Answers found to mysterious week-long water spill in AC
CONCHO — In what must have seemed like a mirage in water-parched Apache County, residents reported a continuous flow of fresh water between mile posts 348 and 349 on the 180-A state highway, starting on June 18 and ending on June 24.
Residents there typically haul fresh water to their homes, an exercise that is labor intensive, time consuming and expensive. In fact, one resident reported that the weekly acquisition of fresh water sometimes consumes an entire day, yet for an entire week, water gushed along the dry, high-desert floor without lapse. “The location and visibility of the waste and volume compared to the people out here trying to conserve was a shock,” said a resident who asked not to be identified.
It turns out, the flow was from one or more of the Concho wells that Salt River Project (SRP) uses to generate electricity at its 100% SRP-owned Coronado Generating Station near St. Johns. SRP is a community-based not-for-profit water and energy company and has been in existence for over 100 years, according to its website. SRP boasted over 1 million electric power customers at the end of its fiscal year 2020.
To generate electricity, the process uses “low-sulfer coal” to boil water, which produces steam, which turns turbines which produce electricity. This method is used not only in the Coronado St. Johns station but also at the Springerville Generating Station. The Springerville station is much larger and generates 1,560 megawatts as opposed to Coronado’s 773 megawatt expected capacity from two power units there, both coal fired.
As an aside, SRP owns just one of the four power units at Springerville, Unit 4. That unit opened in 2009 and produces 400 megawatts of the entire plant’s 1,560-megawatt expected capacity states the SRP website. SRP and the other owners of the SGS sell the power generated at Springerville to Tucson Electric Power, SRP, and a Denver-based wholesale electric cooperative called Tri-State Generation & Transmission.
With regard to the water flow witnessed by Apache County residents, it was suspected at first that the Concho “wellfield” supplied the water to the Springerville Generating Station to produce electricity. However, SRP clarified that the Springerville station gets its water from wells nearer to Springerville, “from a different wellfield that is located on the east of Highway 191,” said Patty Garcia-Likens from SRP Media Relations. The water from the Concho wellfields actually goes to the St. Johns Coronado station.
As can be imagined, the vast operation of extracting well water, measuring, storing and delivering it, is a complicated undertaking and the pumps and the delivery system apparently are managed by radio technology and therein lay the problem. It was learned that “There was damage at the radio site, as it had been hit with a microburst,” said Garcia-Likens in an email.
While SRP was waiting for supplies to repair the damage, on June 18 the decision was taken to set the flow of water into the “Concho head tank” higher than the flow out of that tank so as to “ensure we didn’t damage pumps and could maintain the reliability of the (Coronado) generating station as the Concho wells are our main source of water for our boilers,” stated Garcia-Likens. Water flowing in exceeded the water flowing out and thus, the weeklong spill.
According to SRP’s water data calendar year 2019, it had stored 2,255,870 acre-feet of water and “runoff” was in the amount of 1,415,489 acre-feet. An acre-foot is a measurement of water equal to the volume of water needed to cover one acre with water, 1 foot deep. As to what “runoff” means, Garcia-Likens explained it is not a measurement of spilled water; rather it means surface water that runs into, for example, the many lakes that SRP manages. The water at issue in this spill incident was well water.
Other information of note includes the planned closure of one unit at Coronado in 2025 and the full closure of Unit 2 in 2032. Finally, because SRP is not an investor-owned utility, it is not under the jurisdiction of the Arizona Corporation Commission’s utility division. Any customer complaints are addressed through an internal ombudsman, whose office can be contacted through SRP’s website, srpnet.com.
Shiprock auto theft, home invasion suspect in custody, Navajo Police says
WINDOW ROCK
The Navajo Nation Police apprehended Kendale Johnson and another suspect early Friday morning.
Johnson and another suspect were apprehended without incident in Red Mesa, Arizona. Johnson was arrested on a federal warrant related to a 2020 weapons charge and will soon be in federal custody, according to the Navajo Nation Police.
On Wednesday night, Shiprock Police District officers and their partners pursued two different vehicles. Johnson is believed to have been in one of them.
The pursuits ended with the occupants abandoning the vehicles resulting in a foot search of the Shiprock area where five individuals were apprehended, according to the Navajo Nation Police.
“The last several months, there has been a rash of car thefts and home invasions in the Shiprock area,” Navajo Nation Police Chief Phillip Francisco said in an interview with the Navajo Times.
“Come to find out that it’s all kind of related,” he said, “so we have been trying to catch this particular gentleman who seems to be heavily involved with it.”
A task force was formed for these crimes, which led to the pursuit.
During this pursuit, suspects threw “homemade spike devices” at officers and two police units had their tires blown out. Another police unit was rammed by one of the suspects.
The arrest of the five individuals resulted from an effort by multiple agencies, including the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office, which provided aerial support; the Navajo Department of Emergency Management, which provided drone support; the city of Farmington’s K-9 unit; the Bureau of Indian Affairs; and state and federal officials.
“None of my officers were hurt,” Francisco said. “We are asking the public for help in locating this gentleman who is causing havoc in our community for several months now.”
In March, the Navajo Department of Correction abruptly shut down the Shiprock Correction Facility. This closure has left it up to Navajo Nation Police with the arduous task of transporting prisoners to the Kayenta or Crownpoint jails, adding an extra two hours to one call, leaving Shiprock with less officers to patrol the community.
Francisco said this crime spree is widely known, and it is believed that Johnson and other suspects have used the lack of law enforcement coverage as an opportunity to commit the crimes, as they have for the past few months.
“They seem to be organized, is what we think,” Francisco said. “They’ve been watching and monitoring police activity and knew the best times to take advantage of our depleted resources, which have been even more pronounced with the closure of correction center and officers having to transport hours out of district.”
Johnson’s girlfriend, Ranelle Rose Bennett, 33, of Hogback, New Mexico, has been missing since June.
The Navajo Division of Public Safety posted flyers to inform the public that she has been missing since June 15. She was last seen by her mother.
The flyers describe Bennett as 5 foot, 2 inches tall and weighs 125 pounds. She has “Treasten” tattooed on her right inner forearm and a “B” tattooed behind her left ear. She was last seen wearing an orange tank top with black joggers/sweatpants.
It isn’t known whether or not Johnson has anything to do with Bennett’s disappearance, according to the Navajo Nation Police.