Flagstaff City Council Passes Resolution on Black Mesa Project DEIS : AZ IMC

The Flagstaff City Council passed a resolution late Tuesday requesting a 120-day extension of the public comment period from the Office of Surface Mining for the city to review the 758-page Black Mesa Project Draft Environmental Impact Study.
The Black Mesa Project contains a plan to develop well fields near the town of Leupp and to pump up to 11,600 acre/feet per year for more than 20 years from the C-aquifer, which supplies numerous communities in Northern Arizona with water, including the city of Flagstaff. The water would be used primarily to wash and slurry coal via a 273-mile pipeline to the Mojave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev.
The resolution contains a number of requests for more detailed analysis of the effects of the project, mostly pertaining to concerns over the proposed project’s impact on the groundwater at Red Gap Ranch, which is situated in relatively close proximity to the proposed well fields. The city bought the ranch in 2005 for $7.9 million for the purpose of water development.
Councilmember Kara Kelty said she was surprised by the small window for public comment offered by OSM. The DEIS was released in late November and the deadline for public comments was initially scheduled for Jan. 22, but has been extended to Feb. 6. A public meeting was held Jan. 11 in Flagstaff to receive comments from the public on the DEIS.
“I heard from several people who attended the public hearing, or they thought it was a public hearing, and they told me it was almost a sham of a process,” Kelty said. “It made me a little bit wary of how open they are to public input.”
The resolution, which was passed unanimously, contains a request that a regional groundwater management agreement between the city of Flagstaff, the Navajo and Hopi tribes and any other stakeholders anticipating use of groundwater from the area be in place before approval of the EIS. It also includes a request that the city, along with its anticipated water requirements from the Red Gap Ranch, be included in the project’s planning process.
Flagstaff Utilities Director Ron Doba said he met with an official from the Bureau of Reclamation to discuss future projections for the city’s pumping requirements from the Red Gap Ranch, and those figures were supposed to be included in the study.
“Nowhere in the DEIS is Flagstaff specifically mentioned as having our numbers included in the hydraulic model,” Doba said. “We believe it is very important to have those numbers in there, and for us to be mentioned that they’re in there, depending on what happens with this EIS.”
Doba said the DEIS does not adequately analyze the effect the project will have on the quality of groundwater at the Red Gap Ranch. He said the project could cause lower quality groundwater currently found to the east to move to the area under the ranch, and that water would be unsatisfactory to Flagstaff consumers.
“In 25 or 30 years from now, if the city of Flagstaff does need to develop that as a source of water supply, it would be horrible to go out there and find that the good water we had now isn’t there anymore,” Doba said.
Doba also said the project contains no mitigation measures to protect the quantity and quality of the groundwater at the Red Gap Ranch, or for the protection of the surface water quality and the threatened species at Clear Creek and Chevelon Creek.
Flagstaff Mayor Joe Donaldson said the extension would allow the city to perform a more detailed analysis of the DEIS.
“I think we also have an opportunity to accommodate some members of the public that asked for a longer time to look at it,” Donaldson said. “A lot of members of the community are not as equipped as we are to review this kind of a document. There’s a lot of stuff in that thing.”