Navajo Gives Up Navajo Generating Station Bid

By Laurel Morales
Published: Friday, March 22, 2019 - 3:49pm

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Navajo Generating Station
Laurel Morales/KJZZ
One of the Navajo Generating Station's three 750-megawatt generators.

The Navajo Nation announced Friday it's given up trying to purchase the West's largest coal-fired power plant and the tribe's biggest revenue maker.

The tribe's negotiations with the Navajo Generating Station owners came to a halt over who would ultimately be responsible for the plant's cleanup.

Navajo Transitional Energy Company, which is owned by the tribe, said in a statement that despite this decision, the company will "continue to usher in a new era of conscious energy development while hundreds of Navajo workers at the plant and the Kayenta Mine face an uncertain future."

Salt River Project, the plant's operator, has redeployed more than a third of its Navajo workforce to other plants near Phoenix. The utility decided to shutdown the Navajo Generating Station ahead of schedule because natural gas is so much cheaper than coal.

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