FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BIA Withholding Records on Desert Rock Power Plant, Court Asked to Force Agency to Release Basic Public Documents

Despite the harmful effects of the proposed Desert Rock coal-fired power plant on precious water resources and air quality in the Four Corners region, the lead federal agency in charge of the project has denied numerous requests to review even basic public records on those issues.

CONTACTS:

Dailan Long, Diné C.A.R.E., 505-801-0713

Mike Eisenfeld, San Juan Citizens Alliance, 505-360-8994

Brad Bartlett, Energy Minerals Law Center, 970-247-9334

FARMINGTON, N.M. – Despite the harmful effects of the proposed Desert Rock coal-fired power plant on precious water resources and air quality in the Four Corners region, the lead federal agency in charge of the project has denied numerous requests to review even basic public records on those issues.

As a result, The Navajo group Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment and the San Juan Citizens Alliance have been forced to ask a judge to order the agency to abide by the law under the Freedom of Information Act.

The groups had filed requests with the Bureau of Indian Affairs on three separate occasions for records detailing a consultant’s work on Desert Rock, particularly its water use and a related coal-mining expansion. In each case, the BIA has refused to provide the public documents requested.

Specifically, the complaint requests access to BIA records associated with development of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Desert Rock, a 1,500-megawatt coal-fired power plant in northwestern New Mexico being proposed as a joint venture between Sithe Global LLC and the tribe’s Diné Power Authority. The Draft EIS was prepared for the BIA by URS Corp. – a
private third-party contractor.

“We are very concerned about corruption of the BIA’s public approval process for Desert Rock,” said Mike Eisenfeld of the Alliance. “URS Corporation wrote the Draft EIS for the BIA, but now the agency says that URS works for Sithe. The public has a right to know how the agency, Sithe and URS have interacted in planning the proposed power plant.”

The Draft EIS identifies the “URS Team” as “consultants” to the BIA, and in a response to one of the records requests, the agency said its communications with the URS Corp. “represent the personal opinions, recommendations and advice of staff members and agency consultants.” In another response, however, BIA denied access to requested documents, asserting that URS Corp. is not an “agency consultant” but rather “a private research and consulting organization contracted by the project proponent to assist the BIA in preparing the draft EIS.”

Eisenfeld said his organization and Diné C.A.R.E. believe the public isn’t being allowed to see the documents because they will show a clear trail of how BIA, URS and Sithe have written the Draft EIS with considerable bias in favor of Desert Rock.

In addition to communications between URS, Sithe and the BIA, the complaint also requests full release of the water and land agreements between the Navajo Nation and Sithe.

“We are highly concerned that the tribal government may be planning to use its water rights in the San Juan River basin to feed Desert Rock,” said Dailan Long of Diné C.A.R.E. “The public’s ability to fully review the water leases for Desert Rock is critical. This water is meant for the people and there are thousands of us tribal members living in this part of the reservation without adequate access to water. If Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley has committed the tribe’s water rights to the San Juan River for another coal-fired power plant, the public has a right to know.”

Desert Rock would use approximately 4,950 acre-feet – 1.6 billion gallons – of water annually over the next 50 years. President Joe Shirley is currently urging Congress to approve a $1 billion water settlement that would pipe water from San Juan River and the Animas La Plata Project (located just south of Durango, Colo.) to reservation lands where the proposed Desert Rock
Energy Project would be built.

“The BIA’s refusal to let the public know what it is doing through access to its records is unacceptable,” said attorney Brad Bartlett with the Energy Minerals Law Center. “It has left citizens with no choice but to ask the federal courts for help. FOIA’s purpose is to foster public disclosure of government actions and is designed to pierce the veil of administrative secrecy and to open agency action to the light of pubic scrutiny.”

Diné C.A.R.E. and San Juan Citizens Alliance, represented by the Western Environmental Law Center and the Energy Minerals Law Center, filed their complaint on April 2, 2008 in U.S. District Court in New Mexico.

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