The Navajo Generating Station (NGS) is a massive coal-fired power plant.  It is the country’s eighth-largest greenhouse gas polluter, at 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions (and hundreds of pounds of mercury and arsenic) each year.

But as I blogged earlier, it’s also the economic lifeblood for one of the most impoverished regions in the country, for the Navajo and Hopi Tribes. The plant is responsible for 3,000 jobs, and the Hopi Tribe alone receives $13 million annually, representing an astonishing 85 percent of the tribe’s yearly revenue.

Bloomberg reports on the economic challenge facing these communities with the impending closure:

It’s unquestionable that closing NGS is the best possible outcome for the land the Navajo and their neighbors, the Hopi, have called home for more than 800 years. It’s also unquestionable that closing NGS presents an existential threat to both tribes. Once the work of winding down operations is said and done, “some will say, ‘I have no choice but to make a life off the reservation,’” says Hopi Chairman Herman Honanie. “That is very likely, and something that we, as parents and tribal leaders, especially for younger people, may have to really encourage.” After centuries of fighting against both men and laws, it’s market forces that have brought them to this breaking point. “I think we need to reach deep down inside ourselves and ask how we want to survive as a people,” he says.

These communities don’t have a lot of other economic options, but it’s never a winning long-term strategy to be so totally dependent on one economic source. Like many rural communities across this country, they’re going to have to figure out alternative means of surviving economically, and they’re going to have to do so quickly.