To the editor: In the 1970s, I made several trips to northern Arizona near the Navajo Nation and the coal-burning Navajo Generating Station, then under construction. I was struck by the obvious lack of employment opportunities for the Navajo and the Hopi. Apparently, not much has changed. (“Trump promised a coal renaissance — but keeping open this Arizona plant will test his resolve,” Feb. 17)

The long-term question is not if President Trump has the “resolve” to keep this power source in operation, but rather if he and Congress have the insight and commitment needed to address the systemic economic problems of the Navajo and the Hopi.

The economics of the energy marketplace are causing the closure of the Navajo Generating Station, and the Navajo can prosper without it in the long run. Doing so requires local economic and educational opportunities. Continuing the obsolete plant’s operation would amount to marketplace manipulation and further exploitation of a vulnerable population.

Garry Herron, Seal Beach


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To the editor: The Navajo Nation put zero capital investment into the coal operation, and for decades it provided the Navajo Nation a third of its revenue and the Hopi 80%. It also provided hundreds of “prized” jobs within those communities.

Now, only because coal is no longer competitive with cheaper natural gas fuel, they view the plant’s abandonment as a betrayal by the utilities walking away after making a windfall off tribal coal and tribal labor.

How quickly they forget their own rewards and the good, hard-to-come-by jobs within their communities that they benefited from for decades. Another victim group emerges.


Edmund Umbrasas, Thousand Oaks

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