Members of two Arizona Indian tribes asked regulators Wednesday to order Southern California Edison Co. to pay them as much as $40 million a year to make up for job losses and other economic fallout from the shutdown of the massive Mohave power plant on Dec. 31.
A coalition that includes Navajo and Hopi Indians as well as environmental groups said the money also would compensate tribal members for "a long history of sacrifices" made on behalf of Edison customers who benefited from cheap power from the Mohave plant since it opened in 1971.
The plant in Laughlin, Nev., generated electricity for the Los Angeles Basin using coal dug from the Black Mesa mine on tribal lands in northeast Arizona. Losing its sole customer curtailed production and forced layoffs at Black Mesa, costing the Indians 200 high-paying jobs and $20 million in annual mining royalties.
The Mohave plant, one of the biggest sources of sulfur dioxide pollution in the West, was closed after Edison failed to meet a deadline for installing expensive pollution-control equipment as required in the 1999 settlement of an environmental lawsuit.
In a motion filed Wednesday, the coalition asked the California Public Utilities Commission to order Edison to give the Indians money the utility is expected to earn by selling pollution credits created by mothballing the 1,585-megawatt power plant. Edison, which operated the plant and is its majority owner, relied on Mohave for 7% of its electricity.
The request for financial restitution, which has not been endorsed by the two tribal governments, is legally unprecedented, some energy experts said.
"They are plowing new ground, and it's going to be a tough argument to make," said Michael Shames, a veteran advocate for energy users with the Utility Consumers' Action Network.
Edison, a unit of Rosemead-based Edison International, declined to comment on the Indians' motion, saying it needed to review the document.
Meanwhile, the utility and Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal-mining company and operator of the Black Mesa mine, continue to negotiate with the two tribes' governments over contracts for coal and water supplies needed to possibly reopen the Mohave plant.
It's unclear how many Hopi and Navajo are actually active in the newly formed Just Transition Coalition, which also includes the Grand Canyon Trust and the Sierra Club among its members.
