Southwest
US regulators grant Native American tribes authority to block unwanted hydopower projects
- Federal regulators have granted Native American tribes more power to block hydropower projects on their land.
- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission previously allowed developers to proceed even if tribes objected, but now tribes have the ability to veto proposals quickly.
- This policy change acknowledges and respects tribal sovereignty, according to a spokesperson for the Navajo Nation’s president’s office.
Federal regulators have granted Native American tribes more power to block hydropower projects on their land after a flurry of applications were filed to expand renewable energy in the water-scarce U.S. Southwest.
Previously, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted developers approval to move ahead with planning even if tribes objected. That practice came to an end last week. Now, a new commission policy allows tribes to quickly veto proposals, forcing businesses to cooperate if they want the federal government to grant them exclusive rights to their hydropower projects.
“This is the acknowledgement and respect of tribal sovereignty, which is critical,” said George Hardeen, spokesperson for the Navajo Nation’s president’s office.
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The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently rejected seven proposals for projects on the Navajo Nation, which stretches 27,000 square miles across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. When it issued those rejections, the commission also announced the policy change, handing tribes the same power as federal agencies to block projects.
A school bus is seen in Oljato-Monument Valley, Utah, on the Navajo reservation on April 27, 2020. Federal regulators have granted Native American tribes more power to block hydropower projects on their land after a flurry of applications were filed to expand renewable energy in the water-scarce U.S. Southwest. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
“It applies anywhere that a hydropower project might be proposed on tribal lands throughout the United States,” said Aaron Paul, an attorney with Grand Canyon Trust, a conservation group.
The Hopi Tribe, which is completely surrounded by Navajo, urged the commission to cement the policy announcement in a formal rule, worrying a different administration would be less favorable to tribes and change the policy.
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The hydropower projects are essentially big batteries that generate energy when demand is high and there aren’t a lot of other renewable sources like solar and wind available. Hydropower can be turned on when it is needed and works by releasing water from an upper reservoir to a lower one.
At a later point when the electric grid has excess power, water is pumped in a loop back up to the higher reservoir, recharging the battery.
Developers have expressed new interest in building these pumped hydropower projects as coal-fired plants shut down in the Southwest. The canyons, towering mesas and dramatic river valleys in the area are ideal terrain because the projects require moving water between different elevations.
Environmental groups and some members of the Navajo Nation argue the projects require enormous amounts of water — particularly in a part of the country that already doesn’t have enough. Roughly one-third of the 175,000 people on the Navajo Nation don’t have running water at home.
People are sensitive to how scarce water is, and “they would more likely say ‘no’ to these kinds of projects,” Hardeen said.
Some of the proposals that were rejected came from Nature and People First. For example, the company told federal regulators it wanted to build the Black Mesa East project on the Navajo reservation in Arizona that would have two upper reservoirs with a combined capacity of 100,000 acre-feet and a single, lower reservoir with the same total storage capacity. An acre-foot of water serves two or three homes annually.
The project was proposed near a home site lease that Jheremy Young’s family has held for generations. He’s happy the commission blocked it. The area around the mesa is rugged, quiet and vast, and water has to be hauled in.
“That’s where my dad came from, that’s where his father came from,” Young said. “The sentimental value of the land — the story, the history — were the biggest concern.”
The Navajo Nation told federal regulators the company hadn’t consulted with the correct tribal authorities or addressed key concerns about water use and harm to golden eagle and other species’ habitats. Hardeen said now, developers will first need to go through the Navajo Nation Division of Natural Resources.
Denis Payre, president and CEO of Nature and People First, said the commission’s decision was “undeniably disheartening.” The company secured support from local Navajo communities and talked with Navajo government officials for a project he said would create jobs.
“Developing pumped storage projects is inherently challenging; this additional obstacle threatens to halt our collective efforts,” Payre said.
The company submitted a proposal for a much larger project than it intends to construct, giving it flexibility to build a smaller project on the piece of land it finds is best after study and tribal consultation.
That approach and using that amount of water engenders opposition, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.
“If you are going to propose a small project, actually propose a small project,” said Taylor McKinnon, the center’s Southwest director.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission also rejected proposals from Rye Development, which said it values tribal consultation and will continue to study opportunities on tribal land.
Malcolm Woolf, president and CEO of the industry group National Hydropower Association, said he supported tribes’ right to stop unwanted projects. But he said the new policy could halt planning too soon.
The commission denied preliminary permits for the seven projects, which only recognize a business is first in line to develop a project and allows further studies. Developers have to consult with tribes before they can be granted a license and start building.
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Companies don’t want to navigate a complicated permitting process and spend years working with a tribe only for another business to swoop in and win rights to the project at the last minute, Woolf said.
One company quickly caught up in the new policy is Pumped Hydro Storage, which wants a preliminary permit for a project near the Little Colorado River on Navajo Nation land in Arizona. In light of its new policy, the commission asked for more input from those it potentially impacts before they decide what to do.
The company’s manager, Steve Irwin, said pumped storage is important but hard to build on the Navajo Nation’s land.
“There’s no clear pathway to doing business on the reservation,” Irwin said. “It’s almost like you have to have 100% unanimous consensus. It’s not majority, it’s got to be 100%, and it’s like, you are never going to get 100%.”
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Southwest
Missing 19-year-old Camila Mendoza Olmos believed to be ‘in imminent danger,’ Texas sheriff says
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Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar indicated that authorities believe that Camila Mendoza Olmos, a 19-year-old woman who went missing on Christmas Eve, is “in imminent danger.”
The FBI is supplying technical aid and the Homeland Security Department is keeping an eye on border crossings as well as international travel, Salazar indicated, according to ABC News.
“We definitely don’t want to miss anything,” he said, according to the outlet. “The ground search is somewhat limited to a couple of square miles. We’re also not ruling out that this case may take us outside the borders of the continental United States.”
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Camila Mendoza Olmos, 19, was last seen outside her home in San Antonio, Texas, on Christmas Eve, authorities said. (Bexar County Sheriff’s Office)
The sheriff confirmed to ABC that the young woman had not been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which he verified despite Olmos being an American citizen.
“That was a personal concern. So, I had it checked to make sure that there were no stops, no detentions, and that she’s not somewhere in a federal detention facility. That is something we needed to check,” Salazar noted, according to the outlet.
Fox News Digital reached out to the sheriff’s office for comment.
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Camila Mendoza Olmos was last seen around 6:58 a.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2025, in northwest Bexar County, Texas. (Bexar County Sheriff’s Office)
A December 24 Bexar County Sheriff’s Office Facebook post noted, “Camila was last seen leaving her residence at approximately 6:58 a.m. on Wednesday, December 24, 2025. Video footage from that time shows an unknown individual, believed to be Camila, searching inside her vehicle for an unidentified item. Moments later, the footage ends. It is believed that she left the residence on foot, as her vehicle remained at the location.”
The post notes, “The only items known to be on her person are her car key and possibly her driver’s license. Camila’s mother stated that Camila normally goes for a morning walk; however, she became concerned when Camila did not return within a reasonable period of time.”
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The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office said, “It is believed that she left the residence on foot, as her vehicle remained at the location.” (Google Maps)
The sheriff’s office indicated in the post that she had been “Last seen wearing: Baby blue with Black Hoodie, Baby blue Pajama bottoms, White shoes.”
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Southwest
DAVID MARCUS: At AmericaFest, two legacies hang in the balance, Charlie Kirk’s and Donald Trump’s
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There are two legacies hanging in the balance this weekend in Phoenix as Turning Point USA puts on its annual AmericaFest conference, first is its late founder, Charlie Kirk’s and the other is President Donald Trump’s.
At the convention center here in Arizona, as many as 25,000 attendees are expected to gather to celebrate the life of Kirk, who was tragically murdered just months ago, but also to try to chart a course forward for the movement he marshaled.
Arriving a bit late on Thursday, I was greeted by Lucas, a TPUSA employee from Detroit in his mid-twenties. He was a picture-perfect ambassador, a clean-cut kid who is eschewing his generation’s almost epic bout of despair and instead leaning in to create positive change.
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“The energy has been amazing,” he told me, referring to the huge upswing in interest in TPUSA since Kirk’s horrible murder.
“Not the way you’d want it to happen,” I somewhat darkly noted, but Lucas said, “You have to find the silver lining, I guess.”
Lucas and the hundreds like him are honestly an inspiration, while so many of their generation are out of shape from toe to top, they see a bright future for America that so many of us in advanced years have long ago forgotten.
But do not get the impression that at AmFest this year all is hugs and kumbaya. Iin fact, what you will find here are the early stages of a war to define what Donald Trump’s legacy, and the legacy of his MAGA movement will be.
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Thursday night’s lineup on the big stage was a potent mix, featuring both Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire and Tucker Carlson, whose current feud over Israel has become a bit more than nasty.
I won’t litigate the feud here, it’s all on video after all, but the broader point is that some lines are being drawn ahead of the first presidential race in a while, in 2028, that presumably will not include the name Trump on the ballot.
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At Amfest, we finally have more than tea leaves to tell us what the conservative movement after Trump and Kirk will look like — we have the actual tea, and a few stains to boot.
The factions are becoming clear, Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika, in her speech Thursday enthusiastically endorsed Vice President JD Vance for president, while Shapiro said, more moderately, that Vance would have to build his own coalition.
Is Shapiro lining up a movement behind a potential candidate like Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz who has not been a member of Donald Trump’s, let’s face it, somewhat obsequious court of the Oval Office, and if so, can Erika Kirk’s power thwart such a play?
This weekend in Phoenix has assembled the people with the strongest claim to the MAGA movement — a once disparate band of misfits whose allegiance to the “orange man” who kept winning put them at the forefront of American power and politics.
Many of the grave and profound conservative voices and pundits of old, who give no truck to the New Right have fled ship for think tanks or psuedo-right-wing journals that exist only to destroy Trump and his movement, but they are not the vanguard. The real fight is here.
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What plays out over this weekend in Phoenix will have profound implications not just for next year’s midterms, but for the presidential race in 2028.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, during a panel discussion at the Generation Next Summit at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on March 22, 2018, in Washington. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Legacies are matters of the future, and it is only the young attendees at Amfest who will see the longest lasting fruits of the American conservative movement — a movement still firmly shaped by Charlie Kirk.
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It is both remarkable and stark to see the myriad and often giant images of their Charlie around the convention center amid his earthly absence. Each image is a reminder both of his life’s great success and its tragic end.
But Charlie Kirk’s legacy will not be a statue, or a plaque. His legacy will live in the hearts of the young kids assembled in Phoenix this weekend. Maybe they are naïve. Maybe they are not withered and weathered by life’s brutal storms. God bless them for their hope. We could use a bit more of it.
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Two theme parkgoers were trapped more than 100 feet in the air for more than 30 minutes this week after a roller coaster in Texas malfunctioned.
The Circuit Breaker roller coaster at the Circuit of the Americas near Austin unexpectedly stopped at the first drop, leaving Matthew Cantu, 24, and Nicholas Sanchez, 20, dangling at a 90-degree angle Wednesday night, KXAN-TV reported, citing a publicist representing the two men.
“For more than 30 minutes after the ride stopped, family members reported receiving no clear updates, while witnesses said staff provided conflicting explanations, including comments that the riders ‘weren’t strapped in currently,’” the publicist’s news release said, People magazine reported.
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Construction continues on the Circuit Breaker, the first tilt roller coaster in Texas. (Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
“A sensor triggered a ride delay,” the Circuit of the Americas told Fox News Digital in a statement Saturday. “It was resolved, and the ride proceeded without incident.
“As with all amusement attractions of this sort, delays occasionally occur. We regret the inconvenience and are glad that out of the 25,000 people that have ridden the coaster, only two have this badge of courage.”
The Circuit Breaker is Texas’ first “tilt” roller coaster, which means the track tilts 90 degrees for a nearly vertical drop during the ride.
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The ride opened as a preview in October and will officially open next year, according to KVUE-TV.
Austin-Travis County EMS responded to the incident before 10 p.m. Wednesday, evaluating one of the men who refused medical attention, KVUE reported.
Cedar Point in Ohio opened its new Siren’s Curse roller coaster this summer. (Akron Beacon Journal/Imagn)
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Austin-Travis County EMS for comment.
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Another tilt roller coaster, known as the Siren’s Curse at Cedar Point in Ohio, has similarly malfunctioned multiple times since it opened this summer.
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