Navajo Generating Station was a 2.25-gigawatt (2,250 MW), coal-fired power plant located on the Navajo Nation, near Page, Arizona, United States. This plant provided electrical power to customers in Arizona, Nevada, and California. It also provided the power for pumping Colorado River water for the Central Arizona Project, supplying about 1.5 million acre feet (1.85 km3) of water annually to central and southern Arizona. As of 2017 permission to operate as a conventional coal-fired plant was anticipated until 2017–2019, and to December 22, 2044, if extended. However, in 2017, the utility operators of the power station voted to close the facility when the lease expires in 2019. In March 2019, the Navajo Nation ended efforts to buy the plant and continue running it after the lease expires. On November 18, 2019, the plant ceased commercial generation. Full decommissioning of the site is projected to take approximately three years. On December 18, 2020, the three smokestacks were demolished. History In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a need for new electric generation in the Southwest to supply power to growing populations in southern California, Arizona and Nevada. The US Bureau of Reclamation also needed a large source of power for running the pumps of the planned Central Arizona Project (CAP). A number of power projects were initially considered to fill these needs, most notably Bridge Canyon and Marble Canyon hydroelectric dams on the Colorado River. However, the proximity of the proposed dams to the Grand Canyon raised opposition, initially from the National Park Service and then more vigorously from a coalition of environmental groups which promoted construction of a thermal or nuclear power plant as an alternative. As a result, the proposed dams were abandoned in favor of the Navajo Power Project, consisting of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) along with the Kayenta mine, Black Mesa & Lake Powell (BM&LP) Railroad, and of 500 kV transmission lines. The site selected for the new power plant was about six miles (10 km) east of Glen Canyon Dam and three miles (5 km) south of Lake Powell on of land leased from the Navajo Nation. The site was close to a source of competitively priced fuel and a reliable source of surface water for cooling. The nearby city of Page and U.S. Highway 89 provided existing infrastructure to support construction and operation of the project. The contract for engineering and construction was awarded