For immediate release: Contact:
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 Penelope Whitney, 415-397-5000 x 313
Dailan Long, Diné CARE, 505-801-0713
Mike Eisenfeld, San Juan Citizens Alliance, 505-360-8994


MEDIA ADVISORY

Navajo tribal members to meet with Blackstone & Sithe in New York
Diné CARE will ask execs to invest in clean energy, not coal, on their reservation


NEW YORK CITY – Navajo Nation tribal members who will be impacted by the proposed Desert Rock coal-fired power plant will meet with Bruce Wrobel, Sithe Global Power's chairman and CEO, and David Foley, senior managing director of the Blackstone Group, in New York City on April 30.

Members from the Navajo grassroots group, Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment (Diné CARE), will urge the executives from the two companies to invest in clean energy on the Navajo nation rather than in another polluting, financially risky coal plant that will have detrimental impacts on Navajo health and culture.

“Desert Rock is a bad financial risk for investors and bad for Navajo health and prosperity,” says Dailan Long, community grassroots organizer for Diné CARE. "Desert Rock's projected emissions of 12.7 million tons of carbon dioxide each year is a risky liability for the Navajo Nation with disastrous consequences for global climate change."

Diné CARE was invited to New York to speak at the United Nations Seventh Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples on April 29. They will detail the impacts of living in a region being dramatically affected by intensive energy development and present their economic study, “Economic and Energy Alternatives to the Desert Rock Energy Project,” which found that wind and concentrating solar power would deliver more jobs, less financial risk and less pollution to the Navajo nation. That study is available at http://www.box.net/shared/static/tirr6zsw0g.pdf.

Blackstone and Sithe are the financial backers behind the Desert Rock Energy Project, a proposed 1,500-megawatt coal-fired power plant in New Mexico on the Navajo Nation. Blackstone holds an 80 percent ownership stake in Sithe Global LLC, which has partnered with the Diné Power Authority, a business enterprise of the Navajo tribal government, to construct and operate Desert Rock. State and federal agencies have documented extensive health and environmental concerns with the project, and as a result, federal operating or construction permits have not been issued.

Members of Diné CARE say that Navajos will face forced relocation by the proposed expansion of the existing BHP Billiton Navajo coal mine that would fuel Desert Rock. Toxic coal combustion waste, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and mercury will further degrade the health of local Navajo communities already impacted by two nearby coal-fired power plants and other industrial facilities. Both the San Juan Generating Station and the Four Corners Power Plant sit within 25 miles of the proposed Desert Rock facility.

Despite the proximity of these plants, many Navajo living nearby continue to live without running water or electricity, and Desert Rock will not change that.

“There is an existing legacy of energy exploitation in Navajo communities where coal, natural gas, and oil are found under our homes and communities,” says Long, who lives in Burnham, New Mexico, a traditional Navajo community surrounded by oil fields, the coal mine, and the two existing coal plants. “Desert Rock plans to export its power to large cities in Nevada and southern Arizona and leave us with the pollution.” San Juan County ranks sixth in the nation as one of the nation’s 20 worst CO2 polluters – most of which are metropolitan areas like Houston and Detroit - according to a recent Purdue University study.

Sithe and Desert Rock’s backers say it will generate $50 million in tribal revenues per year for the Navajo Nation, but Long said it will likely be Navajos who will feel the financial impact of impending global warming legislation – estimated from $63.5 million to $292.1 million dollars per year for Desert Rock – since the project is a merchant plant with no existing contracts to sell its power. A wiser choice for the Navajos would be to invest heavily in the nation’s vast renewable energy resources, which will be free of carbon costs.

“The Navajo Nation contains valuable, untapped solar and wind resources which could be a wise investment for the tribe and Blackstone,” says Lori Goodman of Diné CARE. "Solar and wind development is common sense for the Diné."