For the sake of a deliberate and balanced approached to mining, indigenous rights, and environmental concerns, let's hope U.S. Representative Raul Grijalva takes the reins at the Department of the Interior in Obama's administration.
Take this week's startling announcement that the George W. Bush administration might quietly give the green light to reopening the scandalous Black Mesa Strip Mine on the ancestral lands of the Dine (Navajo) and Hopi.
Within a few days, the U.S. Office of Surface Mining will release a "Record of Decision" on the "Black Mesa Project" Final Environmental Impact Statement, which could ultimately grant the Peabody Coal Company a "Life-of-Mine" permit to re-open and expand one of the nation's largest coal strip mines.
Like a voice in the wilderness, Grijalva recently wrote the current Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne to request a suspension in the OSM's "hurriedly conducting a deeply flawed environmental review."
Despite a Hopi tribal government in disarray and a deeply divided Dine-Navajo community, the George W. Bush administration's 11th hour move to unleash Big Coal in the tribal lands will not only jeopardize the Navajo Aquifer -- the main source of drinking water for the area residents and farmers -- but will re-open one of the bitter wounds in contemporary tribal conflict.
Like mountaintop removal in Appalachia, the decades-long battle over Black Mesa and the ensuing Hopi-Navajo Settlement sybolizes shameless disregard of human rights and environmental protection for the sake of extraction industry profits.
It's an old story, of course, dating back to the discovery of one of the largest coal deposits in the country on Black Mesa over a century ago.
Over a decade ago, documents emerged that proved that the main lawyer hired to represent the divided Hopi was also on the payroll of the Peabody Coal Company and might have actually helped gerrymander the massive land deal and subsequent settlement acts. This not only resulted in unfair royalty payments and virtually no environmental safeguards, but bitterly divided tribal interests and relations.
In the process, one report estimated that over 12,000 natives were forced to relocate while one of the largest strip mines in the nation swept across the northern Arizona desert.
As investigative reporter Judith Nies wrote:
In Los Angeles, air conditioners hummed. Las Vegas embarked on an enormous building spree to make gambling a family vacation. Phoenix and Tucson metastasized out into the desert-building golf courses and vast retirement developments with swimming pools and fountains. Few realize that much of the energy that makes the desert "bloom" comes from the Black Mesa strip mines on an Indian reservation. Even fewer know the true costs of such development.
And water, in this upland desert, was pumped away. As part of a 273-mile slurry line, billions of gallons of water were siphoned from the Navajo aquifer for decades. Not only the main water source for the native farmers and ranchers in the area, this caused wells and springs to dry up, groundwater levels to plummet and native vegetation to vanish.
According to native Black Mesa advocates today, the rammed through OSM report has numerous flaws, legal or otherwise:
• The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) does not address the pumping of the Navajo Aquifer for the last thirty years. These amounts exceed the aquifer's ability to replace water annually, and have adversely impacted the natural springs and seeps all over Black Mesa. Springs no longer can produce the water needed for Navajo families to survive daily. Instead families must abandon local water resources and use community wells 20-30 miles over unimproved roads. Peabody has not included in its application the impact on the people of Black Mesa and how long they can expect to survive with continued use and contamination of the only source of drinking water the people have. Nor are measures in place to insure an alternate source of water in quality and quantity for local residents will be delivered if there is irreversible damage to the N-Aquifer;
• local Black Mesa residents have been inadequately informed of the proposed changes; • due to changes in the original alternatives, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) is outdated and has irrelevant information; • the DEIS mentions lung problems and only proposes mitigation for mine workers, not residents. The EIS must look at mitigation measures for local residents to avoid health problems associated with black lung, asthma and other lung ailments;
• the DEIS does not consider how the OSM will comply with the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, and prevent substantial burden on the tribes' ability to practice their religion; • the DEIS does not compare the economics of additional coal mining vs. transitional renewable energy development on the mine site and reclaimed areas to prevent long-term cumulative impacts by additional coal mining; • the DEIS does not recognize the impact of the potential relocation of native families;
• the DEIS does not address the current U.S. federal laws that make CO2 a pollutant, and uncalculated CO2 emissions that will contribute to global warming until 2026, if more mining by Peabody coal company continues.
Last month, Rep. Grijalva asked for delay until the OSM "can determine the actual purpose and need of this project."
Let's hope the OSM heeds his sound advice.
Chuck Norris on Copenhagen
Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7
Comments
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caniscandida Posted 5:01 pm
07 Dec 2008
Raul Grijalva is being recommended by the Humane Society of the United States also:
https://community.hsus.org/campaign/HSLF_2008_obama_cabinet/nap7mtnwe3
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:27 pm
07 Dec 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGlhgVz5r6E
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Sorry
-David Ahlport
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Pompey Road Posted 1:03 am
08 Dec 2008
The high profile illegal hollow fills that were discovered up At Fishtrap Dam and other areas will fade into the dust bin of meaningless litigation. This has been a blow to the effort to save Appalachia and I feel if the new administration does not get some of these regulations overturned we have lost all the mountains in the Corps of Engineer maintained Fishtrap Dam Reservoir area.
The so called reclamation has begun on the John Bevin's Branch has begun. The hollow is now filled and the stream that ran beside my property has now dried up. There is but a trickle left from a healthy small stream that ran parallel with my property. So much for the lie they tout down here that streams are not impacted by Mountain Top Removal.
Out west when you reclaim the land that was predominately flat to begin with you may be able to call it reclamation after you return it back to its original flat contour. If you replace the topsoil and spray some native grass seed back on it may look close to it original state. There is no way you can call it reclamation when you do not put a mountain back on its original contour and plant native trees back on it. When you just blast off the tops of the mountains and push the overburden over into pristine valleys and then spray a little weed mix on them you are left with a scab on the land that will never heal.
Coal trucks run behind my home all day and all night long, sleep is impossible. The dust covers my home and furnishings and the blasting has ruined my interior. I drive on muddy roads in the winter through late spring and when the mud freezes it leaves a treacherous ice covered mess. To live under such an assault with no way to address it makes the notion of law and freedom from oppression a joke. With the major concerns with the economy and foreign wars I fear MTR will become a peripheral or back burner issue with the new administration. As I have said before we are considered no more than a backwater, backward area of the country and the coal that comes out of these mountains is more important than the people that live here.
Maybe when its all flat land and more accessible we will get more attention.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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mwildfire Posted 1:45 am
08 Dec 2008
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wendigo Posted 3:38 am
08 Dec 2008
scale of the damage is astounding.
The smog around Shiprock, New Mexico is incredible. There's no big city there; it all comes from the Four Corners Power Plant, which burns Black Mesa coal. So the Hopis and Navajos have been doubly screwed by coal...it's mined there and burned there.
I think Grijalva would be an excellent choice to lead DOI. He understands (and actually cares about) the problems caused by unchecked resource extraction. His votes as a congressman have been consistently pro-conservation. He has been an
advocate for increased protections of and funding for public land (what a concept...public lands managed for the public, rather than corporations!). He would be a vast improvement over the Watt-Norton-Kempthorne lineage, whose philosophy of plundering mountains, forests, deserts, and people has caused so much ruin.
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Stephanie Ogburn Posted 7:35 am
08 Dec 2008
The Four Corners Power Plant is at a different place in the Navajo reservation, in New Mexico near the Four Corners. It produces a lot of smog, as does its fellow plant, the San Juan Generating station, located just a few miles away. The controversial Desert Rock proposed power plant would also be located in this region. This coal is a different coal from the Black Mesa coal, but still on Navajo land and still very controversial. There are many ways and places on the rez where energy and pollution are issues. Black Mesa is one; the Four Corners are another. I believe Raul Grijalva would be a progressive leader on both Black Mesa and Four Corners environmental issues.
Stephanie
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AnnaKay Posted 11:15 am
08 Dec 2008
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