Today the Navajo Nation Council is expected to meet in a special session after it voted last week to table legislation that seeks the approval of a replacement lease for Navajo Generating Station. Legislation sponsor Speaker LoRenzo Bates requested the Council hold the bill until today in order to allow several days for the Navajo Nation’s negotiating team to share the amendments with the owners of NGS to determine if they would be agreeable to amendments.
The current NGS lease is set to expire in December 2019, however the owners determined that the process of decommissioning the power plant will take approximately two years, which would require the power plant to begin shutting down in July 2017.
The proposed legislation would allow the power plant to continue operating until the end of 2019 and continue providing significant revenues and hundreds of jobs for the Navajo Nation.
The special session is scheduled to begin at 1:00 p.m. on June 26 at the Department of Diné Education auditorium in Window Rock, Arizona. The Office of the Speaker is working with the Office of Broadcast Services to provide live streaming of the special session.