TOXIC SPILL - The Consequences

"Toxic spill causes hardship for the Navajo farmers and ranchers downstream" PBS NewsHour 8/17/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  It's been nearly two weeks since an EPA accident at a defunct Colorado mine fouled rivers in multiple states, and among the hardest hit residents are the Navajos.  Special correspondent Kathleen McCleery reports from New Mexico.

Editor’s note:  We originally reported that the San Juan River flows into Arizona and then enters Lake Powell.  In fact, it joins the Colorado River in Utah, then flows into Lake Powell, which straddles the Arizona border.  Also, in a map of the Navajo Nation, we incorrectly illustrated the northern border, which more closely follows the San Juan River than our depiction.  We regret the errors.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  It’s been 12 days since an accident at a defunct Colorado gold mine fouled rivers in three states.

Special correspondent Kathleen McCleery has an update on the impact the spill has had on Native Americans and others in Northwest New Mexico.

KATHLEEN MCCLEERY (NewsHour):  The sunflowers in Upper Fruitland, New Mexico, are drooping.

LORENZO BATES, Speaker, Navajo Nation Council:  When you look at them now, they’re all hanging over because they haven’t — they need water.

KATHLEEN MCCLEERY:  On LoRenzo Bates’ farm, it’s not just sunflowers in trouble.  The alfalfa, key for feeding his animals, is stunted.

LORENZO BATES:  This is right now 12 days behind.  This hay has to get me through the winter season.

KATHLEEN MCCLEERY:  Bates, the speaker of the Navajo Nation, tallied his losses so far at $1,000 in just one week, no small amount in this poor region.  It’s all because Bates and thousands of others here couldn’t pull water from the San Juan River, which abuts his land.  Irrigation ditches were shut down after the mine accident earlier this month 100 miles north in Silverton, Colorado.

Efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up one mine resulted in a breach at another, the Gold King Mine, which has been inactive since 1923.  A three million gallon toxic stew of heavy metals poured downstream, turning the Animas River a shocking yellow.

GREED FILES - Grand Canyon, Economics vs Preservation

COMMENT:  The real issue is not just developer plans, but how intrusive they are.

"Where Grand Canyon rivers converge, economic and preservation needs collide" PBS NewsHour 6/3/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Millions come to the Grand Canyon every year to marvel at its natural beauty, but in a remote corner of the Navajo Nation, there's a part of the canyon that few tourists see.  A group of developers hopes to change that by building hotels, restaurants, and an aerial tram.  Ryan Hill, a student reporter from Arizona State University, looks at what that could mean for the Navajo community.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Finally tonight, a sacred spot in one of America’s most breathtaking landmarks.  History, environment and economics all collide, as a divided Navajo community grapple with a billion-dollar plan to develop a pristine spot where two rivers meet.

Ryan Hill, a reporter at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, takes an in-depth look at the controversy.

RYAN HILL, Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism:  The Grand Canyon is one of the world’s most protected places, for a reason.

WOMAN:  It’s my time with God.  As you’re heading down and the sun is just starting to peak out and the shadows are across these beautiful creations, it is — it’s magnificent.

RYAN HILL:  Millions come every year to marvel at one of the seven Natural Wonders of the World, which remains unchanged since the late 1800s, when it first came under federal protection.

STEVE EMERICK, Hiker:  This is a pristine — still, after all these years, a pristine outdoors, backcountry experience.  National parks really were America’s best idea, and this is a fine example of that.

RYAN HILL:  But deep in a remote corner of the Navajo Nation in Northern Arizona, there is a part of the canyon that few people ever see, the Confluence, where the Colorado and the Little Colorado Rivers meet, a place considered sacred by the Navajos, who have deep ties to the land.

ENVIRONMENT - The Navajo View

"Navajos Hope to Shift From Coal to Wind and Sun" By MIREYA NAVARRO, New York Times 10/25/2010

Excerpt

For decades, coal has been an economic lifeline for the Navajos, even as mining and power plant emissions dulled the blue skies and sullied the waters of their sprawling reservation.

But today there are stirrings of rebellion. Seeking to reverse years of environmental degradation and return to their traditional values, many Navajos are calling for a future built instead on solar farms, ecotourism and microbusinesses.

“At some point we have to wean ourselves,” Earl Tulley, a Navajo housing official, said of coal as he sat on the dirt floor of his family’s hogan, a traditional circular dwelling.

Mr. Tulley, who is running for vice president of the Navajo Nation in the Nov. 2 election, represents a growing movement among Navajos that embraces environmental healing and greater reliance on the sun and wind, abundant resources on a 17 million-acre reservation spanning Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

“We need to look at the bigger picture of sustainable development,” said Mr. Tulley, the first environmentalist to run on a Navajo presidential ticket.

With nearly 300,000 members, the Navajo Nation is the country’s largest tribe, according to Census Bureau estimates, and it has the biggest reservation. Coal mines and coal-fired power plants on the reservation and on lands shared with the Hopi provide about 1,500 jobs and more than a third of the tribe’s annual operating budget, the largest source of revenue after government grants and taxes.

At the grass-roots level, the internal movement advocating a retreat from coal is both a reaction to the environmental damage and the health consequences of mining — water loss and contamination, smog and soot pollution — and a reconsideration of centuries-old tenets.

In Navajo culture, some spiritual guides say, digging up the earth to retrieve resources like coal and uranium (which the reservation also produced until health issues led to a ban in 2005) is tantamount to cutting skin and represents a betrayal of a duty to protect the land.

“As medicine people, we don’t extract resources,” said Anthony Lee Sr., president of the Diné Hataalii Association, a group of about 100 healers known as medicine men and women.

Bold emphasis mine

The Navajos in sync with our Earth and "Mother Nature." Americans as a whole need to learn from them.