Northern Arizona Field Trip Report

On April 12, our class took a field trip to Northern Arizona to look at some important facilities in the state that provide electricity for many of people, and to observe first-hand some concepts of energy we have learned in class. I will briefly summarize the places, what we saw and learned in relation to energy and the environment, and a bit of my experience through my own photographs.
On thisfirst day, we visited Arcosanti about 100km north of Phoenix. The goal of Arcosanti is to explore the concept of “arcology”, which is a combination of architecture and ecology. Roger Tomalty guided us through the town and explained the project. Arcosanti has some particular designs and constructions. They use concrete panels that are molded with earth. Arcosanti uses solar power for heating,cooling, and electricity overall, but also, as part of the architectural design; buildings are facing south to capture the sun's light and heat- and this is actually used to meet the electricity requirements. I was surprised to learn that Arcosanti is more of an education center with workshops, classes, and construction for students around the world than an actual community, which is what I hadenvisioned. Paolo Soleri is the founder of Arcosanti, he is an Italian architect and is retired now in Scottsdale. Other designs based on Soleri’s ideas are the Soleri Bridge located on Scottsdale Waterfront, the “earth cast” artwork and the Goldwater Bell.


By Tuba City, within the Navajo Nation and close to the Hopi Reservation, we stopped to loot at the decommissioned uranium mill which operatedbetween1956 and 1966. In this time, it processed about 800,000 tons of uranium ore. It created radioactive mill residue, which was sent to evaporation ponds at the site but affected a larger area of the environment. The U.S. Department of Energy moved and stabilized all residues in a disposal unit on the site and completed cleanup by 1990. The disposal site is close to Moenkopi Wash and waterdischarges there; however, there are no known uses from the contaminated region of the aquifer.
We also stopped to look at the Black Mesa coal conveyor belt, silo, and railroad. The people at the mine tracked us and knew we stopped to look at this, which apparently was not allowed. The belt is about 17 miles long and transports coal from the Kayenta mine to the storage silo, which loads coal to unittrains and ships to the Navajo Generating Station 78 miles away.

Another stop we made was to the Moenkopi 500kV Switchyard Substation, which brings electricity from Four Corners power plant to Phoenix and other places. These 500kV allow carrying enough electricity to power 1 million homes.


I took this picture as we approached the Kayenta Mine located on reservation lands on BlackMesa, and it was the last photo allowed. As we have learned, this mine operates through a lease agreement between the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe. What is important about it is that it supplies around 7.8 million tons a year of coal to Navajo Generating Station which we visited the next day. Coal is extracted from many layers, then it is crushed, then carried in the conveyor belt to storagesilos, which we before the mine. There are about 500 employees, and about 90 percent of workforce is Native American. Peabody's operations have gotten a couple of recognitions for their efforts to reclaim mined lands in a way that also preserves culture. According to them, leading edge technology is used to make the reclaimed land 20 times more productive than original land, and about 15,000 acres havebeen restored for grazing, wildlife habitat and plant cultivation. At the mine, we were taken to see the huge machinery in action- strip mining. We saw the draglines removing the overburden to the side in order to extract the coal. Also, we were taken to see reclaimed land and the storage/transportation ground. Finally, from the Power-Point presentation we were shown at the beginning of the...