The Interior Board of Land Appeals granted the Western Environmental Law Center’s request to reconsider the Bureau of Land Management’s approval of the Navajo Transmission Project (“NTP”). Without the NTP, the proposed Desert Rock coal-fired power plant in New Mexico, designed to provide power to Phoenix and Las Vegas, cannot be built.

“This decision recognizes that the approval failed to consider the impacts that the transmission line and a new coal-fired power plant would have on the health of people living in the Four Corners region, threatened and endangered species in the path of the transmission line, and not least of all the substantial contribution the power plant would have on global warming,” said Western Environmental Law Center (WELC) attorney Matt Kenna of Durango, CO, who handled the appeal. WELC is representing Diné CARE, a Navajo Nation conservation group, as well as the San Juan Citizens Alliance, Sierra Club, and the Center for Biological Diversity. 

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