While the owners of Navajo Generating Station have agreed to keep the Page power plant open through the end of 2019, there are still some questions about the future of Page’s largest employer.
The most immediate question is whether the Navajo Nation will agree to a short-term lease extension on the land. The current lease ends in 2019 and to keep the plant operating until then, at least two more years must be added to the lease.
Salt River Project, which is one of the plant’s owners and the company that runs the plant, is negotiating with the Navajo Nation to extend the lease.
If that is accomplished, the next question becomes what happens after 2019. The owners of NGS said they will remove themselves from the equation at that time, but if the Navajo Nation, the Department of the Interior or someone else wants to keep it running, the current owners have agreed to allow that to happen.

If the plant is shut down, per the current agreement with the Navajo Nation, it must be removed and the land returned to its former state. SRP officials expect that process will take two years.
When the NGS owners voted last month, the four utility owners — SRP Arizona Public Service Co., NV Energy and Tucson Electric Power, voted to leave NGS at the end of 2019. The fifth owner, the Department of the Interior, expressed an interest to keep NGS open longer.
Last week, the department hosted a meeting with NGS stakeholders to discuss the future. While no firm decisions were made, the department said it is still looking for a long-term solution.
“Today’s session gave each stakeholder with an interest in the current and future operation of the Navajo Generating Station an opportunity to review the multiple economic realities facing NGS through 2019 and – potentially – beyond,” said Acting Deputy Secretary of the Interior James E. Cason. “This economic review is only one piece of the challenges we face. The economies of the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe and the state of Arizona are clearly tied to NGS operations.”
Cason said as the department is looking at the future, the economies of the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe are at the forefront of any decision they make.
“For Interior, we are mindful of our Indian Trust relationships to the Navajo and Hopi people and the hundreds of well-paying Navajo and Hopi jobs at NGS and the Kayenta Mine,” he said. “Interior will continue to facilitate these ongoing discussions. The next important step is for the Navajo Nation and Salt River Project to conclude discussions on a lease extension or amendment that will allow operations to continue through December 2019. In addition, a number of other entities associated with NGS will be discussing options for post-2019 operation.”
No public word has been released about the negotiations with SRP and the Navajo Nation. But when the NGS owners announced the decision last month, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye said he still hoped to see the plant open much longer than 2019.
“Though we appreciate NGS’ extension of plant operations up until 2019, we question what will happen beyond that time,” Begaye said. “The plant will have to be decommissioned in order to stop its operations. Additional infrastructure will have to be put in place to transition NGS from coal-burning to any other form of natural gas-based power generation.”