A suburban Chicago-based energy company executive on June 7 told Arizona officials his group is putting together a proposal to purchase the Navajo Generating Station (NGS), the largest coal-fired power plant in the western U.S. The plant’s current owners have said they will close the 2,250-MW facility by year-end 2019 unless a buyer is found.

Workers, their family members, union representatives, and tribal leaders had rallied Wednesday in Phoenix, asking state officials to slow the process of closing the plant, which employs hundreds of Native Americans along with the nearby Kayenta Mine that supplies coal for the plant. Joe Greco, senior vice president of Middle River Power in Chicago, told the Central Arizona Water Conservation District board on Thursday that his company could operate the plant efficiently and economically.

The water board was meeting Thursday to consider bids for the future power supply to pump water for the Central Arizona Project (CAP), which supplies some of the state through an aqueduct system from the Colorado River.…

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