Chapter 10 BLACK GOLD AND YELLOW CAKE 183 In the meantime, the firm continued to negotiate a lease. In April 1957 the tribal leadership finally agreed to an acceptable arrangement, but a snag about pipeline rights already granted to an oil company delayed the beginning of the operation. By the end of the summer, a revised lease resolved the problem, and on October 22, 1957, the United States Department of the Interior announced approval of a coal mining and electric power development lease on 24,000 acres of Navajo land. The ten-year lease contained an extension provision for as long as coal production was financially feasible. Allen D. Christensen, representing Utah Construction, and Tribal Chairman Paul Jones signed the compact, which called for payments of 25 cents per acre for the first year, 50 cents per acre for the second and third years, and $1 per acre for each year thereafter. pecveeseteneemneteneiinte | iin sts -aelhenmnaiaenetanenaniannaneeninnens In the 1950s, Utah Construction convinced electrical utilities in the Ameri- can West to burn coal to produce steam, as was done in the East. Power then flowed three hundred miles to fast-growing Phoenix, Arizona.