Smokestacks come down: The end of an era in Page, Arizona
Durango, Colorado Currently Sun 0% chance of precipitation
Saturday, Jan. 9, 2021 4:33 AM For decades, a trio of concrete smokestacks signaled the Navajo Generating Station near Page, Ariz., a coal-fired power plant in northern Arizona. On Dec. 18, the stacks were taken down. The 775-foot stacks were the third largest human-made structures in the state. Associated Press file On Dec. 18, the three smokestacks at the Navajo Generating Station in Page, Ariz., came down. They were as tall as a 77½ story building and were the third largest human-made structures in the state. For 45 years, they had spewed chemicals and carbon dioxide across Native American nations on the Colorado Plateau.
The new Biden administration could take action on the Colorado River that would go well beyond the president-elect’s term in office.
The week of Dec. 14, the seven states that are part of the Colorado River Compact began the first step for renegotiating guidelines that will decide how much water the three lower basin states and Mexico will get from Lake Mead, on the Arizona-Nevada border, and from Mead’s source, the Colorado River.
The guidelines are interim, signed in April 2007, and are due to expire in 2026. Among the most significant, the guidelines provide long-term stable management of the river and also determine the circumstances under which the Interior secretary could reduce the annual amount of water available from Lake Mead to the Colorado River lower basin states. The guidelines also are a way for the basin states to avoid litigation, part of what prompted the 2007 interim guidelines.
For Immediate Release, December 22, 2020
Contact:
Steve Bloch, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, (801) 859-1552, steve@suwa.org
Anne Hawke, Natural Resources Defense Council, (646) 823-4518, ahawke@nrdc.org
Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity, (801) 300-2424, tmckinnon@biologicaldiversity.org
John Weisheit, Living Rivers, (435) 260-2590, john@livingrivers.org
Court Blocks Drilling Set to Begin in Newly Designated Utah Wilderness
WASHINGTON A federal judge today enjoined the Trump administration’s approval of a plan to punch a helium well into the heart of the Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness in Utah just two days before Christmas. Road construction was set to begin Wednesday.
“Labyrinth Canyon Wilderness is too special to drill,” said Landon Newell, staff attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “We’re grateful the court enjoined this ill-conceived project and gave this incomparable landscape a brief reprieve. We’ll