PROJECT DESCRIPTION 

Run-time: 15 minutes 

The Navajo Generating Station (NGS), a titanic coal plant on reservation land near Lake Powell, Arizona, yields roughly a third of the Navajo Nation's revenue. For nearly half a century, it has provided thousands of jobs to the tribe, which has a 50 percent unemployment rate. 

But it’s the third-largest carbon dioxide emitter in America. And coal’s heyday is over: Natural gas surpassed coal as the biggest source of U.S. electricity in 2016, and half the power plants closed between 2008 and 2017 were coal. NGS’s owners are trying to sell the plant, but deals keep falling through. It's a bad investment – even after the State of Arizona offered to exempt the purchase from state sales tax, and Arizona representatives proposed excusing it from certain Clean Air Act provisions. Now the Navajo government is considering buying NGS themselves before the lease expires in December 2019. 

Many Navajos say the closure would desiccate the economy in a region without alternatives: little arable land, no natural gas, and no major city for 273 miles. They point out that renewable energy, such as solar, takes jobs to set up, but nearly no manpower – no salaries – to maintain. Others argue that NGS’s side effects, such as a massive carbon footprint, groundwater depletion, and phenomenally high asthma rates on the reservation, are unjustifiable.

COAL CROSSROADS follows two Navajo families with starkly different perspectives as the fate of the coal plant unfolds in early 2019 – a microcosm of America’s fraught transition to cleaner energy.

KEY CREW

Caroline Beaton  |  Co-director/Producer   

Caroline is a short film producer, impact strategist, and journalist for VICE, The Atlantic, the New York Times, and other publications. Previously, she was an associate producer for High Noon Entertainment, where she helped develop a new Travel Channel series about the American West. Caroline graduated in the top ten percent of her class at Colorado College, and she was born, raised, and continues to live in Denver, Colorado.

Isaiah Branch-Boyle  |  Co-director/Cinematographer   

Isaiah is a film director born and raised in the American southwest. He has worked with National Geographic, Patagonia, The North Face, Google, and his work has been featured in the New York Times. Isaiah grew up on the Southern Ute Reservation in southwest Colorado and continues to tell stories about people's relationship to the land in the Four Corners region. 

Brendan Young  |  Cinematographer/Editor  

Brendan directed, produced, shot and edited the documentary short JUNCTION, which followed a Navajo high school senior through her final basketball season. JUNCTION is currently screening at film festivals around the country. Brendan also freelance shoots and edits commercial work and branded content for Denver-based Futuristic Films.