A proposed power plant would blur skies crucial to the park.
CHACO CULTURE N.H.P., N.MEX.—At few places on Earth is the clear night sky as crucial as at Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Ancient American Indian tribes built structures at what is now the park site in relation to the stars, moon, planets, and sun. Today, the park's interpretive programs center on clear skies.
On a clear night, visitors can look up and see essentially the same views that ancient Chacoans relished—but perhaps not for long. The sacred skies could soon be blurred by pollution from a coal-fired power plant that, if approved, would be 24 miles south of the park.
"The proposed plant is a really scary thing for us," said Julianne Fletcher of the New Mexico Heritage Preservation Alliance (NMHPA).
"A lot of what you see at Chaco is dependent on a clear sky," she said. "To block or blur it in any way would be a terrible impact."
Chaco Culture is a World Heritage Site, sacred to the cultures and history of the Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo Indians, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It draws about 90,000 visitors each year just for its educational programs and is recognized for its extraordinary architecture and rich archaeological record.
The concerns of park staff over the proposed plant are scientific in nature: that it could affect groundwater, produce excessive ground-level ozone harmful to people and plants, produce mercury deposition, reduce visibility, increase sulfur concentrations, and weaken rock art and mud mortar that holds up the walls of historic structures.
"The power plant's potential impacts could be tremendous across the ecosystem, depending on the technology used," said Brad Shattuck, the site's natural resources program manager.
The Mustang Energy Project would be a 300-megawatt electricity-generating plant that would export energy from the area. The world's largest private coal company, Peabody Energy, proposed the project and applied for an air permit from the state's Air Quality Bureau that was under review at press time.
The National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service voiced concerns that the plant could affect visibility at Chaco, Pecos National Historical Park, and other nearby wilderness areas. The Air Quality Bureau recently requested more information on anticipated levels of plant emissions, which Peabody had yet to supply as of late March.
The plant is proposed for private land about 11 miles east of the Kin Ya'a, a Chacoan Outlier, and about a mile from Navajo land. Since it would be on private land, the plant would not need to have premium technology for limiting pollution, nor would Peabody be held to federal environmental laws.
Park officials fear that Chaco may also face other threats as the demand increases for the extractable natural resources, mainly gas and oil, plentiful in the San Juan Basin. Some say the San Juan Generating Station, about 90 miles north of the park in the state's Four Corners region, has already degraded the area's air quality.
For these and other reasons, NPCA supported Chaco Culture's inclusion on the Ten Most Endangered Places list released by NMHPA, stating that pollution from the power plant "would further destroy the site's fragile cultural resources, petroglyphs, and prehistoric architecture, as well as endanger natural plant and animal life cycles."
According to NMHPA, "the power plant's plume of pollution could blot the horizon, screen the sunrise from view, and diminish the clear night sky-severing the ancient connection between Chaco and the universe."
