Agathla Peak, an eroded volcanic plug, on the Navajo Nation outside Kayenta, Arizona. No news or musings here: I just like this rock formation. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
A flare in the Aneth Oil Field on the Navajo Nation in Utah. Oil producers often flare methane and other “associated gases” rather than capturing and piping them to market. Inefficient combustion, however, is common, allowing the methane—a potent greenhouse gas—to escape into the atmosphere. The field was first developed in the 1950s and companies extracting hydrocarbons have a history of bad behavior. Now many of the wells are old and leaky. The Aneth Field is just a few years older, and not far away from, the Horseshoe Gallup Field, home to derelict oil wells owned by absentee, bankrupt companies. Stay tuned to the Land Desk for a full-blown story on that one, coming next week. Jonathan P. Thompson photos.
Billboard at the Peabody Coal Company airstrip on Black Mesa in northern Arizona not far from its now shuttered Kayenta and Black Mesa Mines. Peabody began mining on Navajo and Hopi land on Black Mesa in the 1960s, displacing families and destroying grazing lands and cultural artifacts, sucking up groundwater at a rate of 1.3 billion gallons per year, and shipping the coal — which was owned by the tribes — off to the Navajo and Mojave power plants. In return, the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe received just 2 to 6 percent royalty for the coal, an amount that was finally increased to the still-below-standard rate of 12.5 percent in 1984. The Black Mesa Mine closed after Mojave was shuttered in 2005. The Kayenta Mine closed in 2019 along with its sole customer, the Navajo Generating Station, eliminating hundreds of relatively well-paying jobs and leaving huge holes in the budgets of the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe. Not only did the companies not provide a just transition fund to affected communities, but Peabody has thus far failed to launch a proper reclamation effort at the mine that would have provided jobs to displaced coal miners for years to come.
Irrigating hay with sprinklers, in the middle of the day, outside Orderville in Southern Utah, a small ag town that has become a gateway town to nearby national parks and public lands (Stay tuned to the Land Desk for a mid-year update on visitation numbers at those parks). The water for the fields comes from the Virgin River (which has been reduced to a trickle here, and runs just beyond the pictured field), a tributary to the Colorado River. The Colorado River system, of course, is in serious trouble and federal officials have concluded that the seven states that rely on it must reduce usage of its waters by as much as 4 million acre feet in the not-so-distant future. So far, it doesn’t seem like the states have made much progress in making those cuts. The Colorado Water Conservation Board commissioner told CPR that her state’s done enough cutting and it’s now on the Lower Basin States (California, Arizona, Nevada) to do their part. Meanwhile, in California …
During my recent travels I did a big loop from one end of Lake Powell to the other, checking out reservoir levels, huge deposits of silt, and the effects of all of that. I’m old enough to remember when Hite was a marina and it sat on the edge of the murky waters of Lake Powell’s northern end. No more. Now the old boat ramp ends about 2,000 feet away from the Colorado River. And if you were somehow able to get a watercraft down the 20-foot-high silt bank into the river, you’d have to float six or seven miles downstream before encountering anything resembling a reservoir. Nevertheless, Hite remained open as a campground, store, and gas-station for years without a lake nearby. This March, however, it shut down and the National Park Service is now looking for a new concessionaire to run the operation. If you’re that person, I have a suggestion: Get some shade structures in that campground (pictured above, sweltering)! Jonathan P. Thompson photo.
Also on the northern half of Lake Powell is a place called Ticaboo, located up the road from Bullfrog Marina. You wouldn’t really call it a town or even a community. At the same time, it’s a bit more than just a smattering of gas stations and houseboat storage lots. There’s a subdivision that was established in the 1970s to house workers from the nearby uranium mines and the Shootaring Canyon uranium mill, as well as to maybe draw Lake Powell users to buy a lot. Now there are maybe 40 to 50 mobile homes on one side of the “townsite” and a handful of single-family homes (and even a couple cul-de-sacs and a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints stake house) on the other side. I stopped in Ticaboo for ice, and because I was curious about a line of tiny homes like the one pictured sitting in the parking lot. They said they were going to place them in the desert nearby and rent or sell them. To whom? I thought. After all, while there were still giant vehicles pulling giant boats toward the reservoir, visitation to Lake Powell is down significantly along with lake levels. But then, Ticaboo is at least trying to pivot away from big boat lake folks and toward a new type of user: canyoneers, campers, OHV riders, and non-motorized lake users. Maybe it will work. Meanwhile, increased uranium prices have Anfield, the current owner of the Shootaring Mill, saying they may revive the facility along with a dozen or so mines (more on that in a future Land Desk dispatch).
From the soon-to-be used-to-be world and the you-can’t-be-serious beat:
Always great pictures come from Jonathan! Since I do not get up that way any more. through his pictures I get to see the country which used to be morE lush in THE OLD DAYS!
Sharon/Tucson
Always great pictures come from Jonathan! Since I do not get up that way any more. through his pictures I get to see the country which used to be morE lush in THE OLD DAYS!
Thanks for todays tour.
Soccer ball sitting in the desert? Or??
Really great pictures - some beautiful - some not. Bet used to be was different.