Navajo Nation leaders are well aware that coal has fallen from favor in thisage of global warming. But to them, plans for a new power plant on the reservation mean more than rising temperatures and climate patterns.

To them it is survival.

The proposed Desert Rock Energy Project in northwestern New Mexico could add $50 million in revenue to their annual budget of about $130 million, excluding government contracts, and bring 1,000 construction jobs and 400 permanent positions to the plant and expanded mine. advertisement

Environmentalists on and off the reservation are fighting the plans, saying that the region already suffers enough air pollution from existing coal plants and mines. They say the poverty-stricken tribe could see a bigger economic boost from developing wind and solar energy.

The jobless rate among the more than 100,000 tribal members living on the reservation is about 50 percent, depending on whether traditional Navajo roles such as gathering herbs are counted as jobs.

It's an understatement to say that attracting industry to the 27,000-square-mile reservation is a challenge. It's likely the largest swath of the continental U.S. without a Starbucks, and long drives into Gallup, N.M., to fill water tanks for homes are common.

The spokesman for the tribe's power authority, Albert Shirley, is one of many people living on the reservation without electricity.

Like many Navajo, he visits a nearby mine in the winter to collect coal to burn for heat.

The importance of electricity hit home last winter, when his 28-year-old daughter-in-law fell ill during a cold snap and died, leaving behind a months-old son.

"That was a reality for me," he said. "It was so cold. I got sick myself. We took her to the hospital, but she fell so fast."

Shirley is all too familiar with the problems linked to poverty. Three years ago, his 22-year-old son, who worked as an art-exhibit tour guide for the New Mexico Legislature, was killed in a violent stabbing outside his home.

"Poverty is a factor in a lot of this," Shirley said. "People don't care. They don't have values."

Better offer

The tribe could buy in and become a partial owner of the coal plant. That's a better deal than past coal developments, some of which paid pennies per ton in mining fees and didn't offer an ownership stake.

And the project would have a Native American hiring preference, something that has served the tribe well at the nearby Four Corners Power Plant run by Arizona Public Service Co., where about 80 percent of the workers are Native American.

"We have to look at more than just the environment," Shirley said. "There is a little bit more to consider."

Desert Rock is planned south of the Four Corners plant and the coal mine that feeds it. Another plant and mine, San Juan Generating Station, lies farther north, just off the reservation, not to mention the Navajo mine to the west in Arizona, which is tapped by both Salt River Project and APS.

Some tribal members say that is more than enough.

Alice Gilmore, 76, keeps time like many Navajo her age, with a reference to The Long Walk, the military roundup of the tribe in the 1860s that temporarily removed them from the land that now is the reservation.

Gilmore grew up chasing sheep on the hills near the Desert Rock site. As she recalled her youth, the draglines from the mine could be heard across the valley.

Through a translator, she explained that relatives are buried in the area and that because of what has happened at Four Corners, she doesn't trust promises about keeping the environment clean.

Navajo council members told her in the early 1960s that the land would be returned to its original condition after it was mined. But she points to it now and says the mine's restoration efforts are falling short and nobody can move back to that area.

Gilmore is helping a Navajo environmental group opposed to the plant, Diné CARE (Citizens Against Ruining our Environment).

The group hopes to see the tribe develop more alternative-energy projects, such as a major wind-power project recently announced, that, if built, could be the first in Arizona.

Shirley acknowledged the difficulty of explaining certain concepts regarding the coal plants, or "big stoves" to tribal elders in their native, wispy language.

"We are obligated to tell people what is going on," he said.

He is helping create translations for some of the terms, such as "the air with a wild spirit," for air pollution.

"A spirit that can hurt you, your health," he added.

The translation efforts have notfound a way to explain the concept of global warming caused by fossil-fuel emissions.

Project delayed

Desert Rock's energy output doesn't have any takers yet. It has been mired in an application for an air permit from the Environmental Protection Agency for four years, triggering a lawsuit from developer Sithe Global Power.

And environmentalists are suing the Bureau of Indian Affairs for withholding operating plans for the facility - namely, where it will get its water.

Sithe officials said they plan to use groundwater, but environmentalists suspect that won't work, and the plant will pull from the nearby San Juan River, just like the Four Corners plant.

"We would be way more amenable discussing the future of this project if it were to allow utilities to decommission another one and bring on a cleaner plant," said Mike Eisenfeld, a staff organizer for the San Juan Citizens Alliance, which is fighting Desert Rock.

Eisenfeld said it's important that the tribe understand global warming.

If Congress passes taxes or limits on carbon-dioxide emissions, which most utility officials believe is imminent, the cost of burning coal will go up.

And if the tribe is a partner in the coal project, that could place some of the expenses, from new taxes or limits, on them.

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., no relation to Albert, has a word for people like Eisenfeld and his group in Farmington: foreigners.

He said building the plant is worth the risk, and that technology could help Desert Rock capture its global-warming gasses someday.

"It's all about putting food on the table to me," he said. "Putting shoes on the little feet."

Poverty and crime are too high on the reservation, which stretches across parts of three states, to turn down the opportunity, he said.

"Some of our children are killing each other," he said. "Once upon a time the Navajo Nation was very fierce, very independent. I'd like to get us back to standing on our own two feet."