'Everybody used coal': After mine closures, Native families look for ways to stay warm

Lowell Susunkewa has met families who burned "whatever they can get their hands on" to stay warm in the winter. They've burned clothes or destroyed furniture to heat their homes. 

"I've seen it happen. It's unbelievable what people do," Susunkewa said. "It's not the greatest sight ever to see, but that's just how things roll sometimes."

The Kayenta Mine and Navajo Generating Station closed in late 2019, leaving workers in that part of northern Arizona with few options for work. The other toll of the closure? The loss of a main source of heating provisions for many families. 

Most families burn coal or wood to heat their homes. Few are connected to the grid by solar or electricity lines. There are options for buying or obtaining wood and coal — some new, some old, some expensive.

Coalmine Chapter House Vice President Phillip Zahne said there is really no control over how wood and coal are sold on the Navajo Reservation. Individual vendors might get wood or coal at no cost, but some sell them for higher prices than before the mine closed. He remembers when vendors sold a truckload of wood for $100. It's now about $400. For coal, it was once $10 a bag, now it's $20 a bag. 

"It's just taking advantage of the general public," he said.

Though some families still rely on vendors, programs and initiatives have popped up to help meet the need at a more affordable cost.

Option: Tewa's Wood Project

The Village of Tewa's wood project provides firewood for people in Polacca, Arizona, and the surrounding area. Susunkewa, 51, manages the project, working with his crew to get the wood chopped, loaded and delivered daily.

"These guys are like machines," said Melissa Alcala, community service administrator for the Village of Tewa. "They have this loading thing down to a science now. They can load half a cord (128 cubic feet) in 5 to 6 minutes."

The project started last fall, serving hundreds of people from the village and surrounding areas. The effort is the result of the village's board of directors meeting in July 2019 to find the best solution for the loss of coal as a community heating source, Alcala said.

 "It was a response to the closure of the mine," said Dorthy Ami, board member for the Village of Tewa.

Out of 12 villages that are part of the Hopi Nation, the Village of Tewa is the only one to offer this type of service. 

"People weren't prepared; they thought the tribe would help," Alcala said.

The project has three goals: To find an alternative heating source, to create jobs and to create economic development ventures.

"We've accomplished every single one of those goals," Alcala said.

A full cord of firewood roughly fills a space equal to 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 8 feet long. The wood project sells area residents a full cord for $240, half a cord for $120 and a quarter of a cord for $60, or $75 for non-village residents. The prices include chopping, loading, stacking and delivery when requested. 

Wood is more costly because it burns faster than coal, and more time-consuming because of the need to feed the fire constantly, whereas coal can be left overnight mostly untended and keep a home warm.

Once or twice a week, workers travel to Whiteriver, Arizona, to pick up on average 20 tons of wood, depending on demand, Alcala said. The first load in October was 40 tons.

The project gets wood from the White Mountain Apache Tribe's lumber company and has support from Sovereign Finance. The Village of Tewa has a contract with the company, giving it exclusive rights to lumber within 75 miles of Polacca. Alcala said this means no one in the area can purchase and sell wood from the timber company. They have to go through the wood project.

If someone lives outside the Polacca area, there is a delivery charge of $20 or $40 depending on distance. Deliveries have traveled as far as Tuba City, about 75 miles away.

The elderly and disabled of Tewa get a reduced price for two purchases per month.

"We're not here to give our project away, we're here to empower people, to educate them that this where we're at," Alcala said,

Organizers understand that not everyone can afford wood so they work with people. While the project accepts cash, money orders and checks, they also accept IOUs from those really in need, Alcala said.

"Everyone who has done an IOU has paid us. We help in every which way we can," she said. "There is not one person we've turned away for wood."

At the beginning, all elders in the Village of Tewa received a free initial cord of wood. One of those elders was Emil Honie, traditional leader for the Village of Tewa and the Sand Clan leader.

Honie, 77, said a cord of wood doesn't last him long because his home's main gas heater is out. It takes six or seven logs in the wood stove to start warming up his large living room.

"It's the only source of heat now because we don't have any more coal," Honie said. "We all depend on that wood."

Darryl James, chairman of the board for the Village of Tewa, says many have switched from coal to wood since the Kayenta Mine closed. Typically, families relied on coal to heat their homes from December to April.

"One hundred percent of the people relied on coal. Everybody used coal," James said. Wood was used "only to supplement the coal." Driving around the village, you used to smell the coal burning in the stoves.

"It was like that until the mine closed," he said.

People from the Hopi Nation can go get coal, James said, but they must drive all the way to New Mexico, and it's not the same quality as the coal from Kayenta Mine. When the mine was open, James said, you could choose the type of coal.

"You take your chance when you buy a bag of coal," Dorthy Ami, a board member for the Village of Tewa, said.

When people buy coal now, they say it's mainly rock and "it's not the shiny stuff everyone wants. The shiny coal is the best coal," he said. "You used to be able to smell the coal burning at night, now all you smell is wood."

For coal: Navajo Mine's Community Coal Program

The closest coal resource is about three hours east of the closed Kayenta Mine — the Navajo Mine, operated by the Navajo Transitional Energy Company (NTEC) outside Farmington, New Mexico.

NTEC and the Bisti Fuels Company have recently expanded the Community Heating Resource Program, which offers free coal during the winter months to Navajo and Hopi residents.

The program originally offered coal to 28 chapter houses in the northern and eastern parts of the Navajo Reservation. As of November, all 110 chapters were eligible, as well as the 12 villages of the Hopi Tribe. This is the first time the program is being offered to the Hopi Tribe, according to NTEC.

The expansion of the program was a direct reaction to the closure of Kayenta Mine. It is not mandatory to participate, but, so far, 85 chapters and four villages have registered, according to Bisti Fuels.

"With the closure of Kayenta, NTEC and Bisti Fuels are trying to fill the gap. We talked about the fact that we're going to triple in size. Normally, we see around 2,230 visitors in a season. This year, we're almost at 6,000," Andy Hawkins, community engagement manager for Bisti Fuels, said.

The Navajo Mine had 1,731 visits in January and 190 visits as of Feb. 4, according to Bisti Fuels.

During the Navajo Mine's individual distribution days – Monday through Thursday –  up to 85 pickup trucks visit, Hawkins said. To cut down on delays, only trucks, and not cars or trailers, are filled with coal, and the coal isn't supposed to be sold for profit.

In the Village of Tewa, Alcala said, people come into village offices asking about coal all the time, but the program supplies only wood.  She thinks it's nice there is free coal offered to Hopi villages, but it isn't really free.

"That's a nine-hour round trip to get free coal, so it's not really free," she added. "Is that great? Absolutely, but it doesn't help us. Especially when people don't even have transportation to go there."

For a premium: Chop your own wood, or buy from a vendor

Chopping your own wood isn't always an option for many living on the Hopi Reservation and western part of the Navajo Reservation. The closest national forests are Coconino and Kaibab, and it could take one to three hours to get to the edge of these forests by car.

You also need one of two types of permits from the U.S. Forest Service: free use or personal paid use. Wood collected with a free use permit can't be sold. For ceremonial and traditional use, there's also a ceremonial fuelwood permit.

In the rest of the Navajo Nation, families need a permit from the Navajo Nation Department of Forestry to obtain wood from Navajo forests.

Those who can't make the trip to the mine or the national forests rely on vendors. In Tuba City, trucks filled with wood or bags of coal line the edge of one gas station parking lot.

Wearing a hooded sweatshirt, vendor Wallace Nez waited next to his truck on a cold Monday in February, trying to sell his final row of wood. 

Nez is from Tuba City, and has been selling wood for four years. He does it year-round, opposed to many of his competitors.

"For a majority of the guys here, it's just a winter thing," he said. "When it gets cold, there is a lot of people out."

He can sell a truckload of wood for about $400, and if he can't do that, he'll start selling it by the roll for $40. If he sells one day, and goes out to get wood the next, he'll make about $1,500 a week. His prices never change, unless the area is hit by a storm and wood is in high demand, then he'll increase them. 

"For some people, it's too much," he said.

As he waited, several people drove up to Nez's truck to ask him the cost of his last row of wood — $40. Many nodded and drove away.

On the other side of the gas station parking lot, Brian Tallsalt loaded a large bag of coal into a customer's truck.

He sells 50-pound bags of coal for $20. His truck holds 50 bags, and he sold all of them within an hour. 

Vehicle after vehicle pulled up to Tallsalt's truck, each person saying "one bag" or just holding a finger. 

Tallsalt said his coal comes from a vendor in Farmington, who brings it from Colorado. He described it as like "buying hay," because the coal he purchases is already bagged and ready to go.

"We've been buying coal from (the Kayenta Mine) all these years, and it was a lot easier because it was just right there," he said.

Tallsalt describes the coal he sells now as lower quality, but it's the only option now and "there is a need in this area." He tries to set up in Tuba City as often as he can, some days pulling a flatbed with 100 bags of coal.

"Elders traditional rely on coal. It's been around since the '50's so they rely on this," he said.

Tallsalt was the only vendor selling coal at that gas station, but he said there are a few other vendors in the area. 

"A lot of these guys are out of work and they're just trying to make ends meet," he added. 

Leona Bedonnie, 53 pulled up behind Tallsalt's truck, asking for one bag of coal to be loaded into the back of her SUV.

"We need it because it stays hot longer and we have an elder living with us," Bedonnie said. 

The 50-pound bag of coal might last about 3 days, she said, because it's been really cold this winter. 

"We put it in when we go to sleep and it stays warm until morning," she added.

Bedonnie said her family used to drive to the Kayenta Mine every winter and get about a ton of coal. Now, they're spending $20 on each 50-pound bag.

On top of that, Bedonnie is driving about 100 miles round trip from Rocky Ridge, Arizona, because this is the closest place they can get coal.

An organization helping with fire risk

Red Feather is a nonprofit organization that provides educational workshops and works with families on the Hopi and Navajo reservations to weatherize their homes, install solar heaters, clean chimneys, and cut heating costs.

"There are some instances where we'll help tribal elders or people that are just simply unable to help themselves and we'll step in and take care of their needs," Joe Seidenberg, Red Feather's executive director, said.

Red Feather offers healthy-heating classes to provide information on how to properly maintain and use stoves.

The group also started doing chimney cleaning and inspections, Seidenberg said, because a lot of families have improperly installed chimneys or single-walled chimney pipes. It's dangerous if a homeowner tries to change a chimney and dislodges a pipe or does it incorrectly, Seidenberg said.

The first round of cleaning and inspections started Feb. 7 around Polacca. Seidenberg and a certified chimney sweeper visited several elders in the community.

"With the switch from coal to wood, there is a significant increase in the risk of chimney fires in area homes," he said. "These chimney fires come from the buildup of creosote that results from wood burning. Families that previously were using coal, there is no creosote build-up from coal, but there is sulfuric acid."

Seidenberg hopes to visit 50 homes on the Hopi or Navajo reservations by the end of February. His goal is to double that number by the end of heating season in April.

Noel Lyn Smith, Navajo Nation reporter for the Farmington Daily Times, contributed to this story.  

Reporter Shondiin Silversmith covers Indigenous people and communities in Arizona. Reach her at ssilversmi@arizonarepublic.com and follow her Twitter @DiinSilversmith.

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