Early last year, the hydropower company Nature and People First set its sights on Black Mesa, a mountainous region on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona. The mesa’s steep drop offered ideal terrain for gravity-based energy storage, and the company was interested in building pumped-storage projects that leveraged the elevation difference. Environmental groups and tribal community organizations, however, largely opposed the plan. Pumped-storage operations involve moving water in and out of reservoirs, which could affect the habitats of endangered fish and require massive groundwater withdrawals from an already-depleted aquifer. 

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has authority over non-federal hydropower projects on the Colorado River and its tributaries, ultimately denied the project’s permit. The decision was among the first under a new policy: FERC would not approve projects on tribal land without the support of the affected tribe. Since the project was on Navajo land and the Navajo Nation opposed the project, FERC denied the permits. The Commission also denied similar permit requests from Rye Development, a Florida-based company, that also proposed pumped-water projects.

Now, Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright wants to reverse this policy. In October, Wright wrote to FERC, requesting that the commission return to its previous policy and that giving tribes veto power was hindering the development of hydropower projects. The commission’s policy has created an “untenable regime,” he noted, and “For America to continue dominating global energy markets, we must remove unnecessary burdens to the development of critical infrastructure, including hydropower projects.” 

Wright also invoked a rarely used authority under the Federal Powers Act to request that the commission make a final decision no later than December 18. And instead of the 30 to 60 days generally reserved for proposed rule changes, the FERC comment period was open for only two weeks last month. If his effort proves successful, hydropower projects like the ones proposed by Nature and People First could make a return to the Navajo Nation regardless of tribal support. 

More than 20 tribes and tribal associations largely in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest, environmental groups, and elected officials, including Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, sent letters urging FERC to continue its current policy.

“Tribes are stewards of the land and associated resources, and understand best how to manage and preserve those resources, as they have done for centuries,” wrote Chairman William Iyall of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe in Washington in a letter submitted to the commission. 

Tó Nizhóní Ání, or TNA, a Diné-led water rights organization based in Black Mesa on the Navajo Nation, also submitted comments opposing the proposed hydropower project. In the 1960s, after Peabody Coal broke up sections of the resource-rich region between the Hopi and Navajo tribes for mining, the company was accused of misrepresenting the conditions of its operations and the status of mineral rights to local communities. Environmental problems soon followed, as the company’s groundwater pumping exceeded legal limits, compromising the aquifer and access to drinking water. According to Nicole Horseherder, Diné, and TNA’s executive director, this led residents of Black Mesa to use community wells.

“They were now starting to have to haul all their water needs in this way,” she said. “That really changed the lifestyle of the people on Black Mesa.” 

After the coal mines closed 20 years later, Black Mesa communities have focused on protecting their water resources while building a sustainable economy. But when Nature and People First’s founder Denis Payre presented the company’s plans, he seemed unaware of the tribes’ history in the region. During these presentations, Payre also made promises that if the company’s hydropower project went forward, it would benefit residents. The project would generate 1,000 jobs during construction and 100 jobs permanently, he claimed, and would help locals readily access portable drinking water.

“He wasn’t understanding that our region has a history of extraction, and that is coal mining and its impact on our groundwater,” said Adrian Herder, Diné, TNA’s media organizer. “It seemed like this individual was tugging at people’s heartstrings, [saying] things that people wanted to hear.”

If the commission decides to retract tribes’ ability to veto hydropower projects, it will mark a shift in the relationship between Indigenous nations and the federal government. Horseherder described such a move as the “first step in eroding whatever’s left between [these] relationships.” She is pessimistic about the commission’s decision and expects it will retract the current policy. 

“The only thing I’m optimistic about is that Indigenous people know that they need to continue to fight,” she said. “I don’t see this administration waking up to their own mistakes at all.”