"The creator blessed us with this land, where there is an abundance of natural resources," said Lucinda Bennalley, president of the Nenahnezad Chapter, one of 110 such tribal chapters, or local governing entities.

Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr., a staunch supporter of the project, says critics should "stop picking on the little Navajo," when countries like India and China are commissioning a new coal plant practically every week.

The debate over Desert Rock comes at a time when leaders in Congress and a number of states have begun questioning coal burning and the volume of greenhouse gases it churns out.

The project's backers, a private equity group, are trying to build ahead of a possible regulation by Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency or states to limit carbon-dioxide emissions, produced in abundance by coal burning, which takes most of the blame for heating up the planet.

The Navajo Nation picked Houston-based Sithe Global Power, which is 80 percent owned by New York-based Blackstone Group, to build what amounts to a "merchant" plant for hire or sale. Blackstone executives say customers won't be hard to find among hard-pressed utilities in the booming Southwest — Phoenix or Las Vegas are the most likely consumers.

Because of industry-wide improvements in pollutant-capturing technology over the years, Desert Rock's emissions would be as little as a fifth of the reservation's Four Corners Power Plant to the north. Four Corners, a 2,000-megawatt plant co-owned and operated by Arizona Public Service, routinely ranks No. 1 on dirty-power lists compiled by watchdog groups from emissions reports to the EPA.

But Desert Rock would hardly be harmless to the environment, despite new emissions technology.

Every year, according to figures compiled by the EPA, the station would pump out 6,644 tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which are components of acid rain; 5,529 tons of carbon monoxide; 570 tons of lung-busting particulate matter and 166 tons of smog-forming volatile organic compounds, plus trace amounts of lead and mercury.

The EPA has yet to approve an air-quality permit, which Sithe Global first applied for in 2004. Sithe and the Navajo Nation's Dine Power Authority sued March 18 over the agency's delay, claiming the tribe is losing $5 million in tax revenue for every month the permit is held up. The Bureau of Indian Affairs already has signed off on a lease.

Nathan Plagens, vice president of Sithe subsidiary Desert Rock Energy Co., believes the risk of more stringent carbon regulation will "work itself out" in a way that won't derail Desert Rock. But he said the project is stalled because it's seen as politically incorrect.