<center>Letters to the Editor</center>

Editor:

We wish to alert Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton to a tragedy occurring on the Hopi and Western Navajo reservations in the Black Mesa region, in northern Arizona, and we ask that she give serious attention to the matter.

In 1966, the Hopi Tribe and the Navajo Tribe signed coal extraction leases with Peabody Coal Company to develop and operate a coalmine on Black Mesa. The leases were prepared under questionable circumstances and approved by the DOI Secretary Stewart Udall despite strong objections from Hopi elders.

Today, 34 years later, mining and water pumping continues. Water from an ancient aquifer (Navajo Aquifer) is pumped at the rate of 3.3 million gallons daily to transport up to 43,000 of coal 273 miles to Laughlin, Nevada. This coal slurry pipeline is the only one of its kind left in the United States. In the 1970s, the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment identified water scarcity as the principle obstacle to slurry pipelines and recommended their use only in those areas with abundant water resources.

In 1989, the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) finally completed the Cumulative Hydrologic Impact Assessment (CHIA) to assess… “probable cumulative impacts of all anticipated mining…on the (area’s) hydrologic balance.” OSMRE concluded that no material damage to Hopi/Navajo water has occurred or is likely to occur due to Peabody water withdrawals (emphasis added).

We must inform you that the Hopi Tribe has never accepted OSMRE’s conclusion. This position has not changed. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Indian Affairs have also questioned the conclusion. Furthermore, in the early 90s, the U.S. Geological Survey publicly acknowledged that its Black Mesa Groundwater Model “cannot make definite statements about the effects of pumping for slurry transportation…because of limitations on the data available for this area and limitations of our knowledge of the hydrogeologic system.”

Now, we have learned that the Director of OSMRE has questioned the integrity of the N-aquifer water model. In 1998, OSMRE Director noted that “the existing N-aquifer model is based on knowledge and geologic/hydrologic understanding…that is 20 or more years old,” and called for technical evaluations so that “impacts to the N-aquifer will be reliably predicted and minimized.” This came only three months after OSMRE issued a report assuring us that N-aquifer is healthy and vibrant.

Nevertheless, Peabody continues to insist that the data compiled by the federal government does not prove that its operation is damaging the N-aquifer. To insist on absolute proof only begs the question: “What standard of proof do Peabody and the federal government want? And isn’t it the federal government and Peabody who bear the burden of proof, and not us Indians?

Finally, in October 2000, the National Resources Defense Council released a report based on government records that one of four damage criteria established under CHIA has been exceeded. The Hopi people, who know and walk the land daily, have consistently said that all four damage criteria have been violated, but no one is listening.

CHIA, according to OSMRE, “is a means of keeping the big picture of hydrologic impacts before the regulatory authority at all times, so that, if the accumulated impacts reach potentially damaging magnitudes they can be dealt with in a timely manner.”

The “big picture” shows the Black Mesa Trust Water system in serious trouble, due primarily to Peabody, which is responsible for 70% of the water withdrawals.

Below is the language of an escape clause found in the Peabody leases with Hopi and Navajo. It gives the Secretary of the Interior direct authority to act when the aquifer is endangered. Clearly, endangerment has been going on for several years. The Secretary does not need absolute scientific proof before she acts. Her special trust duty mandates that she take the precautionary approach in dealing with the water crisis. Up to this point, OSMRE’s activities have shown that they are more interested in protecting and justifying Peabody’s slurry operation than in protecting our resources.

We respectfully ask that she trigger the clause and order Peabody pumps to be shut down by the end of 2004 or earlier. Over 3,000 Hopi and Navajo people have signed a petition demanding an immediate end to the abuse of our only sole-source drinking water and the list continues to grow. Without water, our way of life, considered by many anthropologists to be the oldest living civilization in North America, will end.

Sincerely,

Leonard Selestewa

President

Black Mesa Trust

Vernon Masayesva

Director

Black Mesa Trust

From the Navajo Hopi Peabody Lease, 1966

“Should the Secretary of the Interior determine, at any time, that the operation of wells by lessee is endangering the supply of underground water in the vicinity or is so lowering the water table that other users of such water are being damaged, he may…require Lessee or Peabody Coal company, at its own sole expense, to obtain water for its mining and pipeline operations from another source that will not significantly affect the supply of underground water in the vicinity.”

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