The Navajo Generating Station Closes

The Navajo Generating Station and the Kayenta Mine that supplied it with coal are both closing next month. This is a plant that Arizona politicians and Navajo tribal leaders fought to keep open, crying a need for jobs in a desperately poor area. With utilities and miners lobbying Republicans, and Indians lobbying Democrats, the plant's defenders won it a reprieve from environmental regulations that was supposed to keep it going until 2044.

But it is closing anyway, because it was losing money. All the lobbying in the world couldn't overcome the cost advantage of natural gas and solar.