity.”

The Black Mesa tasks proposed pulling groundwater from the Coconino aquifer—colloquially often known as the C aquifer—which offers the bottom flows for the Little Colorado River, McKinnon mentioned. “That water comes out of the earth in Blue Springs, and it creates a river,” he mentioned, noting that the circulation was essential to an endangered fish. “That river is the place the final supply inhabitants of humpback chub on this planet stay.”

Thursday’s ruling, for now, places an finish to seven of the proposed tasks within the area that might have collectively required round 1.6 million acre ft of water. “That is an company really stepping ahead and saying, ‘we have now the authority to do the appropriate factor and we’re going to do the appropriate factor,’” McKinnon mentioned. “We applaud that.”

The tasks have additionally obtained pushback from the Hopi Tribe, whose land is adjoining to the Navajo Nation. The tasks on Black Mesa not solely threatened water sources for the Hopi, but additionally endangered species and cultural sources, like ancestral trails and shrines, mentioned Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, tribal historic preservation officer for the tribe.

“We nonetheless have a vested curiosity in our cultural sources left by our ancestors all through the panorama,” Koyiyumptewa mentioned.

FERC has a coverage assertion for consulting with federally acknowledged tribes that preexisted Thursday’s order. Whereas the fee acknowledges the government-to-government relationships the U.S. holds with sovereign tribes, the way it notifies tribes about proposed tasks relies on legal guidelines, just like the Nationwide Historic Preservation Act.

For Koyiyumptewa, this leaves tribes lower off from key details about proposals—particularly when tasks will not be on the tribe’s land, however may influence it.

“We weren’t given the chance to supply opposition,” he mentioned of the early course of for the Black Mesa tasks.