By 1918, the National American Woman Suffrage Association had struggled for 150 years to win the vote.

“They were so polite,” sighs Boulder, Colo., novelist Sybil Downing, whose own grandmother worked for Suffrage. “(They) pleaded and reasoned.”

And they failed. “It was in their methods,” Downing bluntly states.

Women had to change their tactics, if they wanted the power of the ballot. During World War I, they made that switch.

“They were able to pull off the white gloves and play hardball politics,” chuckles Downing, a fourth-generation Coloradan and self-described political junkie who has held state and local offices, continuing a family tradition.

She also grew up with a strong interest in women’s issues. With that background, she decided to write a novel about “what finally made suffrage work.”

“The Vote” was published last October by the University of New Mexico Press. It spans the period between May and December 1918, a crucial time for women’s suffrage.”

American suffragettes became militant in the early 1900s because two graduate students studying in England happened to picket Parliament with British suffragettes. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns went to jail when police arrested this group.

From prison, they watched the suffragettes’ story appear in banner headlines across England. Later, they heard people commenting on the women who would willingly face incarceration for something they desired.

Paul and Burns decided to change the approach to women’s suffrage in the United States. Women would demonstrate and let themselves be arrested. The papers would draw attention to their political needs.

The two took their idea to the head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Carrie Chapman Carr. She rebuffed them, still believing that patience and reason would bring suffrage.

Paul and Burns founded their own activist group, the National Woman’s Party. Besides going to jail, the NWP sent workers to states where women could vote, to campaign for senators and representatives who supported universal suffrage.

“Patience is a virtue, but there’s a limit,” Downing laughs.

“The Vote” centers on the women Paul and Burns gathered around them, and the tremendous energy the NWP produced.

As the story opens, Denver socialite and college graduate Kate Brennan is on her way to catch a train home from a visit to an old roommate in Washington, D. C.

From her cab, she sees a women’srights march in front of the White House. The way the police treat the demonstrators horrifies her, and she rushes to aid the marchers.

“A protagonist has to have something at stake,” says Downing. For Kate that’s the prospect of returning to a life of privilege at home. “It’s in the back of her mind that she didn’t want to go back to Colorado, and she was looking for a reason not to go.”

A battle ensues between a jeering male crowd and the suffragettes. “Before she knows it, she’s rounded up and arrested with them.”

As the suffragettes’ leader, Burns demands all the arrestees be treated as political prisoners. The judge laughs, and sends everyone to the Occupation Workhouse, a prison full of roaches, rats, maggoty food, and backbreaking labor.

A 14-day stint in jail galvanizes the sheltered, inexperienced Brennan. She joins the National Woman’s Party, and against the wishes of her parents, especially her mother, begins to work for suffrage.

Along the way, she meets a feisty Irish party worker named Mary, on the lam from an abusive boyfriend. Brennan also meets Charlie, a tough reporter with a soft spot — maybe for her. Through them, she learns about herself, and a life she’s never seen.

“Mary would have been a servant in her mother’s house,” Downing emphasizes. “And Charlie has some kind of government job Kate thinks might jeopardize the National Woman’s Party if she gets serious about him.”

Brennan learns her toughest lesson when she comes home to work against the re-election of a senator who has been a family friend. After a vicious quarrel with her mother, she realizes that in the political game, rights come at a price.

“Many women had to choose between family and suffrage,” says Downing. “That really moved me when I was writing this.”

She carefully planned Brennan’s development toward the decision she finally makes about the two, thinking out how she would behave, the things that would influence her, and her personal likes and dislikes.

In addition, Downing studied Brennan’s times. “Those of us who write historical fiction love the research. You kind of have to slap yourself in the face to stop.”

Downing began by reading scholarly books about suffrage in both Boulder and the Western History Collection of the Denver Public Library.

Then she decided to go to Washington, D.C., to learn more about the National Woman’s Party. She flew into Reagan National Airport on Sept. 13, 2001. “We were like the only tourists in town.”

She had all the libraries, monuments, and offices to herself. “The heads of departments came to help me. How often does that happen?”

“The Vote” ends as suffrage becomes inevitable. Still, Downing believes the suffrage story isn’t over yet.

“For example, 53 percent of the work force are women. Mothers.” she says. “Forty-six percent of those are college educated. They still earn 76 cents to a man’s dollar. There are still a lot of issues facing women that need to be addressed.”

She laughs heartily. “There are plenty of women out there with the energy to (address them.)”

Power plants seem to be growing increasingly unpopular.

While debate rages over plans to build a 1,500-megawatt power plant on Navajo Nation land south of Shiprock, N.M., some critics are challenging plans by Tri-State Generation and Transmission, Empire Electric’s energy supplier, to charge higher rates to build three new coalfired plants.

Two would be built in western Kansas and one in southeastern Colorado. Together they would produce 2,100 megawatts.

But a report by Western Resource Advocates, a nonprofit conservation organization, questions the need for the new plants.

“Tri-State does not need the capacity of even one of the coal units contained in the [Resource Development Plan], much less the full 2,100 MW of capacity of all three units, to meet the projected loads of its members at least through 2019,” states the Western Resource Advocates report.

The report predicts that wholesale rates will increase by at least 64 percent over the next five years to pay for the $5 billion project.

Empire Electric customers are already seeing an average increase of 4.47 percent starting this month because of an increase from Tri-State, based on higher costs of energy.

Tri-State has challenged the conclusions in the WRA report, arguing that there is a definite need for all the capacity the new plants would provide.

Jim Van Someren, a spokesman for Tri-State in Denver, e-mailed comments to the Free Press in response to the report.

“Since 2000 the demand for power across Tri-State’s system has grown at an average of 3 percent per year – with indications of even greater growth in the near-term,” the comments said.

“Tri-State’s existing baseload generation resources are fully committed; without the development of new resources, we are increasingly reliant on volatile, high-priced power purchases on the open market, which is driving up rates.”

Increasing usage

Empire Electric has given its approval to Tri-State’s plan for the new plants, according to Doug Sparks, Empire’s member-services director. Empire is one of 44 member co-operatives supplied by Tri-State.

Sparks said Tri-State’s new plants will be needed because of growth in eastern Colorado.

“We here in Montezuma County are not the drivers by any means for these power plants,” he said. “It’s the Front Range.”

The member co-ops govern Tri-State, he explained, and each has an equal vote in making policy. “They have chosen to have a postage-stamp rate for everybody,” he said. “It doesn’t depend on how much money you have. You share equally in the rate hikes.”

He said it all evens out in the end. Rural areas such as Cortez were able to reap the benefits of infrastructure and plants that were built for other users.

“The [power] generation wasn’t built for Cortez, but we were able to take advantage of it,” he said. “Now it’s the other side of the coin.”

Sparks said both population growth and increased per-capita consumption of electricity are driving the need for more power plants.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, per-capita consumption of electricity in U.S. homes increased by 1,056 kilowatt-hours per person between 1980 and 2001, an average increase of 1.4 percent every year.

Total energy consumption in the United States increased 1 percent per year in that two-decade period.

In Colorado, total energy consumption increased by 1.9 percent annually between 1980 and 2001, while the state’s electricity consumption went up a hefty 3.6 percent per year.

Utah’s energy-consumption increase was similar – 1.9 percent per year, with an average annual increase in electrical usage of 3.8 percent per year, according to the Department of Energy.

But among Empire Electric residential users, consumption has not increased dramatically. Over the past 20 years, per-consumer usage increased only from 603 to 612 kilowatt hours per month, a minuscule annual increase, Sparks said.

“La Plata [Electric] had a big jump in those years, but we don’t really have the trophy homes they do,” he said.

However, Empire added about 4,000 new customers in that time period, Sparks said.

Empire has between 12,000 and 13,000 residential users and roughly another 1,000 commercial users.

Broken promises

While Tri-State plans its new facilities, opposition remains fierce to the $2.5 billion Desert Rock power plant planned on the Navajo reservation.

Beginning Dec. 12, protesters began holding a vigil against the plant at its planned 600-acre site near Burnham, N.M. Navajo elder Alice Gilmore, who would lose her ancestral lands and grazing area if the plant is built, and supporters camped out in the winter cold to protest preliminary site work being done by people with Sithe Global, the company building the plant, and the Diné Power Authority.

The protest brought some publicity to the opponents’ cause. They have a web site, www.desert-rock-blog.com, and a video on YouTube.com (search under “Desert Rock”).

On Dec. 21, Navajo tribal police disrupted the camp, forcing the partici- pants to move and leading to legal wrangling over protesters’ rights.

On Jan. 3, opponents of Desert Rock gathered by the District Courthouse in Shiprock, N.M., before a scheduled hearing regarding a preliminary injunction that had been sought against the protesters by Sithe.

Speaking in Navajo, with her daughter translating, Gilmore said Diné who had been promised jobs at previous power plants and coal mines had not seen them materialize.

“The environment is being degraded,” Gilmore said. “The elders are a target of this environmental injustice. They’re just protecting the sites. They’re not breaking any rules or regulations. [Navajo President] Joe Shirley is exploiting the elders since they do not speak or write English. Once the land is damaged it can never be returned to what it used to be.”

Henry Dixon, father of Elouise Brown, president of Dooda Desert Rock Committee (“dooda” means no), said, “There is no compassion on the behalf of our own tribal government.” He said the Navajo police are policing the protesters instead of helping to ensure their safety in a tense situation.

Tom Johnston, Gilmore’s son-in-law, said Gilmore still has 47 sheep at the Desert Rock site, along with a little stone house. “Every time we try to go in there, [the police] block us. They say, ‘Only Grandma can go in there’.”

“The land is what gives us life,” said Alberta Dechille, another protester in Shiprock. “It is what is really ours from the beginning.”

But supporters of Desert Rock argue that the plant is badly needed for the jobs and income it would provide the tribe. They say if it isn’t built on reservation land, it will be built somewhere nearby, and the Navajo Nation will lose the income it would have brought but still experience the effects of any pollution. They also say Desert Rock will be one of the cleanest power plants ever.

In the end, there was no hearing Jan. 3 because the parties reached an agreement the previous day, signing a consent decree and stipulated injunction, according to the attorney for the opponents, James Zion.

The injunction, he said in an e-mail, “essentially orders EVERYONE to refrain from interfering with the environmental impact statement (EIS) work being done on site and to obey all criminal laws.

“The agreement is a ‘no fault’ one where no party agrees to the allegations of the complaint or the defenses I asserted,” he wrote. “The order assures that the Dooda Desert Rock Committee and those participating with it can enjoy their rights of freedom of assembly and duties to protect Mother Earth and Father Sky under Navajo Natural Law.”

Instant-on capacity

Fueling the push for more power plants nationwide is increasing electrical consumption, both by residential and commercial users.

Residential consumption is encouraged by the fact that electricity is cheap enough that users don’t really notice a difference in their bill if they leave a light on or a computer running. Electricity flows seemingly by magic; it doesn’t run out, and it’s easy to take it for granted.

Sparks said one local resident who had been using solar energy told him, “If people had to live on solar for one year, we’d set the energy crisis back 40 years.”

“When you’re on solar only, if you use too much electricity it’s all drained out, so it’s a different ball game,” Sparks explained. “He spent a lot of time looking for appliances that don’t have those LED displays, that juice running in the background.”

That’s another reason electrical consumption is going up – everything from stoves and microwaves to cordless phones to DVD players and bedside radios now uses electricity even when “off.” Similarly, televisions use juice constantly to provide “instant-on” capacity.

Sparks said studies he’s read show that this “leaking electricity,” the background power used just to keep things humming, is equivalent to “17 full-blown power plants running 24/7 in the U.S.”

“Individually this may not mean a hill of beans to your electric bill, but it adds up,” he said. “That’s the toughest concept for me to sell to people.”

Empire Electric is pushing the use of energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs, he said. “You put one in and it might be inconvenient [because fluorescents can be slower to turn on], but if everyone did it, that in itself could eliminate the need for one coalfired power plant in the U.S.,” he said.

“Get everybody to conserve a little and you could make a change. That’s what we’re trying to push as a co-op. We’re not saying to live your life austerely, but just take away some of that excess. Why do you need three TVs in your house, all plugged in? That represents a load that’s constantly turning that meter. And appliance manufacturers – that’s one of my biggest complaints. We’re talking about energy efficiency and these guys are designing all these whizmo-gizmos for every appliance.”

But Sparks said Empire Electric supports Tri-State’s plan to build the new plants because the need is there. “Their base load is in the margins area. It’s getting dicey,” he said. “They don’t have a lot of wiggle room.”

Tri-State is especially concerned about its peak capacity, he said – the amount needed to handle surging demand at special times.

“The worst-case example, the worst day a year, is Super Bowl Sunday at halftime,” Sparks said. “That’s the peak for all utilities. People all run and flush their toilets at once. Sewer companies have blown lids off manholes from the Super Bowl flush.”

Tri-State now has to buy power off the grid to handle such peaks, Sparks said. He said after Tri-State builds the new plants it will have an excess supply of energy for a while, but it can sell the excess to other companies.

Much of the demand for electricity is coming from commercial rather than residential uses. A huge increase in demand in the San Juan Basin is projected, largely because of increased oil- and gas-drilling that requires electricity.

And Western Resource Advocates says much of Tri- State’s supposed need for more electricity is based upon projected oil-shale development in western Colorado and a US Biogen ethanol plant planned for Morgan County, Colo.

Tri-State in its comments acknowledged that 58 percent of its load growth in the last five years has been in “high load factor commercial/industrial loads” rather than residential.

Still, in the end it boils down to people’s demand for energy, a demand that can’t be entirely met by renewables such as wind and solar because of their intermittent nature, Sparks said.

“You have to talk about individuals,” Sparks said. “It’s all of us together. By changing to CFLs, if enough of us do it, we could summarily stop a power plant from being built. That’s what people need to understand. If we’re demanding it, it has to be built.”

Wendy Mimiaga contributed to this report.

People traveling along Highway 184, slipping past Summit Lake on their way from Dolores to Mancos, probably aren’t turning the radio dial in the car to check in for local traffic updates.

But when searching the airwaves, this Four Corners community is finding that some of the options on the radio dial provide a distinctive local flavor and are broadcast from their own backyard.

A quick tap on the “seek” button has the radio stopping often for stations broadcast out of Farmington, N.M., and Durango, but six of the listener’s choices do originate in Montezuma County. However, only one of those six is actually locally owned.

The expansion of radio to rural areas traces back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that were intended to assist in the country’s recovery from the Great Depression.

Like a museum artifact, a fading 1955 FCC construction permit hangs in a frame above a door in the Cortez offices of American General Media (AGM), the current owner of three Cortez broadcast licenses: KVFC/740 AM, KRTZ/98.7 FM, and KISZ/97.9 FM. Winton Road Broadcasting, Co., LLC, based in Bakersfield, Calif., hold the licenses for these stations.

Winton Road Broadcasting is a part of AGM, which is also based in Bakersfield.

Radio owners sometimes have unique company names for different parts of the country.

“Radio stations tend to subdivide to wiggle around FCC broadcasting rules,” said Kelly Turner, newly promoted operations and station manager for the AGM stations in Cortez. Jack Hawkins’ name is on the 51- year-old permit that started KVFC as a locally owned radio station. But Turner thinks local ownership of radio stations is headed toward extinction.

“I think the days of mom-and-pop-owned stations are a distant memory,” Turner said.

Media consolidation

Although the political right is often criticized for its attack on Rooseveltbased programs and its fostering of media consolidation, the major blow to local ownership of rural media came during the Clinton years.

President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which loosened the strict limits the Federal Communications Commission then had in place on how many media outlets one company could own.

At that time, the largest radio company, Clear Channel Comm u n i c a t i o n s , owned 62 stations, with its closest competitor owning 53.

By March 2003, Clear Channel had emerged as a radio giant, taking control of 1,233 stations nationally. The impact of the 1996 legislation has been studied by the FCC in recent years. Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell established a Localism Task Force and called for a study of the effects the policies had on the FCC’s goal of encouraging localism, a requirement for media outlets to serve the “needs and interests of the communities to which they are licensed.”

The results of the 2004 draft study showed a reality that was not in alignment with the FCC leadership’s unwritten vision for localism.

Under Powell’s direction, the FCC took positions that were favorable to media consolidation and even tried to further soften ownership rules in 2003.

The 2004 report was suppressed by FCC senior managers until Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) received a leaked copy from former FCC lawyer Adam Candeub in 2006. Boxer subsequently pressured current FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to make the report public.

A 2003 FCC Media Bureau study, “Review of the Radio Industry,” was also released under pressure from Boxer. The report showed that in areas like Cortez — rural stations that are not in a designated radio market — the changes to media ownership laws have had major impacts on local ownership.

While the number of stations available to listeners locally held relatively steady, during the seven-year period from 1996 to 2003 the number of different owners for radio stations not in a market decreased by 41 percent.

No stockholders

The relaxing of ownership rules has moved much of the control of rural radio stations outside of the local area. Of the six full-power stations currently licensed to cities in Montezuma County, only one is under local ownership.

KSJD/91.5 FM, a non-commercial educational radio station first licensed in 1988 under the direction of Tony Valdez, broadcasts from a modular building tucked into the piñon and juniper trees on the campus of the San Juan Basin Technical College east of Cortez. The station is managed by the Community Radio Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit licensed to the college.

KSJD is now the only locally owned and operated, full-power radio station in the Montelores area. But its existence has been precarious at times, and its success has come as the result of an enormous effort by citizen volunteers.

Until 2003, KSJD operated as a training and educational facility for students at the technical college. But media consolidation reduced the demand for programmers (trained by the college and elsewhere) and at the same time the state legislature made cuts to education, forcing the college to close the radio station.

In April 2003, community leaders organized a meeting to try to save KSJD and turn it into a community radio station. More than 100 citizens attended, and an organization called the Community Radio Project was formed.

Subsequently, KSUT Public Radio in Ignacio and San Juan Basin Technical College signed an agreement under which management of KSJD was taken over by KSUT while the license was still owned by SJBTC. This agreement secured KSUT’s signal in Montezuma County and allowed the college to keep its license.

Finally, on July 1, 2006, the Community Radio Project took over management of KSJD, assuring its independence from KSUT.

KSJD operates under a communityradio model that relies primarily on volunteers for operations. From April 2003 to June 2006, volunteers donated 15,000 hours to the station, according to Jeff Pope, its executive director.

The station has a strongly local flavor that is largely absent from most commercial stations.

“Community radio is locally owned, and the national trends are in the opposite direction because of a consolidation of media ownership,” said Pope, one of the station’s two paid employees.

Underwriting, listener-funded support and grants generate KSJD’s operating revenue. “Contrary to popular belief, public radio is not funded by the federal government,” Pope said.

A wide variety of live, local programming is supported on KSJD by more than 50 volunteers serving on committees and performing as disc jockeys. Pope says being locally controlled allows the station to be nimble when trying to fill the needs of the community.

“We don’t have to pay stockholders,” Pope said. “The dividends are what we provide to our listeners.”

‘Local as possible’

Commercial radio, of course, has a different bottom line. But although corporate ownership has been able to climb over the San Juan Mountains, many of the negative impacts that media-consolidation critics fear have not materialized in Montezuma County’s stations.

For instance, KRTZ does not have a corporately mandated play list of music for its adult-contemporary rock format, and the station is able to produce local news broadcasts from behind the sliding glass doors of its studio.

“We have a fair amount of autonomy,” Turner said.

Beyond American General Media’s corporate interests, KRTZ has two primary communities it is responsible for serving, the Ute Mountain Ute tribe and the Cortez community.

The KRTZ FM transmitter sits on Ute Mountain Ute land, and, as a result, the station has a contract which requires it to provide public programming that focuses on the tribe. Tribal member Norman Lopez hosts a Ute language program on Sunday mornings from 9 to 10.

Turner says 85 percent of the station’s local service to Cortez comes in the form of public service announcements for community organizations. The station also partners with the United Way and broadcasts Montezuma-Cortez High School sports. Turner received a 2005 “Voice of Democracy” award for working with the local Veterans of Foreign Wars associations.

“We try to keep it as local as possible,” said Turner, who was one of the last students to complete a since-discontinued broadcast communications program at San Juan College in Farmington, N.M. “Ultimately this is the community we are accountable to.”

A non-profit, Christian radio station licensed to Dolores, KTCF/89.5 FM, does not have a phone number or office in Dolores. The station works under the name of Power and Light Radio, and they are licensed to Educational Communications of Colorado Springs, Inc.

A relatively new addition to the area’s radio community is KKDC/93.3, a station owned by Durango-based Four Corners Broadcasting, LLC. Ray McDonnell, station manager, says his station is allowed some independence as well.

As long as the advertising sales are meeting their mark, McDonnell said, he is able to mold the programming on the 2-year-old station to reflect c o m m u n i t y needs. “The great thing is, FCB granted me a great wish.”

McDonnell, who was raised in Dolores, has enjoyed making the local schools and students a focus of much of his programming. KKDC, primarily a rock station, broadcasts Dolores football and basketball games, has conducted live remotes from pep rallies and partnered with the Montezuma County Health Department for a broadcast during the Great American Smokeout.

“I’m open to anything,” McDonnell said, “if it’s something the community will enjoy over the airwaves.”

P.A. Jackson, another graduate of Dolores High School, hosts “The Drive Home” on Thursday and Friday evenings for KKDC, which is commonly referred to as “D’Crow.” Jackson said he enjoys the localized nature of their station, and he said that it is quite a contrast from the Clear Channel-owned station where he did a job shadow during high school.

“There wasn’t anything personal about what they were doing,” he said.

In order to keep their licensing for use of the public airwaves, all stations have to annually prove they are responding to the needs of their community.

The 2004 FCC radio study, “Do Local Owners Deliver More Localism?” concluded that an increase in localism is indeed beneficial to the public.

The study focused on the production of locally oriented news stories.

According to the report, when a station is locally owned, the amount of local stories in a 30-minute news broadcast increases by an average of 5 1/2 minutes over what is offered by a non-locally-owned station. Local onlocation news broadcasts will increase by over 3 minutes, the study found.

In contrast, owners of multiple stations tend to consolidate newsrooms in cost-saving measures, leading to an increase in the broadcast of non-local information. But covering local news takes time, staff, and money, and not all stations are willing to commit the resources needed to do the job. Pope said he would like to offer regular local news on KSJD, but it is an important and expensive decision.

“The need for news-oriented programming in small communities is high,” Pope said. “But news is an expensive luxury when you operate on a lean, mean budget, and it is hard to choose that over keeping the lights on.”

KSJD has been able to produce an agricultural report and a twice-monthly talk news program and partnered with the League of Women Voters for a candidate forum before the 2006 elections. At KRTZ, five local news broadcasts are spaced throughout the day. Turner said his staff is spread thin and has to rely on the Internet, newspapers and press releases for much of the news they read. If given the opportunity to change KRTZ programming, Turner said he would add a full-time news director.

“News is what separates KRTZ from the soft-hits channel on satellite radio or the music on a person’s iPod,” he said. Studies have linked the availability of local news for rural radio audiences with an increased ability to attract government attention and aid.

According to David Stromberg in his study, “Radio’s Impact on Public Spending,” radio’s ability to inform voters led to a 50-percent increase in federal funds allocated to a rural county.

But Turner says finding advertising support for sporting events is much easier than it is for news slots. “I think the challenge is selling the importance of news to the advertiser.”

KKDC is able to do news, public service announcements and a community calendar at the beginning of each hour during the weekday morning show broadcast from its Dolores studio. The community service in these segments has a unique local twist.

Listeners have even called in to report lost dogs. “You couldn’t do that in a big town,” Jackson said.

Accurately measuring the effectiveness of localism seems to be a challenge for the FCC, but McDonnell, a Cortez resident, said he is always impressed with the number of people who tell him they are listening to KKDC.

McDonnell said he was struck by this during the recent birth of his and his wife’s second child.

“It was really cool,” he said. “When we were giving birth in the O.R., they were playing d’Crow.

Four tattered and sun-bleached state flags flap in a crisp breeze that stirs up an occasional dust devil. A wide arc of plywood vendor stalls stand mostly empty, but people at one or two are hawking jewelry, pottery, T-shirts and of course, fry bread.

A stark, bare-walled visitors center overheated by an ancient propane furnace is unattended, its only literature contained in a small lucite rack provided by a Montezuma County tourist group. The circular stone wall of a viewing area looking east toward the Sleeping Ute Mountain is in disrepair, with parts of the wall cracked and missing.

In the center of this setting — just off U.S. Highway 160 not far from the San Juan River — is a granite disc embedded with a bronze cross, marking the intersection of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.

There is no running water anywhere, and three smelly Porta-Potties are the only means of answering Nature’s calls.

This is the Four Corners Monument, more than three years after a $4.25 million project to improve the tourist attraction’s “appalling conditions” was announced with considerable fanfare, and two years after a groundbreaking ceremony was held at the monument to construct an interpretive center, restrooms with running water, attractive vendor booths and landscaping around the central plaza.

Mired in conflicts between two sovereign Indian nations, the project, it now appears, may never be completed.

Dividing revenues

The monument lies completely on reservation lands and is owned jointly by the Navajo Nation and the Ute Mountain Ute tribe, with the Colorado section Ute territory and the other three portions belonging to the Navajos.

In 1999 Congress awarded a $2.25 million federal grant jointly to the tribes to refurbish the tacky roadside attraction and build an interpretive center to educate visitors about Native American culture. The federal grant was contingent on each of the four states providing $500,000 in matching funds. The Four Corners Heritage Council was put in charge of dispensing the federal funds and making sure the conditions of the grant were met otherwise.

Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico came up with their shares relatively promptly, but it took until August 2003 for Colorado to agree to provide $200,000 through its Department of Local Affairs. The Ute Mountain Ute tribe promised to supply the remainder for that state’s share.

Then-DOLA director Mike Beasley announced the agreement during a meeting with Ute tribal officials in Towaoc, Colo., just days before the deadline for the federal funds would have passed.

During the intervening three-plus years, however, nothing has changed at the monument, no improvements have been made, and the original joint operating agreement between the two tribes has been scrapped.

“The condition now is that there is no agreement between the two tribes,” said Cleal Bradford, executive director of the Four Corners Heritage Council, even though “the federal money did come, it was available for use, and we had the full ($2 million) match.”

One major roadblock is how future revenues from the attraction would be divided between the tribes.

“Two years ago we did hold a groundbreaking down there,” Bradford told the Free Press by phone from Utah. “We had an agreement in place and were intending to have the project bid out as soon as we could finalize some of the engineering items. What happened thereafter was the Navajo Nation decided they wanted to change the mix a little bit [and] kept holding up the agreement.”

Essentially, Bradford said, the Navajo Nation wanted a bigger share of the revenues, since threequarters of the monument is on Navajo territory.

“The [financial] agreement was kind of a 50-50 relationship,” Bradford explained, “and I guess there must have been some of the leadership of the Navajo change, and they felt like they were being short-changed a little bit on that arrangement.

“Now the condition was that if the operation broke even or lost money, it was still 50-50 [and] if it made a little money it was 50-50, and I guess they got thinking it was going to be a money-maker.”

Other reported bones of contention are which tribe would build the project — the Utes’ Weeminuche Construction Authority or the Navajo Construction Authority — and an old dispute over the exact boundaries of the reservation lands involved.

According to Montezuma County Assessor Mark Vanderpool, another member of the Heritage Council board of directors, the legal descriptions of the boundaries of four states and the tribal lands differ, with the Navajo Nation claiming its land extends more than 300 feet north into the Ute part of the monument. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the current location is correct, but the Navajo Nation contends that it is not bound by another sovereign nation’s ruling anyway.

Everyone loses?

“It’s like getting the Palestinians and the Israelis to sit down and talk,” said Vanderpool.

“It seems to me to be that difficult — we’ll have a meeting and have representation from one tribe or the other, but very rarely, if ever, do they both show.

“I fear that it’s going to be ‘everyone loses’.”

Frances Redhouse, tribal council member for the Navajos’ Teec Nos Pos, Ariz., chapter, which includes the monument area, was contacted twice by the Free Press but declined to comment.

Repeated attempts were also made to contact several officials with the tribes, including Ute Mountain Ute Chairman Manuel Heart, Ute Mountain Planning Director Troy Ralstin, Navajo Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation Martin Begay, and the communications director for Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr., George Hardeen. None responded to phone messages except Hardeen, who said he knew nothing about the situation.

‘Very underwhelming’

No reliable information on the number of annual visitors to the monument is available, but it is widely publicized by area tourist groups as a stop on suggested day trips and in the summer, at least, the site sees a steady stream of tourists.

At present, their $3-per-person entrance fee gets them only the chance to buy various wares and to have their photo taken with a limb in each state, an impulse that seems to be powerful and universal.

“Quite frankly, the Four Corners Monument, as it now exists, is very underwhelming,” commented Vanderpool. Whether conditions will ever change remains highly uncertain. The promised funding is starting to evaporate because of the lack of progress on the original ambitious plan. New Mexico and Utah have both taken back their funding.

“When the Navajos reneged on the agreement, Utah asked for their money back,” Bradford said. “They just figured the project was dead at that point.” Little tourism benefit would be derived by Utah anyway from the revamped monument, he pointed out, since there is no direct access from that state.

“New Mexico’s commitment was for $500,000, but that elapsed as well,” he said, “but the Navajo Nation is working with New Mexico to try to get them to re-commit,” and the state legislature is going to take up the matter this session.

“We’ve resurrected these other ideas since to try to have each of the tribes do something within their own tribal boundaries,” Bradford added.

Bradford said Colorado’s funding is now up in the air.

“We’ve got another five months before the Colorado money goes, and if something hasn’t happened before that, I don’t expect to see Colorado extend theirs again.

“If we can’t get something pulled together in the next two or three months, probably the federal dollars will be lost too,” he said.

If that happens, it would be a shame, Bradford said.

“For the past 12 years there’s been this enormous amount of energy and time by a variety of people — money spent, miles travelled — it would be a tragedy if this thing came to naught.”

Having patience

The delays and disagreements seem to justify the potition of former State Rep. Mark Larson (R-Cortez), who had opposed the state funding on the grounds that the monument mainly benefits the tribes. Larson also argued that since the Utes pay no state sales tax on goods sold on the reservation — other than fuel tax — the tribe should contribute all of the Colorado share.

“The [Ute] tribe is a sovereign nation that is routinely touting that sovereignty when the state or local government wants cooperation on mutually beneficial issues or attempts told the tribal government accountable,” Larson wrote to Gov. Bill Owens in a lastditch appeal to withhold the DOLA funding at the time.

In a January e-mail to the Free Press, Larson suggested it is now time for the states to call in its markers.

“ . . . The bottom line is that they have not fulfilled their promises and the states should be looking at getting their money back,” Larson said.

“The on-going battle between the tribes over who should control, etc., has not been resolved to date. I think that they should go back to the beginning and start over. The issues should be hammered out PRIOR to securing funding. It seems disingenuous to secure funding and then never start construction because of bickering,” Larson wrote.

The deadline for Colorado’s DOLA funds was to have expired at the end of October 2006.

Cortez City Manager Hal Shepherd attempted to find out what was happening from Ute chairman Heart, but did not get a reply until the last minute.

“ … if the Navajo and Ute Mountain Ute tribes cannot come to an agreement by Oct. 31, the grant monies will expire,” Shepherd wrote on Oct. 24, noting that he’d left a message for Heart “a couple weeks ago” and had heard nothing.

Only on Oct. 29, two days before the Colorado money was to dry up, did Heart reply to Shepherd’s repeated attempts to contact him.

In a letter to Shepherd, Heart said the Ute Mountain Utes are “completely committed to the development of the Four Corners Monument.”

“Unfortunately, the Navajo Nation has conditioned any agreement between the Tribes for development at the monument on the [Ute] Tribe agreeing that Navajo Nation lands extend into the state of Colorado,” he said. “The Ute tribe simply cannot agree to this requirement of the Navajo Nation.”

Heart wrote that an agreement was hammered out between him and Bradford under which the interpretive center would be built on Ute land and the restrooms on Navajo land under separate agreements with the Heritage Council.

“Too many people have worked too hard, for too long, to see this project fail,” Heart wrote.

Ken Charles, DOLA director for Region 9, is more optimistic than many of the other players about the future of the monument. He said the Colorado money will remain committed for the foreseeable future as long as the possibility of improving the monument exists.

“We’re really flexible and if there’s a good reason to extend it [beyond the end of 2007] we probably would,” Charles said. “Our experience has been that if we have patience with projects they eventually do get done.”

Separate projects

There would be a major advantage in doing separate projects, Bradford said.

“If the Ute Mountain tribe proceeds with the interpretive center, we could match whatever portion they were able to come up with,” regardless of what the Navajo Nation might do on its part of the monument, he said. “It would appear that that might move forward.

“I’ve had discussions with the Navajos about what they might want to do, and they’re still more discussion than decision, but the Ute Mountain [tribe] has actually committed — we have a letter from them saying they would like to proceed with the interpretive facility in Colorado.”

Under the now-defunct original plan, the visitors center would have straddled the Colorado/New Mexico border.

Bradford said that under the terms of the federal grant, an agreement between the tribes for a joint project is not necessarily required, but what is mandatory is that “one tribe supports what the other tribe is doing.”

“So it wouldn’t be a joint operation — it would be a letter from the Navajos saying they support what the Utes are doing.”

‘It’s just nuts’

Vanderpool said the advantages of improving the monument would be many, but expressed doubt that any will be forthcoming with the current atmosphere between the tribes.

“One of my first meetings was to go to the ground-breaking ceremony that was held down at the monument,” Vanderpool recalled. “At that point in time the money was in the bank and everyone thought this was going to happen expeditiously.

“Well, here we are two-plus years later and I think we’re further away now from anything happening than we were then. It seems like they just don’t want to sit down and work it out.”

He said when the possibility of each tribe doing its own project was suggested, with the Utes building the interpretive center and the Navajos the restrooms, Heart embracred the idea, but the Navajos responded by threatening to block access, since the current entrance road to the monument lies entirely on Navajo land. Then the Utes suggested the possibility of building their own road.

“I recall a brief discussion about the Utes building a new road across their land,” Vanderpool said, “and that’s when the Navajos said, ‘We would do anything we can to block access.’

“It’s just nuts.

“So this thing just goes on and on and on, with both sovereign nations shooting each other in the foot, quite frankly.

“It’s very frustrating.” Vanderpool stressed that his remarks were in no way intended to “dampen any entity’s enthusiasm for doing something down there.”

Still, he is fed up with the posturing and shenanigans that have been stalling the project.

“The more you stir it, the more it stinks,” he said.

He said the Heritage Council and Bradford in particular deserve credit for the efforts still being made.

“Our guiding light has been to try to hold this thing together, and it’s been one disappointment after another and one new plan after another, trying to get the players — mainly the tribes — to work together.

“And here we sit in 2007, and I wish I could say we were closer,” Vanderpool said. “Maybe I’m a cynic, but I just fear the facts are that there are still hurdles to jump.

“I’ve never been involved in a more frustrating exercise,” Vanderpool said, “but the bottom line is if we could do something down there and create a nice facility with the heritage center, eats, nice restrooms, it would be so beneficial to both tribes, to surrounding communities and to the tourists themselves — it would actually turn it into an attractive destination.”

But if that is not possible, it may be time for the money to be returned to its original sources, he said.

“There’s a significant part of me that feels that if these players can’t agree to agree for everyone’s mutual benefit here locally, I’m sure these monies could be better spent elsewhere.