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Despite promises of help, a community struggles after San Juan Generating Station closes

Workers in high-visibility vests use shovels to dig around a large mechanical structure
Alice Fordham
/
KUNM
Workers fill in the main fan shaft at the San Juan coal mine. The mine's portals have been sealed and the remaining employees are working on reclamation.

The San Juan mine is a dark pit in the rocky red landscape west of Farmington, its tunnels burrowing into a rich seam of coal that has yielded many millions of tons since it opened in 1973.

Now, the few employees still there are above ground. The portals to the tunnels are sealed, and on a recent morning, workers were filling in the main fan shaft. Looming against the bright blue sky was the silent, empty San Juan Generating Station, which shut at the end of September.

"We were the sole supplier for the generating station, we have nowhere else to sell our coal to," said general manager Steven Pierro, who has worked here for 21 years.

About 200 people used to work for him, with another 220 in the power plant. By the end of the year there will be about 50, doing reclamation work like filling in pits.

The mine and generating station were powerful economic drivers in an area with few alternatives. The poverty rate in San Juan County stands at 26.7%. Pierro estimates about half his employees were Native Americans, many from the Navajo Nation reservation, where unemployment is 48.5%, according to its Department of Agriculture.

Total job losses from the closure were more like 1,500, if indirect employment like suppliers is included, said Alicia Corbell, dean of the School of Energy at San Juan College. The average age of those workers is 46, their average salary was $86,000.

"And the tax, whether it's local or state, that would be lost was about $50 million," she said. "So obviously you can see that that is a major loss to our region."

In the face of climate change, federal and state governments nationwide are trumpeting their efforts to transition away from fossil fuel.

In parallel have come initiatives meant to ease the pain for people who relied on fossil fuels, like an interagency working group specifically tasked with revitalizing communities hard-hit by coal mine and coal power plant closures.

But this area's struggles show how difficult it is, in reality, to move on from coal.

Just weeks after the long-planned closure of the generating station, the surrounding communities are speaking of skilled workers moving away, tax revenue drying up and a burgeoning middle class faltering.

A Navajo middle class

During a nearly 50-year lifespan, the station polluted the air and supplied power to faraway cities while some nearby still have no electricity. And yet the jobs it and other plants brought were transformative.

"They were extremely important because they helped create the Navajo middle class," said Barry Dixon, a member of the Navajo Nation who worked as a miner for 34 years in the nearby Navajo and La Plata mines as well as the San Juan operation.

He was able to buy land off the reservation for a home, and support his three children through college.

"I think it did change the outlook on how people viewed Native Americans," he said. "They had money to spend."

Now, Dixon works for the local branch of the International Union of Operating Engineers, and has done his best to advocate for workers as the industry has been dismantled.

In 2019, New Mexico passedthe Energy Transition Act, landmark climate legislation mandating that half the state's energy would come from renewable sources by 2030.

State utility PNM had already announced in 2017 that it planned to close the San Juan Generating Station and mine. The law allowed the utility to take out “energy transition bonds” which cushioned the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in the plant. It then required PNM to invest in renewable energy and compensate the affected community.

"This legislation is a promise to future generations of New Mexicans, who will benefit from both a cleaner environment and a more robust energy economy," said Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham in a statement at the time.

Nearly four years on, the economy does not feel robust.

Hard choices

"I've seen some households fall apart because a choice had to be made," said Arthur Bavaro, who coordinates community services at the Navajo Nation's Nenahnezad chapter house. He said one person earning an energy industry salary was often supporting an extended family.

"They have bills to pay and they have to still make a living," so the working-age members of the family are moving away to find work and leaving children and the elderly at home, Bavaro said.

At the Judy Nelson Elementary School in nearby Kirtland, principal Debi Tom said children are suffering.

"They are familiar with the strains and stresses that it puts on mom, dad, their families, having to even be displaced to caregiving families as opposed to being one family unit."

The closures also threaten her school's funding. It is part of the Central Consolidated Schools District, 80% of whose revenue came from the now-closed generating station and from the Four Corners power plant and mine, set to close in 2031.

PNM was meant to build renewable energy facilities in the district to maintain school funding as well as reliable power supply. But a long-discussed San Juan solar plant has not been built and $20 million PNM gave to three state departments for local economic development has not been disbursed.

Tom Fallgren, vice president of generation at PNM, said there were delays in approval for the solar plant by the state Public Regulation Committee, and pandemic-related supply chain and financing problems for the third party companies who might build the facility. He insists the project is going ahead.

He added that the $20 million was held up when a clean energy group challenged the constitutionality of the energy transition legislation, a challenge dismissed in January of this year.

Those funds are now available, but the process for deciding how they should be spent is slow. Jason Sandel, an oil executive and former Farmington city councilor, reconvened a community advisory committee to discuss proposals for the funding after a nearly-two-year hiatus in November. In an interview in his office in Aztec, NM, he said the delays were frustrating and the community was hurting.

"Clean energy is a terrific aspiration," he said. "But we can't forget the economic devastation that is in its wake."

The rural region spanning New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado has long provided electricity to the West.

"People that live in California, and turn on the lights in California, get their power from here," he said. "And my message is, don't forget about us."

Not forgotten?

The federal government has not forgotten, but its good intentions have also proved hard to turn into real help.

In August, Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk visited the putative site of the San Juan solar project and announced the creation of a Rapid Response Team, meant to help people benefit from funding in recently-passed climate legislation.

"This community doesn’t have time to just wait for the transition," said Secretary Turk, according to the NM Political Report. "We’ve got to be rapid."

The Los Alamos National Laboratory has been tasked with leading the team, building on its work with regional partners studying energy transition. So far they have conducted community engagement, but have not yet facilitated money reaching anyone.

"If you look historically at how these energy transitions have evolved, they take time, a generation or so," said Jolante Van Wijk, who leads a group of scientists at the laboratory.

On Tuesday, the city of Farmington announced the end of a plan it began years ago to acquire the San Juan Generating Station and run it with a partner as part of a carbon capture project.

After years of upbeat announcements followed by long delays, community leaders are skeptical about the Rapid Response Team, the Energy Transition Act and promises by politicians.

"I'm fairly disappointed with the state of New Mexico in regard to moving faster than a speeding snail," said Barry Dixon, the union leader.

Disentangling the latest news of legislation, lawsuits and energy companies is a challenge. And people come to him with questions, people who can no longer pay for their health insurance or support their parents and children.

They say: "when is this money going to be made available to us that you've been telling us about, that you guys are trying to get for us? When?"

He has to tell them he has no idea.

Alice Fordham joined the news team in 2022 after a career as an international correspondent, reporting for NPR from the Middle East and later Latin America and Europe. She also worked as a podcast producer for The Economist among other outlets, and tries to meld a love of sound and storytelling with solid reporting on the community. She grew up in the U.K. and has a small jar of Marmite in her kitchen for emergencies.
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