Black Mesa

4 Pages 1077 Words

Black Mesa in Muddy Water

“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 (Reilly 1).” Peabody Coal Company has pumped water from beneath the Hopi and Navajo reservation for almost thirty-five years. In the beginning of the 1960’s Peabody signed leases with the Hopi and Navajo tribes that gave permission to the coal company to search and mine coal deposits on over 100 square miles of the Black Mesa. The water is then mixed with pulverized coal into a slurry line that transports the coal 273 miles to Laughlin, Nevada. Currently, slurry lines are rarely used; much more astonishing is that the slurry line is being employed in one of the driest regions on Earth. Regardless of what the company and tribal leaders maintain, many natives insist that the usage of the water from the Black Mesa has “thrown the aquifer out of balance, because natural discharges and well withdrawals exceed any recharge (Dougherty 2).”
The environmental justice movement came to fruition as a synergy between economic development, social justice and environmental protection, and calls for the rectification of conditions unequally imposed on minority groups (Switzer 40). Black Mesa Trust was a Native American protectionist group founded to “safeguard, preserve and honor the land and water of Black Mesa (http://www.blackmesatrust.org/).” This group was created in 1999, with the specific goal to address the harsh impacts of Peabody Coal Company’s water extraction from the Navajo aquifer on Hopi and Navajo culture along the Black Mesa. The group desires to be the voice of the people that have been silenced for almost thirty years in the name of revenue, and finally challenge the company’s mining activities and water usage before more of the wells, washes and ancient springs run dry (http:...