Filed under: Corporate Power, Energy, Tribes — Ernie Atencio at 9:34 am on Monday, April 7, 2008
http://blog.hcn.org/goat/2008/04/07/stonewalling-as-always/#comment-6552

How is it, in our theoretical democracy of, by and for the people, that government agencies and corporations think they can just blow off the public process and accountability time after time? It’s become tiresome business-as-usual, laying the burden of public information on the people instead of with the powers that be, where it should reside.

On April 2, the Navajo grassroots group Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment (Diné CARE) (HCN 10/31/94) and the San Juan Citizens Alliance filed a lawsuit against federal agencies overseeing the proposed Desert Rock coal-fired power plant in northwestern New Mexico to force them to release documents that they are legally required to share with the public. Diné CARE and the Citizens Alliance want to see records on the draft environmental impact statement; they want to know where the required water will come from and how the related expansion of the nearby BHP Navajo coal mine would affect tribal members living in the area. Sounds reasonable, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs, its regional director in Gallup and the Department of Interior — all named in the lawsuit — have so far refused to comply with requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

The proposed $3 billion Desert Rock plant would generate electricity for up to 1.5 million homes at the cost of 4,500 acre-feet of water per year and an unknown increase in air pollution — both soot and global-warming CO2 from the plant as well as increased coal dust from the mine. Local Navajo residents and livestock grazers say they are already fighting cancer from the coal dust.

Brad Bartlett, attorney for the plaintiffs, said, “It tells me there’s likely some things the agency wants to hide. . . . there’s really problems with the way BHP has treated community members.”

Meanwhile, Frank Maisano, spokesman for Sithe Global Power, the primary Desert Rock partner, doesn’t acknowledge Sithe’s or the agencies’ public responsibilities, but instead dismisses the lawsuit as a stalling tactic. Invoking the same old economic benefit arguments we’ve heard over and over in support of every mine or energy development in the West, Maisano said, “This doesn’t hurt Sithe Global. This hurts the Navajo people. This hurts those who could be working at the plant. It hurts those who could use increased programs that the revenue from the project will help fund.”

See a response to that economic argument in a cartoon of “Desert Rock in a Nutshell.”