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Monday, June 07, 2004

Environment - Arizona's Navajo and Hopi Tribes Battle for Water

The LA Times Sunday magazine yesterday featured a long and very compelling story with this headline: "Gathering Clouds - Arizona's Navajo and Hopi Tribes Have Won a Water-Rights Battle Against the Coal Company That Has Sustained Their Fragile Economies. But on the Threshold of Victory, a Sobering Question: Now What?" Just a taste from the start of the piece by Sean Patrick Reily:

"Somewhere far away from us, people have no understanding that their demand for cheap electricity, air conditioning and lights 24 hours a day have contributed to the imbalance of this very delicate place." — Nicole Horseherder, Navajo, Black Mesa

For years upon years beneath star-heavy skies, the Navajo awakened before the sun rose over northeastern Arizona's Black Mesa to guide their sheep to the natural waters of desert washes and springs to beat the overwhelming heat of day. For those who kept cattle in more modern times, they dug wells powered by windmills to pump groundwater into drinking troughs. The Hopi, farmers whose reservation borders Black Mesa's fringe, channeled these same waters onto hillside terraces where they planted their sacred and sustaining crops of corn.

But that was when there was water on Black Mesa.

Today, few Navajo lead their sheep to water, the cattle troughs are no longer full, and the Hopi have abandoned many of the terraces as their springs, washes and groundwater have gone dry. Instead, they drive as far as 25 miles, often over untended roads, to water stations where they fill 55-gallon barrels roped into pickup trucks. The disappearance of their water is threatening a traditional lifestyle for the Navajo and Hopi, who so value tradition that they voted not to have gaming and the millions of dollars it has brought to other Native American tribes. They do not blame the drought that has plagued the West for so many years now. They blame Peabody Western Coal Co.'s Black Mesa mine, which they say has been siphoning their water for three decades, and their own tribal governments that have allowed that water use.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 7, 2004 06:51 AM
Posted to Environmental Issues