The coal-fired Four Corners Power Plant near Farmington, New Mexico, will provide less power to Arizona under a new operating plan, Arizona Public Service Co. said Friday. APS owns the majority of the plant and runs it for other co-owners. The company has a pledge to move to carbon-free energy sources by 2050 and close Four Corners by 2031.

In a year characterized by extreme weather, avid handwashing, and increasingly remote interactions, access to electricity is more important than ever. But 12 months into the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a basic right on which thousands of Navajo Nation members are still waiting.

On a chilly December morning in northern Arizona, near the town of Page, Nicole Horseherder stood beside a barbed-wire fence, waiting for the smokestacks of the Navajo Generating Station to fall. The coal-fired power plant, just a mile away, towered against the backdrop of the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and a cloudless blue sky.

Arizona Public Service (APS) has captured the attention of the Western U.S. power sector with its plan to finance the economic transition of communities affected by the closure of its remaining coal plants.

For nearly a half-century, the Navajo Nation has helped transform the city of Tucson into a prosperous and growing city by hosting one of the coal-fired power plants that powered its lights and economic activity.

Some 30 years ago, when Navajo Nation member Nicole Horseherder returned to her Native land after college, her hopes of building a home like her grandmother’s near here were dampened because wells had dried up with massive coal strip mining and power plant development that drained the underground water tables while polluting Diné and Hopi communities.

Arizona Public Service is proposing to offer $144 million in help to three coal-country and tribal communities where the company eventually will close its remaining coal-burning power plants.

It happened quietly and without a lengthy debate, but the Arizona Corporation Commission’s vote on Sept. 23 to approve a seemingly minor docket item on energy efficiency marked a historic moment, and the commissioners who approved it should be applauded for taking the first steps toward rectifying a long overdue injustice.