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Senate
Committee hears Black Mesa Trust testimony on Peabody mining
By
Tanya Lee
Flagstaff Resident
For
the second time in as many months, Black Mesa Trust testified before
the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs about the Office of Surface
Mining’s failure to fulfill its trust responsibilities to the Hopi
and Navajo People.
On
July 17, Black Mesa Trust Executive Director Vernon Masayesva
testified, "For more than 10 years, the Office of Surface
Mining (OSM) has allowed the world’s largest coal company, Peabody
Energy, to take billions of gallons of pristine ground water and
billions of gallons more of surface water from our lands without
conducting a complete and objective assessment of the environmental
and cultural impacts of such a loss."
Peabody
Energy uses 4,000 acre-feet a year of N-aquifer water for its coal
mining operation at the Black Mesa Mine. Much of the water is used
to slurry coal from the mine to the Mohave Generating Station in
Laughlin, Nevada.
In
addition, Peabody impounds 250 million gallons of surface water at
the mine site each year without any plan to treat and release the
water, which is essential to Hopi religious and cultural life and to
Moencopi farmers.
Masayesva
explained to the Committee that "Hopi people believe that the
earth itself is alive, that water is the earth’s life blood, and
that life on earth comes from and returns to water."
When
the Hopi People settled on Black Mesa, said Masayesva, they were
given three things by the guardian of the land, Ma’saw — corn
seeds, a planting stick, and a gourd of water. "With these
simple tools, the Hopi People entered into a covenant with Ma’saw
to live a simple life of reverence and respect for the land and to
help steward the land." He explained that the Hopi not only use
N-aquifer water to drink and bathe in, but that the water is sacred.
Masayesva
said that OSM has never taken the sacredness of N-aquifer water into
account. "OSM has not approached an impact assessment using the
values and cultural perspective of the people it claims to protect,
but rather from the utilitarian perspective of the company it is
supposed to regulate. ... OSM does not view water drawn from the
Navajo Aquifer as sacred, but as a commodity whose value lies in its
utility."
He
then went on to tell the Committee that OSM’s analysis of
environmental and cultural impacts of the Black Mesa Mine is flawed
on technical grounds as well. For example, OSM has admitted that the
United States Geological Survey hydrological model to assess impacts
of water mining is inaccurate and "provides no basis to
rationally assess the impact of drawing billions of gallons of water
each year from the Navajo Aquifer."
"For
years," Masayesva said, "Hopi farmers and ranchers who
walk the land have been saying what hard data now show: Large scale
withdrawals have seriously damaged the Navajo Aquifer." Despite
that data, however, "OSM has taken no action toward restoring
the health of the aquifer, nor has OSM ever required Peabody to
submit a reclamation plan for the N-aquifer as part of its mine
application."
He
went on to discuss the failure of OSM’s permitting process to give
Hopi and Navajo people a chance to have full and meaningful
consultation on Peabody’s new mining application, citing, among
other factors, the failure of OSM to provide written materials in
non-technical language and the difficulty people would have just
getting to the few places where they could look at the application.
Finally,
he said that on June 19, OSM cancelled the informal conferences on
the mining application that it had promised to hold on Hopi and
Navajo this summer. The reason OSM gave was that Peabody had
identified an alternative source of water for the coal slurry. Yet,
said Masayesva, the application Southern California Edison (the
majority owner of Mohave) submitted to the California Public Utility
Commission states that the feasibility and cost of the alternative
water source is still being investigated.
"As
things stand now, the people most affected by the Black Mesa Mine
have been shut out of the public participation process. As a result,
in my opinion, an illegal depletion of trust assets is
occurring."
For
more information about Black Mesa Trust, visit www.blackmesatrust.org.
Editor’s
note: Writer Tanya Lee is affiliated with Black Mesa Trust.
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