Podcasts about four corners power plant

A row of coal next to skid steer inside the Navajo Transitional Energy Co. coal yard in New Mexico. (Photo: Gabriel Pietrorazio) The Trump administration has just approved a plan that could let the Navajo Nation dig up more than 500 million tons of coal by extending the life of a New Mexico mine over the next century – until the year 2136. KJZZ's Gabriel Pietrorazio has details. The U.S. Interior Department says denying this permit would be at odds with President Donald Trump's “Unleashing American Energy” agenda. It could also destabilize the Navajo Nation economy. The tribally owned Navajo Transitional Energy Co. fuels the aging Four Corners Power Plant. That lease is set to expire in 2041, but the U.S. government notes the next coal buyer is unknown. The United States argues those financial factors outweigh a slew of environmental and other harms posed by the expansion – including the relocation of nearby families. Jason Smith and Kremena Doust with some of their horses on the Warm Springs reservation in central Oregon, July 30, 2026. (Courtesy James Smith Ranch) While the Bench Fire in Oregon has been largely contained, its effects are still being felt. A ranching couple on the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon needs help caring for their cattle and wild horses after the fire destroyed their grazing land. Brian Bull of Underscore Native News and KLCC reports. Jason Smith and Kremena Doust say they were preparing to do a live auction and photo shoot with their horses on July 25, but they canceled once they realized the Bench Fire was burning fast through their area. Smith: “It run like 14 miles in one day, y'know. It made it from our westerly range where we run our cattle and horses, clear to our front door.” Doust: “It was intense, it was orange. It was like pretty high in the sky.” Smith: “There were a bunch of fires, just south of the reservation there. And they looked like they were comin' our way big time, y;know.” The flames almost came up to their doorstep, but a highway created a natural break that spared their home. They say at least 80% of their grazing district was consumed by fire, leaving between 400 to 500 wild horses and their cattle without food. So now Smith and Doust are trying to raise funds to help buy emergency feed for their animals and offer the horses for adoption by good homes. Doust: “So if we can take care of that through community support and grants, that would be a game changer.” Smith: “The biggest thing is feed right now, though.” Doust: “Right now, immediately feed. Absolutely.” Mares, yearlings, and studs are all available on the ranch’s website for adoption. Doust said she is also trying to set up a nonprofit. Photo: Spirit Lake Nation. (Courtesy Spirit Lake Nation-Mni Wakan Oyate / Facebook) Two North Dakota Tribes are renewing their legal fight over a state legislative map they say weakens the voting power of Native people. The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, Spirit Lake Tribe, and individual Native voters moved Friday to file an amended complaint challenging North Dakota’s 2021 legislative districts. The Tribes originally won their case in 2023, when a federal judge ruled the map violated the Voting Rights Act by denying Native voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, but in May, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated an appeals court ruling in the case and sent it back for further consideration following another voting rights decision. The Tribes now argue the map also violates the U.S. Constitution because it was drawn with discriminatory intent and improperly divided Native voters. Spirit Lake Chairwoman Lonna Jackson-Street says the Tribes have fought the map for five years and are prepared to prove their case again. Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today. Download our NV1 Android or iOs App for breaking news alerts. Check out today’s Native America Calling episode Thursday, September 3, 2026 — Osage school closure delivers blow to tribe’s language revitalization

On this week's interview Paul sits down with Vern Lund, the CEO of Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC). You may have never heard of NTEC, but it is a big deal both in New Mexico's energy sector as well as economically on the Navajo Nation. What is NTEC and what does it do? What is its involvement in the Four Corners Power Plant (a coal power plant) and other current and future energy projects? If you care about energy (and if you have been using your AC this summer, you should) this conversation is worth it! 

Photo: Navajo Mine is the sole supplier of the Four Corners Power Plant in New Mexico. An environmental group met in Window Rock, Ariz. Monday to argue against keeping a Navajo Nation coal mine alive. As KNAU's Chris Clements reports, critics say it would ignore a nationwide transition away from fossil fuels. Members of the group Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment (CARE), like Devon Norberto, say the permit to extend the life of the Navajo Mine by 110 years is rushed. “A lot of the concerns we heard were around that the community hadn’t been fully notified of this permit.” The tribally owned Navajo Transitional Energy Company (N-TEC) operates the Navajo Mine in northwestern New Mexico and is pushing for its expansion. Supporters of that proposal argue it is essential to the tribe's economic stability and sovereignty, but Norberto says members of Burnham Chapter, a community near where coal would be mined, were not properly consulted. “It would relocate some of the families within the leasing area that they are trying to mine at. It would force them to lose their grazing lands. It would remove them from their ancestral ties to the land.” N-TEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A federal agency tasked with approving the mine expansion is expected to release a decision in August. The 65-year-old Hills Creek Dam and Reservoir roughly four miles east of Oakridge, Oreg. as seen on June 24, 2026. (Photo: Brian Bull / KLCC) Across the Pacific Northwest, tribes and conservationists are working to help the eel-like fish, the lamprey rebound. As KLCC's Brian Bull reports, dams have greatly diminished their numbers. Recently near Oregon's Coyote Creek, technicians with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs arrived with 100 lampreys in their truck. Aldwin Keo introduced himself and his slithering cargo. “They're filter feeders, they clean out whatever is in the sediment, that's where they stay for many years before they go out to the ocean.” A group of Native educators and students helped release the prehistoric critters into the creek. This is a practice called translocation, where adult fish are released in waterways above dams. Courtney Golts, a lamprey biologist with the tribe, says dam development has had its impact. “In the upper Willamette tributaries are areas that have been completely impassable to lamprey for decades, so these are reintroductions to areas that do not have Pacific lamprey, and as of today, they do.” The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) says lamprey once teemed in the millions through the Columbia River Basin, but only 23,000 were recorded in 2010. Jerrid Weaskus of the Nez Perce Tribe holds a lamprey before releasing it in a waterway near Hills Creek Dam on June 24, 2026. (Photo: Brian Bull / KLCC) Raymond Ellenwood Jr. is a fisheries technician with the Nez Perce Tribe. Near Oakridge, he and Jerrid Weaskus released more lamprey. The goal is to have adult lamprey stay and mate, creating little lampreys called ammocoetes. “The ammocoetes, they burrow into the sand and the substrate and they'll filter feed off the detritus in the river or stream. And what they're doing is the adults are smelling the ammocoetes, that are upriver in those river systems. They're telling them, ‘Hey that river system's good. There's good spawning habit. That's where we want to go.'” If all goes to plan, lamprey released here will start migrating to the Pacific Ocean around 2030, and come back as adults four years later. “Wanna welcome you guys to our annual lamprey celebration.” Recently in Oregon City, more than 1,200 people signed up for the annual Yakama Nation Willamette Falls Lamprey Celebration. It is a day of music, presentations, even a lunch with grilled lamprey. CRITFC's Jeremy Five Crows says they have updated their plan to include a technical document for scientists, students, and resource managers, and a policy brief for lawmakers. “The lamprey has been around 450 million years. We're closer to a T-Rex than a T-Rex was to lamprey. That's how far back they go, and so the thought of just in the past 100 years that we could drive something extinct that's been on Earth for that long, is terrible.” Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today. Download our NV1 Android or iOs App for breaking news alerts. Check out today’s Native America Calling episode Wednesday, July 22, 2026 — Accessing the vulnerability of Indigenous communities during 2026 wildfire season

Last month, VICE NEWS released a short documentary about the Navajo Nation called “Cursed by Coal.” The images and stories confirm the title. “Seems like everything’s just dying out here,” says Navajo citizen Joe Allen. “It’s because of the mine. Everything is being ruined. They don’t care about people living on that land.” About four hundred miles southwest of the Four Corners Power Plant, where much of the coal stripped from Navajo land is burned for energy, stands the gleaming Chase Tower in downtown Phoenix, the tallest building in the state of Arizona. Connecting the two places is a maze of energy infrastructure, hidden and ignored when a Chase executive enters his air-conditioned top-floor office. “Electricity and power lines had become second nature in Phoenix, as assumed and expected aspect of modern life,” writes Andrew Needham. “Appearing in Phoenix’s homes, businesses, and factories at the flick of a switch, electricity seemed to exist in neither time nor space. It simply was.” But it had to be made somewhere, as Needham vividly illustrates in his new book, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest (Princeton University Press, 2014). With booming desert cities demanding ever more power throughout the last century and into the present, the Navajo Nation’s massive coal deposits were targeted for extraction, no matter the ecological or economic cost. People are still living with the consequences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last month, VICE NEWS released a short documentary about the Navajo Nation called “Cursed by Coal.” The images and stories confirm the title. “Seems like everything’s just dying out here,” says Navajo citizen Joe Allen. “It’s because of the mine. Everything is being ruined. They don’t care about people living on that land.” About four hundred miles southwest of the Four Corners Power Plant, where much of the coal stripped from Navajo land is burned for energy, stands the gleaming Chase Tower in downtown Phoenix, the tallest building in the state of Arizona. Connecting the two places is a maze of energy infrastructure, hidden and ignored when a Chase executive enters his air-conditioned top-floor office. “Electricity and power lines had become second nature in Phoenix, as assumed and expected aspect of modern life,” writes Andrew Needham. “Appearing in Phoenix’s homes, businesses, and factories at the flick of a switch, electricity seemed to exist in neither time nor space. It simply was.” But it had to be made somewhere, as Needham vividly illustrates in his new book, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest (Princeton University Press, 2014). With booming desert cities demanding ever more power throughout the last century and into the present, the Navajo Nation’s massive coal deposits were targeted for extraction, no matter the ecological or economic cost. People are still living with the consequences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last month, VICE NEWS released a short documentary about the Navajo Nation called “Cursed by Coal.” The images and stories confirm the title. “Seems like everything’s just dying out here,” says Navajo citizen Joe Allen. “It’s because of the mine. Everything is being ruined. They don’t care about people living on that land.” About four hundred miles southwest of the Four Corners Power Plant, where much of the coal stripped from Navajo land is burned for energy, stands the gleaming Chase Tower in downtown Phoenix, the tallest building in the state of Arizona. Connecting the two places is a maze of energy infrastructure, hidden and ignored when a Chase executive enters his air-conditioned top-floor office. “Electricity and power lines had become second nature in Phoenix, as assumed and expected aspect of modern life,” writes Andrew Needham. “Appearing in Phoenix’s homes, businesses, and factories at the flick of a switch, electricity seemed to exist in neither time nor space. It simply was.” But it had to be made somewhere, as Needham vividly illustrates in his new book, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest (Princeton University Press, 2014). With booming desert cities demanding ever more power throughout the last century and into the present, the Navajo Nation’s massive coal deposits were targeted for extraction, no matter the ecological or economic cost. People are still living with the consequences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last month, VICE NEWS released a short documentary about the Navajo Nation called “Cursed by Coal.” The images and stories confirm the title. “Seems like everything’s just dying out here,” says Navajo citizen Joe Allen. “It’s because of the mine. Everything is being ruined. They don’t care about people living on that land.” About four hundred miles southwest of the Four Corners Power Plant, where much of the coal stripped from Navajo land is burned for energy, stands the gleaming Chase Tower in downtown Phoenix, the tallest building in the state of Arizona. Connecting the two places is a maze of energy infrastructure, hidden and ignored when a Chase executive enters his air-conditioned top-floor office. “Electricity and power lines had become second nature in Phoenix, as assumed and expected aspect of modern life,” writes Andrew Needham. “Appearing in Phoenix’s homes, businesses, and factories at the flick of a switch, electricity seemed to exist in neither time nor space. It simply was.” But it had to be made somewhere, as Needham vividly illustrates in his new book, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest (Princeton University Press, 2014). With booming desert cities demanding ever more power throughout the last century and into the present, the Navajo Nation’s massive coal deposits were targeted for extraction, no matter the ecological or economic cost. People are still living with the consequences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last month, VICE NEWS released a short documentary about the Navajo Nation called “Cursed by Coal.” The images and stories confirm the title. “Seems like everything’s just dying out here,” says Navajo citizen Joe Allen. “It’s because of the mine. Everything is being ruined. They don’t care about people living on that land.” About four hundred miles southwest of the Four Corners Power Plant, where much of the coal stripped from Navajo land is burned for energy, stands the gleaming Chase Tower in downtown Phoenix, the tallest building in the state of Arizona. Connecting the two places is a maze of energy infrastructure, hidden and ignored when a Chase executive enters his air-conditioned top-floor office. “Electricity and power lines had become second nature in Phoenix, as assumed and expected aspect of modern life,” writes Andrew Needham. “Appearing in Phoenix’s homes, businesses, and factories at the flick of a switch, electricity seemed to exist in neither time nor space. It simply was.” But it had to be made somewhere, as Needham vividly illustrates in his new book, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest (Princeton University Press, 2014). With booming desert cities demanding ever more power throughout the last century and into the present, the Navajo Nation’s massive coal deposits were targeted for extraction, no matter the ecological or economic cost. People are still living with the consequences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last month, VICE NEWS released a short documentary about the Navajo Nation called “Cursed by Coal.” The images and stories confirm the title. “Seems like everything’s just dying out here,” says Navajo citizen Joe Allen. “It’s because of the mine. Everything is being ruined. They don’t care about people living on that land.” About four hundred miles southwest of the Four Corners Power Plant, where much of the coal stripped from Navajo land is burned for energy, stands the gleaming Chase Tower in downtown Phoenix, the tallest building in the state of Arizona. Connecting the two places is a maze of energy infrastructure, hidden and ignored when a Chase executive enters his air-conditioned top-floor office. “Electricity and power lines had become second nature in Phoenix, as assumed and expected aspect of modern life,” writes Andrew Needham. “Appearing in Phoenix’s homes, businesses, and factories at the flick of a switch, electricity seemed to exist in neither time nor space. It simply was.” But it had to be made somewhere, as Needham vividly illustrates in his new book, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest (Princeton University Press, 2014). With booming desert cities demanding ever more power throughout the last century and into the present, the Navajo Nation’s massive coal deposits were targeted for extraction, no matter the ecological or economic cost. People are still living with the consequences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices