Trinkets for the Navajos

The New Republic, July 3, 1971

THERE ARE MORE than 600,000 Indians in the United States, about half of whom, including 120,000 Nava­jos, live in the Southwest.  The Navajos are probably better off than most tribes.  They have the largest res­ervation outside of Alaska — 24,000 square miles, about the size of West Virginia.  Oil, uranium and natural gas have been found on Navajo land, and are being extracted by major corporations that pay the tribe royalties.  Revenues from these mineral leases have enabled the Navajos to establish a scholarship fund and maintain a large governmental bureaucracy.  Nev­er­theless, most Navajos live at a subsistence level, tending their pathetically dry farms or herding sheep.  Average family income is under $3000 a year; unem­ploy­ment chronically exceeds sixty percent; malnutri­tion and alcoholism are rampant.

Indians, of course, are no longer the only inhabi­tants of the Southwest.  They’ve been surrounded by genus americanus — a strange people who, though con­stituting only six percent of the world’s population, manage to consume sixty percent of its resources, mainly by exploiting the underdeveloped nations of Latin America, Asia and Africa, but frequently by exploit­ing the Indians.  Within the past few decades these Ameri­cans have totally altered the face of the South­west.  They have dammed rivers, laid highways and built great cities.  These cities in turn have produced smog, suburbia, and an ever-growing appetite for water and electricity.

Until recently, the water and power needs of Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix and other Southwest cities could be met without unduly en­croaching upon the Indians.  By the mid-sixties, how­ever, air pollution in Los Angeles became so bad that construction of coal-burning power plants was banned.  Phoenix and Tucson exhausted their local water sup­plies and de-manded huge infusions from the Colorado river.

Throughout the Southwest the desire for elec­tricity stimulated by power com­pany advertising — continued to grow many times faster than the popu­lation.  The solution to these multiple problems was to go after the Indians’ resources — their coal, their water, and inescapably, their land and clean air.

To this end, the Southwestern power companies, joining with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, developed a far-reaching plan.  Coal in the Navajo and Hopi res­erva­tions (some of it high in mercury) would be strip-mined, then burned at giant gener­at­­ing plants that would be cooled with Colorado river water.  Power from the gener­at­ing plants would be carried to Los Angeles and other cities over long-distance trans­mis­sion lines, and some of the power would be used by the Bureau of Reclamation to pump Colorado river water uphill to Phoenix and Tucson.

Peabody Coal, America’s largest strip-miner, was brought in to dig up Black Mesa, a massive highland in the heart of Navajo and Hopi country, while the power com­panies themselves began building generat­ing plants.  Thus far two are completed the Mohave plant, operated by Southern California Edison, and the Four Corners plant, operated by Arizona Public Service.  Four more are scheduled for completion by 1977, and when all six are fully operational they will emit more ash and dust than New York City.

WHAT DO THE Indians get for their resources?  Well, for 65,000 acres of land on Black Mesa, Peabody is paying the Navajos and Hopis $1 an acre per year.  For the coal itself, from what will be the largest strip-mine in the world, Peabody is giving the Indians 25 cents a ton.  (By contrast, Peabody chips in 40 cents a ton to the United Mine Workers health, welfare and pension fund.)  In addition to coal, Peabody is extract­ing nearly a billion gallons a year of pure fossil water from thousands of feet below the surface of Black Mesa.  Peabody mixes this water with pulverized coal to form slurry, which is then carried to the Mohave generating plant 275 miles away by means of a giant pipeline.  For use of this valuable water Peabody pays the Navajos and Hopis about $20,000.

Most interesting of all is the highly complicated shuffle by which the Navajos were coaxed into sur­rendering their precious Colorado River water rights in exchange for the many “benefits” that strip-mining and power-generating will bring.  Because it is the only steady source of water in a region that is essen­tially a desert, the Colorado is probably the most con­tested river in the world.  Navajo rights to the Colo­rado date back to 1868, and thus have priority — or rather had priority — over most recent claims.  Navajo rights were also potentially very large equal, accord­ing to U.S. Supreme Court rulings, to the amount of water necessary to irrigate all the practi­cably irrigable land on the reservation.

Other claimants to the Colorado’s waters — and there are more claims than there is water — were understandably fearful that someday the Navajos would exercise their rights.  Arizona was particularly nervous, since its plan to pump billions of gallons of Colorado water to Phoenix and Tucson hinged upon nonuse by the Navajos of their entitle­ments.  All fears were resolved in 1968 when the Navajos were persuaded to limit their claim to 50,000 acre-feet of upper basin water, and, what was more, to give two-thirds of that to the power compa­nies free of charge for cooling one of their coal-burning plants.  In return for this extraordinary con­cession the Navajos were given Peabody’s meager pay­ments, enumerated above, a grant of $125,000 for the Navajo Community College, plus a few hundred jobs in the mines and generating plants.  It was like trading away Manhattan Island for $24 worth of trinkets.

Even if the Navajos had gotten better terms for their resources, it’s doubtful that strip-mining would benefit them in the long run.  Peabody promises to em­ploy about 375 persons at Black Mesa, of whom 300 or so will be Indians.  But these jobs will last only un­til the coal is depleted in about 35 years.  Meanwhile, fifty Navajo families currently sheepherding on the north rim of Black Mesa will lose their livelihoods.

There is also great concern about the Indians’ water supply.  Peabody firmly insists that its slurry wells are so deep they will have no effect upon subsurface water tables.  But the U.S. Geological Survey has stated that the water table north of the strip-mine may drop 100 feet over the life of Peabody’s lease.  And, say the Indians, the gouging of Black Mesa has already blocked off natural springs and washes, interrupting the surface flow of water to livestock and crops.

AND AFTER 35 years?  The jobs then will be gone, leaving only empty hulks of gener­ating plants and mountains of overturned earth as monuments to America’s hunger for electricity.  “We will be like the people of Appalachia,” says Robert Salabye, a Navajo Vietnam veteran, “where coal mines have destroyed the health of the people who worked in them, left the land scarred and the people without hope.” True economic development, many Navajos are coming to believe, would be for the tribe to develop its own re­sources, not give them away; to promote clean indus­try that is permanent, not dirty industry that exploits and runs; to use Navajo water for irrigation, not for slurry lines or for cooling power plants that benefit cities hundreds of miles away.

So the Navajos are in a quandary.  Many tribal council members, while admitting they entered into the contracts without full knowledge, are nevertheless reluctant to back out now; they fear the loss of tribal revenue and that other corporations will not build plants on the reservation if Peabody is kicked off.  A lot of younger Navajos are not so cautious.  They call for lawsuits, strict regulations and other pressures that would eventually force Peabody to stop mining.  Some talk of sabotage.

Peter MacDonald, the newly-elected tribal chair­man, is caught in the crossfire.  MacDonald is an elec­tronics engineer (he worked on the Polaris missile guidance system), a Republican and a believer in pri­vate enterprise.  He’s also a shrewd politician who takes pride in standing up for his people.  Lately he has called for renegotiation of the Peabody contract and a halt on new power plant construction until ade­quate pollution controls can be installed, and he could go further if his constituents demand it.

Because they will spew forth an enormous amount of pollutants, smogging not only Indian land but vast expanses of the pristine Southwest, the power plants of the Colorado plateau are fast becoming one of the hottest ecological issues since the SST.  At hearings in Albuquerque last month, Senate Interior Committee chairman Henry Jackson (D-Wash.), who fancies himself something of an environmentalist, defined the region’s task as one of reconciling the “urgent” need for increased electric power with the equally pressing need for protecting the environment.

That’s not the real issue.  The root problem is to decrease America’s appetite for neon glitter, artificial air and electricity-devouring conveniences such as aluminum beer cans — or, if that can’t be done, to arrange that those who desire electricity bear the full costs of its production.  “Why should Indians be forced to suffer the conse­quen­ces of America’s power madness?” asks Peterson Zah, a young Navajo legal aide.  “If the cities must have power, let them put up with the filth that their power greed produces.”

            This if the first of a two-part series on Indians of the Southwest.