Along the Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad, Ariz. • One of the largest coal-fired power plants in the American West will close before the year ends and others in the region are on track to shut down or reduce their output in the next few years.
Owners of the Navajo Generating Station near the Arizona-Utah border are turning to cheaper power produced by natural gas as they and other coal-fired plants in the U.S. face growing pressure over contributing to climate change.
Those shifts are upending people's livelihoods, including hundreds of mostly Native American workers in northeastern Arizona who mined the coal, loaded it from a roadside silo and helped produce the electricity.