George Will writes about the the attack that Obama’s EPA is conducting against the Navajo Generating Station, which together with the coal mine that feeds it represents an important factor in Arizona’s economy and an important source of employment for members of the Navajo tribe.
Will notes that the NGS provides 95”‰percent of the power for the pumps of the Central Arizona Project, which routes water from the Colorado River and which made Phoenix and most of modern Arizona possible. A study sponsored by the Interior Department estimates that the EPA’s mandate might increase the cost of water by as much as 32 percent, hitting agriculture users especially hard.
Read the whole thing.
It’s interesting to read the comments following the Will column. If anyone needs another example of the cluelessness of the left on issues of energy or economics, you need look no farther. Even Los Angeles had a moment of sanity when their vapid Arizona boycott suddenly involved the power from that generating station. They decided that the boycott of Arizona didn’t include electricity purchases. Not all leftists are capable of even that flash of sanity. Look at the comments after that column.
Many of the commenters assiduously avoid responding to the substance of Will’s argument. It’s either ad hominems or absurd straw men, never realistic comparisons of the costs and benefits of the power plant.
Arizona’s 10 electoral votes comfortably went to McCain in 2008. They’ll all but certainly go for Romney in November. Obama does not care. Clearly the Navajo and Hopi tribes have not given the DNC enough money for them to start to care.
Maybe the Navajo can get Elizabeth Warren to represent them?
“Maybe the Navajo can get Elizabeth Warren to represent them?”
How
Jason’s got it. The Arizona affair is reminiscent of how the Clinton administration created Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. It was a purely political move to buy green support at the expense of people in Utah who were going to vote Republican anyway.
Those comments Michael referred to were typical –
The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument creation is notable locally for delivering the coup de grace to whatever remained of the Utah Democratic Party.
There is a large deposit of anthracite coal (which burns reasonable cleanly for coal) under the monument. A mine was in the process of being opened after years of the tortuous permitting that comes up whenever someone tries the develop any part of the 70% of Utah land owned by the Federal government when Clinton held a press conference across the border in Arizona to announce that all of that process was for naught because he was making the whole thing a national monument.
Good bye clean burning coal. Good bye Utah Democratic party. November 1996 saw a utter route of Democratic officeholders from national, state, and local offices alike. After that, politics in Utah became fights between wings of a Utah Republican party that commands all major state offices and a two thirds majority in both houses of the state legislature. Utah has one Democratic congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives but he’s a DINO.
I would suggest that the western states, especially, but all states in general, seriously consider exercising their rights to the property of their own states, and begin working toward nullifying the federal confiscations that have occurred during our history.
The obvious solution to the coming bankruptcies at all governmental levels, by the way, is to auction off the enormous land holdings of those states who can’t manage their finances, and the federal government, which controls huge parts of the country for no realistic purpose.
There’s no reason a bunch of pols from the eastern seaboard should have a controlling interest in the future of large swaths of the far west, or Alaska. That land should belong to the inhabitants of those states, and be available for their use.