The Four Corners Power Plant is the last functioning coal-powered plant on the Navajo Nation.

As the economic engine for the region, coal offered solid work. But it has also used up water, polluted the air and raised health concerns.

Kurtis Lee

Visuals by Benjamin Rasmussen

Reporting from Window Rock, Ariz., and Shiprock, N.M., on the Navajo Nation

• Oct. 31, 2025

The pushback began almost immediately. Buu Nygren, the leader of the Navajo Nation, posted a selfie on Facebook, beaming as he stood shoulder to shoulder with President Trump at the White House.

The U.S. president had just signed executive orders to promote coal production, and Mr. Nygren was thrilled: “The harmful policies of the past have unfairly targeted coal, but those tides are turning,” he wrote.

The angry Facebook comments rolled in: Mr. Nygren had betrayed his people and his support of coal would lead to the degradation of the land and water, they said.

But other voices surfaced, too. Stop complaining, they said. Coal meant jobs.

For decades, coal has been a divisive subject in the Navajo Nation, which spans portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. As an economic engine for the region, it provides well-paid jobs on the reservation, where nearly 40 percent of the residents live in poverty. But it has also used up water, polluted the air and raised health concerns.

As elsewhere, coal production and coal power generation has slowed over the years on the reservation, as companies pivoted to cheaper forms of energy, like natural gas, and Biden-era policies sought to elevate greener forms of energy, like wind and solar.

With Mr. Trump’s re-election, however, and his exhortations to “drill, baby, drill,” along with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s calls to “mine, baby, mine,” coal supporters, including Mr. Nygren, see the potential to boost coal jobs — or at least slow their departure.

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Brenda Jesus, a member of the Navajo Nation Council, voted for President Trump and hopes he can help save coal jobs.Credit...Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York Times

“Without coal, a lot of Navajo families would not have had any source of income,” said Brenda Jesus, a delegate on the Navajo Nation Council who oversees a committee focused on the tribe’s resources and development.

Ms. Jesus voted for Mr. Trump. Now she hopes that the president can help save the Navajo Nation’s last remaining coal-fired plant, the Four Corners Power Plant.

One of Mr. Trump’s executive orders signed in April instructs federal agencies to repeal regulations that “discriminate” against coal production. With the explosion of artificial intelligence data centers, the order directed federal agencies to explore how coal generating plants might provide some of their insatiable demand for electricity.

The Four Corners plant is past its prime and was scheduled to close in 2031. But four months after Mr. Trump signed his coal orders, officials with Arizona Public Service, which owns most of the Four Corners plant, said the site would close “no later than 2038,” opening the possibility of extending its life.

That would mean keeping hundreds of jobs at the plant. It would also mean nearly a decade of continued emissions and a reliance on an industry in decline.

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“Coal really is not coming back,” said Robyn Jackson, executive director of Diné C.A.R.E., which advocates environmental and social justice.Credit...Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York Times

Robyn Jackson, executive director of Diné C.A.R.E., a group that advocates environmental and social justice on the reservation, characterized the recent moves by Navajo leadership in collaboration with the White House as a deflating setback. She said tribal leaders needed to explore more economic and energy diversity, like wind and solar, on the reservation.

“Coal really is not coming back,” Ms. Jackson said. “For far too long, the land has not been healthy, and it has affected our people.”

Open Spaces and Hazardous Ores

Before coal, there was uranium.

The toxic ore extracted by the U.S. government in the 1940s to build nuclear weapons left pockmarks along the high desert plateaus. Tribal members fell ill. Many died. Waste from the hundreds of abandoned uranium mines still contaminates the soil and water on and around the reservation.

So when the Four Corners plant opened in 1963, on Navajo Nation land, many in the tribe were suspicious and fearful. A decade later, a second coal-fired plant on the reservation, the Navajo Generating Station in northern Arizona, was completed. Additional plants and mines opened around the reservation, offering wages that far outpaced those from the region’s traditional work, such as farming and sheep herding.

The initial years of coal mining laid a critical economic framework for the tribe, said Andrew Curley, a professor at the University of Arizona who researches Native American advancement and is a member of the Navajo Nation.

“A lot of people, young men, leaving high school and looking for jobs found them right there in the mines and coal plants,” Mr. Curley said. “So with coal, here was this new opportunity and new work — and the chance to stay on the reservation and not leave.”

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Coal has been an important source of income on the Navajo Nation for decades.Credit...Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York Times

But like nationwide, as newer plants using natural gas and alternative energy replace aging generating stations, two local coal-fired generating plants and their associated mines closed, in 2019 and 2022. More than 1,000 jobs were lost, along with at least an estimated $40 million in revenue to the Navajo Nation.

Those closures hit hard. At one plant, the annual average pay was $86,000, based on a local study, well above most salaries on the reservation. The unemployment rate, according to the tribe, is 39 percent, and many residents live in trailers along winding dirt roads or in mobile homes without electricity or running water. The reservation of 143,000 people covers about 27,000 square miles, much of it uninhabited. Along the shoulders of two-lane highways slicing through the land, people often hitchhike in search of a ride to the nearest city.

In 2020, Arizona Public Service announced that it would close Four Corners in 2031. In a report released last year, the Navajo Transitional Energy Company, which owns mines and was established by the tribe, estimated that 500 Navajo members would lose their jobs if the Four Corners plant closed. Revenue from the plant and mine accounts for more than a third of the tribe’s budget, according to the Navajo Transitional Energy Company. The company owns a 7 percent stake in the plant. (Company representatives and Mr. Nygren declined interview requests.)

On the eve of Mr. Trump’s inauguration in January, Mr. Nygren 38, spoke to supporters at a reception in the Navajo Nation’s Washington office, which is a short walk from the U.S. Capitol.

Wearing his signature wide-brimmed black hat, he talked about the future of energy. “One of the priorities that I have under my administration,” he said, “is how does the Nation continue to be the forefront of energy development.”

‘Enough Is Enough’

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Joseph Lee worked at a coal mine for years, earning a salary that allowed him to put his children through college. “It provided a great living,” he said.

For years, along the vast stretches of low-growing desert shrubs on the reservation, towering stacks from coal plants jutted up like skyscrapers interrupting the horizon. It was a sight that symbolized hard work for Joseph Lee.

Mr. Lee, a third-generation miner, worked at the mine for the San Juan Generating Station for more than two decades doing production work until it closed in 2022. He earned around $100,000 a year, a salary that helped him put three children through college.

He understands the health implications of the work, Mr. Lee said, and sees how it could be easy to pass judgment from afar about coal’s impact on climate change. But up close, what he sees are people. Other laid-off coal workers Mr. Lee knows have packed up and moved to Wyoming and Montana to find work. Many who stayed on the reservation, he said, remain jobless.

“It provided a great living,” he said. “It’s rural and allows us to earn a good living close to home.”

At the union hall of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local No. 953 in Kirtland, N.M., on a recent afternoon, an event showed the hazards of making a living with coal. As a steady rain pelted down, a handful of former coal workers gathered inside to meet with health care workers from a local mobile medical clinic. They brought fliers that read, “BLACK LUNG SCREENINGS FOR ALL MINERS.”

Black lung cases, which are associated with coal mining, are underreported on the reservation, according to a 2023 study prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor, in part because of limited access to health care and a lack of trust in both researchers and the federal government.

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The Navajo Nation Council Chamber in Window Rock, Ariz., the capital of the Navajo Nation.

At recent public meetings before council delegates on the Navajo Nation, residents spoke passionately about how coal production had destroyed the land and depleted water resources.

Ms. Jesus, the council delegate who supports coal jobs in the region, acknowledged that it was a complicated issue. She has witnessed the impact of depleted watersheds, she said, and coal workers struggling to get health care.

“It’s a nuanced situation,” she said of coal work, on a recent morning outside the council chambers in the remote town of Window Rock, Ariz., the capital of the Navajo Nation. “There are definitely risks, but also opportunities for a living.”

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Joseph Franklin Hernandez, a New Mexico state lawmaker represents constituents who live near the Four Corners plant. He has pushed for renewable forms of energy.

To Joseph Franklin Hernandez, a New Mexico state representative who has lived on the Navajo Nation much of his life, the risks eclipse the benefits.

He worked at the San Juan Generating Station after high school. Every day, when he returned home from his shift, his flannel shirt would be caked in fly ash, a powdery residue that accumulates in coal plants. He had a cough that lingered for years.

“There was no protection and no concerns — the company just had us work,” he said. Looking back on it years later, Mr. Hernandez worries about future health problems. His mother, who worked as a janitor at the plant for many years, had respiratory problems and died early in the pandemic from Covid-19.

“I cannot help but think that working at the plant made her weaker,” he said.

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The Four Corners plant was scheduled to be closed in 2031, but the company that owns it recently suggested it might stay open longer.

Mr. Hernandez, who represents constituents in San Juan County, N.M., where the Four Corners plant is, has made environmental issues a top focus.

“As a tribe, we need to be thinking about alternative and cleaner forms of energy,” he said. Mr. Trump and tribal leaders are misguided in continuing to focus on coal, he said. He wants to see investment in solar and expansion of broadband internet to open new opportunities for tribal members.

“Enough is enough,” he said. “Coal has been declining.”

Mr. Hernandez often gathers to talk with constituents at his family friend’s hogan, a traditional, dome-shaped Navajo structure made of clay and wood logs whose doorway faces east to welcome the rising sun.

On a recent evening, the topic was coal. For an hour, members of the tribe shared stories about lost jobs and illnesses.

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Lawrence Begay, a retired miner, has struggled with health issues.

Lawrence Begay, a 72-year-old former miner, walked with a distinct limp and struggled to catch his breath as he described his work. For more than 20 years, he operated heavy machinery at a local mine.

“Honest work,” he said, switching back and forth between English and Diné Bizaad.

Since his retirement, he has farmed alfalfa and herded sheep on his land. Mr. Begay thinks it’s possible he has black lung, he said.

“There could have been more warning about the harm,” he said, “but it was a job and anyone who could do it did the work.”

Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Kurtis Lee is an economics correspondent based in Los Angeles who focuses on the lives and livelihoods of everyday Americans. He has written about economic inequality for a decade.

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