![The Long family [clockwise from top left] Joni Lapahie, Dáilan Long, Jona Lapahie, Emma Long and Emery Long.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/18731ea/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4032x3024+0+0/resize/840x630!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F8c%2F3e%2Fcb7758794c59b588da1f9a3323b8%2Flong-family-household-burnham-nm-gp-202602.jpg)
Coverage of tribal natural resources is supported in part by Catena FoundationCoal powered the Industrial Revolution, and remained the dominant fuel source in the U.S. up until the 1950s. Since then, it's been giving way to cleaner and cheaper energy alternatives. But President Donald Trump has been a vocal champion of coal — and is strategizing a comeback story for the American coal industry.
His so-called "Unleashing American Energy" agenda includes Indian Country.
That effort involved reviving the National Coal Council — a federal advisory committee overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy. Founded in 1984, the Biden administration allowed this appointed body of coal industry stakeholders and policy experts to lapse four decades later.
The council has since been resurrected under Trump.
Two of its 50 seats at the table — all hand-picked by Energy Secretary Chris Wright — belong to the Crow Nation in Montana and the Navajo Nation spanning Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.
"We've got Crow, we've got Navajo. You guys play an important part of this industry, DOE loves working with you. Thank you for also being great patriots," said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum during the first convening of the National Coal Council meeting under a renewed charter in January.
Coal has long been the economic bedrock of the Navajo Nation, which owns deposits in Wyoming, Montana and New Mexico. Now, the tribe is asking the Trump administration to dramatically expand the life — and size — of an operational coal mine that could uproot the lives of some Navajo families.
And their longtime homes — literally.
'This is their dwelling place'
Growing up without running water or electricity, Emma Long has seen lots of change over the last seven decades, including her home no longer burning coal. "Years ago, we stopped using coal. We don't bother it."
Instead of coal, she'd rather be bothered by her menagerie of pets — including five dogs and four cats. When I asked which one is her favorite, she told me "they're all equally loved."
"This is the mother cat right there."
"This one?"
"Yeah."
"What's her name?"
"Oscar Lena. That one's Gene Fred," she said with a chuckle.
"Where'd that name come from?"
"I don't know," she said, still laughing. "We just put those two names together like that."
Mittens and Edicinda are the other cats' names, while chihuahuas Parker and Chico, a husky named Mishka, a Great Pyrenees called Mary Alice and a German shepherd, Diesel, round out the bunch.
This 2-acre homesite in Burnham, a Navajo community roughly 75 miles north of Gallup, is something the Long family has been building from the ground up for a very long time. Emma's husband, Emery, is tending to their flock of Navajo Churro sheep — guarded by a yapping Mary Alice.
"I'm building a barn right there for the hay," said Emery, an ex-boilermaker who worked inside the neighboring Four Corners Power Plant. "This is what was passed down from my grandpa. They keep me on my feet pretty much. I don't pen them all the time like they are now, but I usually let them roam."
"This is their dwelling place."
Their backyard butts up against this coal mine.
"Four Corners Power Plant just sitting right there where the steam is coming up. And Navajo Mine, they're right here — right where these red hills are," said Long, pointing out the facilities. "When they bomb, you feel the shake. And they want to come all the way out here to the highway."
Originally from the small Navajo community of Leupp, near Flagstaff, Emery is also building there — and maybe crafting a contingency plan for him and the rest of the Long household.
"So over the summer, I talked to my relatives that live around there," Emery shared. "'I'm gonna get that house. I'm gonna rebuild it, and that's where I'm gonna put my sheep.' They said, 'Go for it.'"
'Clinically dependent on coal, like substance abuse'
That's because the Longs are among a dozen or so families that could be displaced by the Navajo Transitional Energy Company, or NTEC. This tribally owned company was created by the Navajo Nation in 2013 and bought the namesake coal mine that same year.
While the mineral lease was initially inked in 1957, digging up coal at the Navajo Mine didn't actually begin until 1963. Its first owner was Utah International, a multinational mining corporation that started out as a construction company founded in Ogden.
It was among the Six Companies Consortium that built the Hoover Dam. Then, the Navajo Mine was sold off to General Electric — followed by the Australian mining giant BHP that later merged with Billiton.
Today, NTEC owns this historic mine in New Mexico and is asking the feds to expand the mineral leasing boundary by nearly 12,000 acres. In doing so, this decision could add more than 500 million tons of coal while extending the mine's life by more than a century — 110 years from now — to 2136.
"The tribe is just clinically dependent upon coal, like substance abuse," said Dáilan Long, a chief risk officer for a New Mexico healthcare company. He's also one of Emma and Emery's four children. "Using coal extraction as a remedy for the future but it's really just harming the community even further. And you try to pull them back but they keep going back to coal and it's just like this unending cycle of relapse."
"And we're fed up with it."
As for the coal industry, they're optimistic anything is possible under the Trump administration, according to Emily Arthun, executive director of the American Coal Council.
"We've certainly seen a change — even from day one of our president being sworn in," said Arthun. "There's a lot of work being done to protect this industry that really had been unfairly assaulted for many years."
"And now we have the opportunity."
"We must capitalize on telling the good story that we need coal to have an economic, prosperous country," she continued. But when KJZZ asked the Wyomingite and former NTEC employee whether she's ever heard of lengthening a coal mine's life by more than a century, Arthun was hesitant to answer.
"I mean, I honestly — it's just out of my understanding of the leasing process, and so I just don't feel right to comment on that."
Neither did NTEC.
Its CEO, Vern Lund, declined an interview.
But the mining company told KJZZ that NTEC is committed to responsible coal production by supporting the Navajo Nation's sovereignty and America's energy dominance agenda, while "minimizing environmental impacts."
'Coal has to remain a part of the equation'
From knocking down homes to laying rail tracks and even the rerouting of a well-traveled road, the Burnham community of about 200 residents is ground zero for NTEC's expansion.
The local chapter passed a resolution opposing the plan.
Robyn Jackson, who is Navajo and executive director of the nonprofit Diné C.A.R.E., stumbled upon a public notice this fall while skimming through the classifieds section of the Navajo Times. Jackson only made the inadvertent discovery because an accompanying map caught her eye.
"We just happened to notice in the classifieds, there was nothing in the newspaper," said Jackson. "There was nothing announced by our tribal council. There really wasn't much announced at the chapters either."
Nothing further was announced until a Christmastime dinner in Burnham — paid for by NTEC — during which, "nothing was really explained" when it came to the company's plan, according to Jackson. "So these things are not fully explained to our communities — even now in 2026."
The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement — housed within the U.S. Department of the Interior — told KJZZ the federal agency received 37 comments, "which were reviewed to identify issues and alternatives to be analyzed."
That input was gathered during a 20-day scoping period beginning in January. The U.S. government's record of decision, including a final environmental impact statement, are expected to be published by the end of August.
During a June hearing of the Naabik'íyáti' Committee, NTEC's Lund addressed claims of the tribe's coal mine being extended for over a century. He was flanked by NTEC Chairman Timothy McLaughlin and general counsel Bernard Masters in Window Rock at the Navajo Nation Council chambers.
"Well, that's not a true statement," said Lund. "And that really what we're doing is just bringing those reserves into our permitted area, but you have to get a mining permit on top of that. And a mining permit is only valid for five years."
While NTEC is looking into solar and gas alternatives, McLaughlin recognized they're "not blind to the fact" that the Navajo Nation earns a "ton of financial benefit from extracting coal," adding "so we want to make sure that if there's a possibility of extracting clean coal — capturing the carbon — we want to look at those avenues, and so we're open to all of that."
"In order to do that, coal has to remain a part of the equation," added Lund. "When you look at the resources of the Navajo Nation, what are the resources? Tremendous resources, but the resource that the Nation is getting value from today is coal, and that has to be the backbone that helps build the next phase of the journey."
'A last dying breath of the coal industry'
Globally, coal continues to lose ground to renewables and other energy sources.
Last year, renewables — driven by wind and solar — surpassed coal in global energy production for the first time in more than a century, according to a study by the London-based climate think tank Ember. The last time renewables outproduced coal, the main sources were hydropower and wood-burning.
Despite those global trends, the Trump administration isn't letting go too easily. The U.S. Geological Survey published a July report estimating that there's more than 350 billion tons of coal sitting beneath federally managed public lands.
Enough coal — the scientific agency claims — to energize the U.S. for another 600 years. That figure is based on the current rate of consumption. The Navajo Transitional Energy Company is a notable part of that calculation — owning other coal mines across the West.
NTEC considers itself to be the third-largest producer of coal nationwide.
Montana's Spring Creek Mine southwest of Billings is believed to have almost 40 million tons of coal reserves, while Wyoming's Antelope and Cordero Rojo mines just north of Casper reportedly have nearly 667 million tons combined.
"It's not penciling out, because I hate to say it, but the industry doesn't necessarily care about the health and human, environmental costs. They're looking at the bottom line for the shareholders," said Clara Pratte, who is Diné and a Democrat running for a seat on the Arizona Corporation Commission. "And right now I see the Trump administration as a last dying breath of the coal industry."
Meanwhile, this Navajo coal in New Mexico is solely burned by the Four Corners Power Plant — which could shutter as soon as 2031. Only two of its five generators remain running after the rest were retired more than a decade ago.
Commissioned in 1963, this aging power plant is mostly owned by Arizona Public Service. Tucson Electric Power, Salt River Project and the Public Service Company of New Mexico are minority shareholders in the facility.
KJZZ contacted each utility about NTEC's dramatic expansion plans for the Navajo Mine — under what's officially labeled the No Name permit. While none of them specifically weighed in on that 110-year plan, all but Tucson Electric Power reaffirmed their timelines to divest from the New Mexico coal-fired power plant within the next decade or so.
Citing the Energy Transition Act, a state law that establishes ambitious benchmarks for renewable energy standards, including a goal for investor-owned utilities to go carbon-zero by 2045, the Public Service Company of New Mexico told KJZZ it's still forecasting to exit in 2031 — "regardless of the other owners' plans."
SRP is also planning to withdraw by then, telling KJZZ that the public utility is evaluating several factors, including costs and corporate goals, "before determining whether we will continue our participation in the plant past 2031." Majority owner APS is an outlier, in that the private utility is expected to depart "no later than 2038, consistent with end of operations under our lease."
"If you look long-term and we have these conversations internally, there is an end of life to the Four Corners Power Plant," said Lund amid the Naabik'íyáti' Committee hearing in June. "I hope it's farther out into the future, but there is an end of life. Every plant has an end of life. We know that."
So if the No Name permit is ultimately approved by the Trump administration but the Four Corners Power Plant shuts down someday, where could this half a billion tons of Navajo coal be going?
"Who are our customers? We predominantly sell into South Korea," Lund told Navajo Nation Council delegates, adding "and then we also sell some into Japan, and then other southeast Asian markets."
Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam have also been in talks.
While NTEC executives sitting in boardrooms strategize for an uncertain financial future, back in Burnham, Emma Long stares out from the frame of her home's front door, contemplating her own uncertain future.
"I actually think about our grandchildren," she said. "I don't know, I'm not going to even be here. And I think about them, where are they going to go?"
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to correct the speaker, Navajo Transitional Energy Company CEO Vern Lund, in two quotes.
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