Horseherder is demanding support directly from utilities and industry. Though some states like New Mexico and Colorado have recently passed laws that together provide millions of dollars for workforce training and economic support for coal-dependent communities, other states, including Arizona and Nevada, have not. “No matter how frustrated I get, sometimes with the way tribal government works or with how hard it is sometimes to educate people and the community - still, it’s the right thing to do,” Horseherder told me. Now that the Navajo Generating Station has closed and other power plants in the region are soon to follow, her vision of a more sustainable energy economy - one powered by wind and solar - is coming more clearly into view. She’s often been the lone voice in the room - confronting not only the coal companies and private interests, but also her own neighbors and tribal government. Over the years, Horseherder has attended public hearings and testified in front of lawmakers, from the reservation to Washington, D.C., advocating for an end to extractive energy economies. “We’re trying to compel them to provide some kind of transition support for the Navajo Nation instead of just walking away and leaving.” “That’s how they supported their family over time.” “For the older folks like my dad, that is where they worked,” Irvin Frank Jr., the son of a former steam-pump mechanic at the plant, told me. Many former plant workers were there to watch the demolition that morning. The industry brought high-paying jobs that sustained families for generations. ![]() Now she’s charting a new path forward for the Diné people as the coal economy fades - a complicated quest, since coal has long been an integral part of life on the nation. Coal miners got sick, and many residents still suffer from asthma, including Horseherder’s mother and two of her daughters. In her lifetime, thousands of acres of Black Mesa were destroyed for strip-mining, while coal mining depleted the area’s only source of drinking water. The demolition was the culmination of years of work: Horseherder has been fighting the ravages of the coal industry for nearly two decades. And then, one after another, they hit the ground with a thundering boom, leaving a cloud of gray dust in their wake. Explosives crackled, and Horseherder could feel the earth move through the soles of her boots. The towers shifted and slowly, almost gracefully, began to tilt. “But it has also had devastating impacts to the environment and to some of our most valuable elements of life, such as water,” she said, leaning into the microphone. As she spoke, she acknowledged the economic benefits the plant had brought to the region. It supplied electricity to millions of customers in Arizona, California and Nevada, using coal from Black Mesa, where Horseherder lives. The Navajo Generating Station, which opened in 1974 and operated for decades before shuttering in 2019, was the largest coal-fired power plant in the Western United States. She and Johnson switched between English and Navajo as they spoke to the tens of thousands of people who had tuned in to watch. Horseherder’s hands were nestled in the pockets of her long tan wool jacket, its tassels swaying at her ankles. ![]() They were livestreaming the demolition on Facebook. The coal-fired power plant, just a mile away, towered against the backdrop of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and a cloudless blue sky.Īs they waited, Horseherder, a Diné (Navajo) environmental activist, and her husband, Marshall Johnson, spoke into a phone camera trained on the power plant. ![]() On a chilly December morning in northern Arizona, near the town of Page, Nicole Horseherder stood beside a barbed-wire fence, waiting for the smokestacks of the Navajo Generating Station to fall.
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