Columnist Susan Snyder: Canyon is more than a vision

Monday, June 28, 2004 | 7:57 a.m.

"The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes ... if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers." -- Chief Seattle, 1854

The haunting words of a Duwamish Indian leader are inscribed at Bryce Canyon National Park's Yovimpa Point.

Yovimpa is the last lookout on the 18-mile paved road leading up the spectacular southern Utah canyon. Here, the canyon's hallmark Creamsicle-colored "hoodoo" rock pillars give way to a panorama of mountain peaks.

It is an endangered view. Byproducts from coal-fired power generation and industrial plants miles away often create a smoggy haze that limits the visibility 40 to 60 percent. Visibility is less than 80 miles some days.

That's highly limited for Bryce Canyon, a place considered to have some of the cleanest air in the lower 48 states. Visibility on a clear day can exceed 200 miles. Visitors can clearly see Arizona's Navajo Mountain, about 30 miles east of Page, south of Lake Powell.

"It's very dependent on season," Kristin Legg, Bryce Canyon's resources chief, said.

Winter's cold air creates inversions that hold polluted air over urban areas. And cleaner, clearer winds from the north keep the southern-borne haze at bay.

Air flows from the south in summer, bringing with it hazy residue from power plants. That haze also obscures views at the Grand Canyon, federal officials have said.

And one of those polluting plants is the Mohave Generation Station in Laughlin.

The California Public Utilities Commission began hearings earlier this month in which the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation and Peabody Western Coal Co. are asking for permission to continue operating the Mohave plant on a conditional basis.

The power plant employs about 350 people in Laughlin and provides energy for 1.5 million homes in Southern California, Nevada and Arizona. It is fired by coal from mines operated by the Navajo and Hopi. The mines employ about 300 people.

The coal is mixed with water and carried to the Mohave plant in a 273-mile-long pipeline. But the Indians say drawing water for this process over the past three decades has dried up springs and is depleting underground drinking water sources on their land.

They want the plant's major owner, Southern California Edison, to find another water source.

Meanwhile a federal court decree has mandated that the Mohave plant must shut down by the end of 2005 if better pollution-control equipment isn't installed. Power company officials have said there is no use installing such equipment if there is no way to get water for carrying coal to fire the plant.

Haze seems persistent even in the hearing room.

And at Bryce the views change depending on how the political and seasonal winds blow.

"Wow -- 110 miles," a Bryce Canyon visitor said of the projected visibility at Yovimpa Point one recent Sunday. "That's not bad."

A conclusion that depends entirely on one's point of view.