Ryan Randazzo

The Republic | azcentral.com

A handful of protestors gathered at SRP's headquarters Friday.

The Sierra Club wants SRP to clean up pollution from the Navajo Generating Station.

A proposal to reduce emissions from the plant is awaiting word from EPA.

A handful of protestors gathered outside Salt River Project's headquarters Friday morning, urging environmental regulators to force additional pollution controls on the company's coal-fired power plant near Page.

Nine adults and five children showed up for the protest, but Sierra Club officials said they submitted 10,000 petitions to the Environmental Protection Agency regarding the plant.

Erica Cheshire of Phoenix brought her two boys, Jaxon, 10 and Keegan, 7.

Jaxon held a sign that said "Your greed gave me asthma" while Keegan had one reading "I deserve clean air."

"We are huge climate change activists," Cheshire said while the boys held their signs for a photo.

She and her husband both work in the solar industry, she said.

"We need to move to clean, renewable energy sources," she said. "There's no reason we shouldn't move to solar."

Last year the EPA proposed mitigating haze from the power plant by adding new pollution controls in 2018. But SRP and the other plant owners said the plan would cost $1 billion and was unworkable because of the complex ownership structure. They also rejected a subsequent plan.

Other plant owners include Arizona Public Service Co., Tucson Electric Power Co., and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, whose stake in the plant is used to power the Central Arizona Project canals that bring water to metro Phoenix and Tucson from the Colorado River.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and NV Energy also own part of the plant, but both plan to give up or divest their interests. Those two utilities own almost one-third of the power plant.

In the fall, the plant owners and a group of environmental organizations and other stakeholders, including the Navajo Nation, formed a working group that proposed closing one of the three units in 2019, representing the NV Energy and LADWP shares, and adding pollution controls to the others by 2030 to meet the EPA haze rules.

Now SRP and the plant owners are awaiting the EPA's decision on that proposal.

Sierra Club organizer Will Greene said the SRP proposed plan for the plant does not contain "clear, enforceable" compliance with the Clean Air Act.

Members of the working group that developed that plan have said that the proposal they submitted will do more to mitigate pollution than the EPA's and that it is a good compromise.

"We think that agreement (to close one unit or curtail operations by one-third) resolves the environmental concerns," SRP spokesman Scott Harelson said Friday.

He said replacing the Navajo power plant with solar would be expensive, require vast tracts of land, and present a challenge because solar does not generate electricity around the clock like the coal plant does.

"Ultimately, it's an intermittent source of power," he said. "And if SRP is going to build solar, it is not going to build it in Page. The power plant is there because it is close to the coal. We can build (solar) closer to our load center. And if we shut the plant down, those folks lose their jobs."

The power plant employs about 500 people, with another 400 working at the Kayenta mine that supplies it. About 90 percent of the workers at both facilities are Native American.

Last June, about 60 protesters marched along the SRP Canal in Scottsdale, urging the closure of the same power plant. Most belonged to the Black Mesa Water Coalition from the Navajo Reservation, where the plant and the mine are located. They were joined by renewable-energy advocates from as far away as West Virginia, Alaska and Brazil.

The Navajo protesters said many people in their communities don't have running water or power. They used a pickup truck to tow solar panels and a large water tank to the canal bank near Scottsdale and Camelback roads, pumping water from the canal in a symbolic gesture to steal back their water.

Friday's protest was less dramatic. Protestor Kathy Mohr-Almeida of Mesa said her 11-year-old daughter is one of six students in her sixth-grade class of 30 who suffers from asthma.

"We have it easy down here, on the (Navajo) reservation it is bad," she said of the power plant.

Like the others, she said she wants to see the power plant close, but said she hopes to see it replaced with renewable energy sources to maintain employment on the reservation.

"We need to get clean energy in place on tribal lands," she said.

She said her household would be willing to pay $50 more monthly on power bills to see the power plant replaced with solar or other renewable energy.

"Not just for the health of people but for the health of the planet," she said. "What is the value of the future for our kids? That's why I'm doing this."