Questions wisdom of use of water

This is an open letter to the Arizona Congressional Delegation from Black Mesa Trust. It is in response to a letter sent by the Arizona delegation to the stakeholders in the Mohave Generating Station, which may close at the end of 2005 unless an alternative source of water can be found for the coal slurry operation that transports coal from Black Mesa to Laughlin, Nevada. Currently, the slurry operation uses pristine drinking water pumped from the N-aquifer.

The Black Mesa Trust would like to offer another perspective on matters that you discussed in relation to Mohave Generating Station in your recent letter to Hopi Tribal Chairman Wayne Taylor, Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr., the owners of the powerplant, Peabody Coal Company (a subsidiary of Peabody Energy), and Black Mesa Pipeline urging them to keep Mohave Generating Station open at all costs.

Shutting down Mohave at the end of 2005, for several years – or Forever -- is, as you write, one option. But it is not the option that would have the worst consequences for the peoples and cultures of northern Arizona. It is not the worst thing that could happen.

For us, grassroots Hopi and Navajo people, “Water is life.” And the water that sustains our life comes from the Navajo, or N-aquifer underlying Black Mesa.

Currently, Peabody Western Coal Company pumps over 4000 acre feet a year of pristine, Ice Age water from the aquifer, mixes that water 50/50 with pulverized coal to form a slurry, and sends that slurry through a pipeline to the Mohave Generating Station 273 miles away. At Mohave, the water and coal are separated, some of the water is used to cool the power plant, and the rest is left to evaporate. This is the only coal slurry operation in the country. Nowhere else is groundwater used for such a purpose.

The depressurization and possible consequent collapse of the N-aquifer is not a loss that can be measured in dollars like tax revenues or royalties. To further deplete this aquifer is to put at risk the oldest civilization on the North American continent. Without N-aquifer water to drink, to use for agriculture, and to feed our sacred seeps and springs all across Black Mesa, the Hopi people will be forced to move from our ancient homeland. It is foretold in our prophesies that such devastation is possible.

Continuing to abuse this precious natural resource – drinking water in the desert – to keep an obsolete power plant operating is the worst thing that could happen.

Peabody Coal and the Black Mesa Pipeline are using, and using up, the birthright of generations of Hopi and Navajo children to come. Our elders tell us that the hand of Black Mesa and the N-aquifer that underlies it can sustain our people for thousands of years to come if the resources of the mesa are used properly, in keeping with the covenant the people made with Maísawu when we first settled here.

Failure to find an alternative source of water for the coal slurry operation, or an alternative means of moving the coal from Black Mesa to Mohave, will not merely cause economic harm to some people; it will cause irreparable harm to two cultures.

Several ideas for that alternative water supply or an alternative transportation method have, over the past few years, been put forward. But to date, none has come to fruition, and the most recent plans to use Coconino Aquifer water drawn from wells near Winslow, Arizona, and piped to the mineóis bogged down in the incessant squabbling and refusal to accept responsibility that has characterized coal mining on Black Mesa for more than 30 years.

Whether or not Mohave continues to operate, to produce low-cost electricity for the cities of California, Nevada, and Arizona, and to provide tribal, county, and state revenues is not the first concern for the grassroots Hopi and Navajo people who live on Black Mesa. Our concern is whether or not we can preserve the aquifer, honor the land of Black Mesa, and pass on to our children and grandchildren the traditions of our cultures.

Vernon Masayesva

Executive Director

Black Mesa Trust

What are real motives for Iraqi war?

The British newspaper, the Guardian, reported on Aug. 4 that at least 827 Americans have been wounded in Iraq, about half of them after Bush’s “triumphant appearance on the carrier.” Many of the injuries include lost limbs.

But the unofficial count is much higher. Lt. Col. DeLane, in charge of airlifts of wounded from Iraq at Andrews Air Force Base, says he has counted 4,000 wounded and the numbers increase daily. The Naval medical center at Bethesda, Md. receives almost daily deliveries of injured marines.

And CBS reports that Walter Reed Army Hospital is working round the clock, taking over beds from cancer patients.

The total reported death toll at this time, including suicides, is 248.

Why are our troops still being shot? Why are Bush and Rumsfeld hiding the true numbers of wounded and killed from us?

In view of the many exaggerations and lies used by our administration to frighten Congress and the American people into approving this invasion and the fact that we are not wanted, we should leave the Iraqis with their oil and go home! Or are our boys dying to protect Haliburton and Bechtel profits?

Angela Bradshaw

Los Angeles, Calif.

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