best,
c.reyes
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The High Plains News Service
Navajos Challenge Coal Mining
DATE TO AIR: Wed. 20 Sept. 1995
By Catalina Reyes
TAPE: 4:33
Announcer's Intro:
Across the Navajo Reservation, tribal members are challenging
what they say are unsafe and illegal coal mining practices. While
tribal leadership tacitly supports current mining operations, one
Navajo group called the [dih-NEH] Dine Alliance is appealing the
recent approval of a mining permit for Peabody Coal's [kay-YEN-tah]
Kayenta Mine on the reservation. Meanwhile, another group called
the Citizens Coal Council is suing the Office of Surface Mining for
failing to provide documentation about mining and reclamation on
Navajo lands. From K-U-N-M in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Catalina
Reyes reports:
CATA: In 1977, a law was passed which was intended to ensure safe
mining operations. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act,
or [smack-ruh] SMCRA, is supposed to be enforced on indian land by
the Federal Office of Surface Mining -- or O-S-M. But as SMCRA
turned 18 this summer, a group of Navajo community members from
Black Mesa, Arizona was at the O-S-M Field Office in Albuquerque,
appealing a permit just granted to Peabody Western Coal Company
for its Kayenta mine near their homes. According to SMCRA, O-S-M
should issue a cessation order when mining causes imminent danger
to public health and safety, or imminent environmental harm. At a
press conference outside the Albuquerque field office, Navajo
Activist Louise Benally of the group Dine Alliance said both those
conditions exist at Black Mesa:
LOUISE BENALLY: We have filed many citizens complaints since the
year before last, and last year. And none of these things have
been addressed adequately. Our water is being depleted. According
to the Hopi Tribal water report -- there's only 15 more years left
of water below the Colorado River Plateau area. And if we allow
these companies to keep pumping our water, within 15 years we're
not gonna have no more water.
CATA 2: Peabody Coal draws more than a billion gallons per year
out of the desert aquifer in order to wash coal from its Black Mesa
mine through a 200-mile long slurry. While SMCRA requires a permit
for mining transportation systems, O-S-M hasn't enforced that
requirement at Black Mesa -- and residents continue to complain
that without a permit, the slurry line is illegal. Also according
to smcra, mine operators must post a reclamation bond to set aside
money for environmental restoration -- but Peabody hasn't done that
for its Kayenta mine. Area residents also complain they and their
livestock are being poisoned by selenium-laden coal dust:
HOWARD CARSON: These allegations have been made for years, and
they're just -- not truthful.
CATA: Howard Carson is the President of Peabody Western Coal
Company:
HOWARD CARSON: We don't know why they continue to make these
allegations, particularly in the face of just overwhelming evidence
from a scientific standpoint that there is not those kinds of
impacts.
CATA: Carson says Peabody does extensive environmental monitoring
that ensures there aren't problems. And he says sheep in the
immediate area of the mine are healthier than sheep that don't
graze on revegetated land. Similar testimony was heard in
Flagstaff at late August hearings on the Kayenta Mine permit appeal
-- where tensions escalated. At one point a U.S. Marshall was
asked to attend after threatening statements were made by an O-S-M
attorney. A decision may not be issued on the appeal until late
fall. Ernest Diswood, a former reclamation specialist and range
conservationist from the northern part of the Navajo Reservation,
says discrimination is at work in the way mining operations are
overseen:
ERNEST DISWOOD: OSM's afraid a lot of the special little
agreements that they have made with the coal companies to become
public. A lot of what they have failed to do, such as providin'
pre-blast surveys, protection of the water quality, and things like
this, are startin to show up now that we're diggin' into it more
and more, and it shows a pattern of what you could consider
environmental racism.
CATA: Diswood is affiliated with a Washington-based coalition
called the Citizens Coal Council. In August they filed a lawsuit
challenging O-S-M's failure to provide complete documents in
response to Freedom of Information Act requests by several Navajo
community groups:
ERNEST DISWOOD: Whatever they provided us was usually blacked out
to a real large extent to where it was almost useless. It just
seems like they singled out the Navajos, anything that we wanted,
they singled 'em out for keeping us in the dark as much as
possible.
CATA: The Citizens Coal Council and Dineh Mining Action Center
based in Farmington, New Nexico, say they need the documents in
order to compel enforcement of SMCRA regulations. Meanwhile, in
spite of their frustration with the Office of Surface Mining,
Diswood and the Dine Alliance worry that congress may severely cut
funding for O-S-M -- making it even harder to get mining law
enforcement on Native American lands.
For the High Plains News Service in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, I'm Catalina Reyes
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|Catalina Reyes | The High Plains News | |
|Acting Assoc. Producer | Service | internet: |
| (a/o Sept. 25, 1995) | 2401 Montana Ave. #301 | catrey@unm.edu |
|(406) 252-9672 | Billings, MT 59101 USA | |
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