Voters gave an overwhelming stamp of approval to the Cortez City Council, turning thumbs down on a recall effort by a margin of approximately 82 percent to 17 percent.

The recall was initiated because of the council’s approval last year of the final plat for a small subdivision called Flaugh-Clark. Critics said the city was paying too much for a right of way through the Flaugh property to create a thoroughfare to the nearby Brandon’s Gate subdivision.

Supporters of the council said the right of way was needed.

Councilors Matt Keefauver, Robert Rime, Donna Foster, Betty Swank and Mayor Dan Porter were targeted for recall. However, just one candidate got on the ballot to replace any of the targeted council members.

A long-stalled wind-farm project at Gray Mountain near Cameron, Ariz., is moving forward despite a veto by Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley, Jr.

Navajo council delegates voted to override the veto on Nov. 23 after first failing to muster enough votes for the override.

The wind farm’s approval came after a fierce struggle in recent weeks.

On Oct. 21, Bobbie Robbins and Raymond Maxx, Tuba City council delegates, and Jack Colorado, Cameron Chapter delegate, co-sponsored a council resolution supporting Navajo Nation lease negotiations with IPP and Sempra Generation to develop a 500-megawatt wind farm on Gray Mountain [Free Press, November 2010]. The legislation passed the council in spite of a surprising allegation made by council delegate Norman John during the floor debate that afternoon that he might have been offered a bribe for his vote to approve it.

On the weekend prior to the veto, Tuba City’s Maxx talked with the president and felt hopeful that he would support the legislation that would bring jobs and economic benefit to the depressed area of the Navajo Nation. But on Nov. 8, Shirley vetoed the measure, saying he was concerned that John’s allegation had not been immediately addressed.

But since that allegation, said Bruce McAlvain of IPP, “the Ethics and Rules Committee has written a letter stating that they have not heard anything from John and have not been asked to investigate any of his allegations.”

Co-sponsors of the wind-farm legislation had been prepared for a possible veto and had been lobbying council delegates to call for an override if necessary. On Nov. 23 the override went to the council. On the first vote that morning the override legislation failed 57-19-12 (it needed a two-thirds majority vote to pass – 59 votes). But a second vote passed 64-8-16, giving approval to lease negotiations between the Navajo Nation, Sempra Generation and IPP. According to the lease negotiations, the developer will fund 100 percent of the $1.25 billion project. Construction is to be completed by 2013.

Opponents of a new uranium mine recently approved on the border of the Navajo Reservation near Church Rock, N.M., failed to win a review of the mine’s license by the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 15.

According to Uranium Resources Inc., the refusal of the Supreme Court to hear the case means legal challenges have been exhausted and the way is clear for the company to move forward with plans to extract 13.7 million pounds of mineralized uranium northeast of Gallup.

“It clears the last remaining legal challenge to our Nuclear Regulatory license and we will move forward towards the final development of the Churchrock/Crownpoint project,” stated Don Ewigleben, CEO of URI, in a press release. “We will continue to educate the community on the project, our focus on safety and the environment as well as the economic opportunity it creates for the area.”

Hydro Resources Inc, a subsidiary of URI, will construct and operate the mine.

The Navajo Nation vigorously fought the project, claiming the mine’s in-situ extraction technique would threaten to pollute an aquifer used by 15,000 Navajos, but the nation’s high court let stand a federal appealscourt decision upholding the mine’s license to conduct in-situ recovery of uranium ore. (Free Press, July 2010)

The mine is located on private land on the border of the Navajo Nation, which banned uranium-mining in 2005 because of its legacy of illness and environmental destruction across Dinetah, the Navajos’ homeland.

The question decided by the court in HRI vs. EPA is whether the private land in the “checkerboard area” of the Navajo Nation constitutes federally protected “Indian Country” as legally defined by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Feasibility studies will continue on the site until the end of 2011, according to URI, and assuming there is appropriate financing and a recovery in the price of uranium, construction is expected to begin in 2012 with an expected mining rate of 1 million pounds per year.

Despite URI’s assertion that the mine has cleared all hurdles, plaintiffs’ attorney Eric Jantz, of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, says more permits and environmental reviews are required.

“They do not have the state permit they need to go forward – they need to renew their discharge permit and they need to get a temporary aquifer designation from the state,” he said. “The idea that the mine can go forward at any time is not right.”

In-situ leach mining is a controversial new method involving injecting chemicals into the uranium ore to release it and then pumping the solution to the surface, rather than digging up the ore.

Opponents of the mine argue that insitu leaching permanently contaminates groundwater with injected chemicals and radioactivity from disturbed uranium ore. Industry experts argue they have proven they can return the water to safe levels following extraction, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agrees.

But opponents to the mine, Eastern Diné (Navajo) Against Uranium Mining and the Southwest Research Information Center, say there are too many unknowns, and the risk to a critical water source is too great to allow the mine.

“In-situ cannot be done safely,” Jantz said. “Data shows that once the groundwater is contaminated, it can’t be cleaned up because the radionuclides change the geochemical nature of the aquifer and it is never the same.”

He criticized the NRC for approving another uranium mine in the Church Rock area where a previous uranium mine’s tailing ponds breached in 1979, contaminating local rivers and soil to this day. The area is now a Superfund site.

“NRC’s position seems to be that this is like a Brownfield area since it is already contaminated,” Jantz said. “So essentially what they are saying is that it is a sacrifice zone.”

A county crusade against a plan to close some roads on national-forest lands north and west of Dolores stalled last month when several appeals demanding greater motorized access were officially denied while one appeal seeking to reduce road density was upheld.

The successful appeal by Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, a group advocating for improved wildlife habitat, means the Boggy-Glade travel-management plan of the San Juan National Forest has been overturned.

The Forest Service considered appeals from seven entities regarding the travel plan, which was approved by Dolores District Ranger Steve Beverlin in August.

Appeals came from the Dolores County Commission, the Dolores County Development Corp., the Town of Dove Creek, the Dove Creek Chamber of Commerce, and two individuals, in addition to the successful appeal.

Appeals can be made only by entities that submitted comments during the original public-comment period. Montezuma County did not meet the deadline to give comments, but sent a letter of support for Dolores County’s appeal, based on the belief that the counties would sustain economic hardships from the closure of roads used for hunting, firewood-gathering and other purposes by locals.

The issue of motorized access in the national forest has been hotly debated during packed Montezuma and Dolores commission meetings recently. There have been veiled threats against public-land agencies, increased vandalism of forest signs, theft of gates, and heated exchanges between the public and government officials, all highlighting the passions surrounding publiclands access.

Under the plan, 155 miles of roads were proposed for closure, but 93 miles were for administrative use only and were not open for public use anyway, Beverlin has said. The remaining 62 miles were to be replaced by 63 miles of ATV roads, he said.

The plan also banned cross-country motorized game retrieval in keeping with a similar trend on forests nationwide.

San Juan National Forest Supervisor Mark Stiles upheld the plan on all points raised in six of the appeals, but in a Nov. 12 decision letter, Stiles stated that two of nine points in the other warranted a reversal.

“My decision is to reverse the decision in whole based on . . .appeal points one and two,” Stiles wrote.

Bob Marion, a volunteer “forest watcher” for the group that filed the justified appeal, did so in part because road densities in the new travel plan exceed thresholds established in the San Juan National Forest’s recently revised Resource Management Plan to protect big-game habitat.

Those directives state that road density should be “moderate” and not exceed onehalf to one mile per square mile of constant roads, yet 40 percent of the travel-management plan area went over that limit, according to the appeal.

“Our interests are really wildlife and wildlife habitat and I don’t think the decision adequately addressed those needs,” Marion told the Free Press.

“Elk need protected areas that are welldefined and a substantial distance from motorized roads. I think the science is clear that road density excludes elk because they have less and less areas where they can go and not be disturbed.”

The travel plan put road density at 1.13 miles/square mile, or 0.13 over the maximum allowable range (equal to 19.9 miles of road) in the MA6B management area. The area covers 40 percent of the 245,800 acres in the travel plan, according to the appeal.

Marion disagreed with the travel plan’s statement that the excess amount “is negligible.”

“This is a large variation from the prescribed density. Twenty miles of road in the MA6B area is far from negligible and amounts to a violation of the existing Forest Plan,” the appeal states, which requests a decrease in the number of miles of roads to comply with the forest plan.

Studies from the Colorado Division of Wildlife support the claim of too many roads, according to the appeal. In a response to a draft management plan from 2009, the DOW stated that several roads in the Boggy- Glade area “parallel each other, are short, have no specific destination and branch out or spider web onto abandoned railroad grades, logging and fire roads, bisecting large areas of the forest, making them less valuable for wildlife.”

The second appeal point upheld by Stiles involved inconsistency with the overall forest plan regarding winter closure of trailheads to protect elk habitat.

Certain areas north and east of the Bradfield Bridge and west of Narraguinnep Canyon, including roads FR 504 and FR 504E, should be closed to winter motorized use to be consistent with the San Juan National Forest management plan, but are not, according to the appeal.

The area is important winter range for game and deserves protection from motorized use, according to the appeal. The Colorado Backcountry Hunters and Anglers group is concerned that a lack of winter refuge is a limiting factor for elk in the Boggy- Glade area and pushes them onto private land.

“The DOW has clear evidence that the elk come down to these areas in the winter, but instead of using the Boggy-Glade area as winter habitat they cross the river and move right through it because of the disturbance due to motorized traffic,” Marion said. “This becomes a financial issue because the elk go from public land to private land around Dove Creek, where they eat feed intended for livestock.”

The Boggy-Glade Travel Management Plan now sits in a bureaucratic limbo and cannot be implemented. The agency can put out a revised edition, or conduct another environmental assessment and then submit a new decision based on that, all subject to appeal.

In the meantime, wildlife in the area can only react to the conditions, positive or negative, established by managers and users of public lands.

“To me this discussion is not pro or con motorized use. I think that is phrasing it the wrong way,” Marion said. “It is an issue of protecting wildlife habitat that the forest plan specifies, because the elk cannot speak for themselves. People will come back to hunt here and maybe more so because the hunting experience will be better.”

Another travel-management plan, for the Rico area, was likewise overturned on appeal in December 2009 and is awaiting revision. That one was also overturned on the basis of complaints about too much motorized access.

Disappointed by a Colorado Court of Appeals ruling, Montezuma County will petition the state Supreme Court to hear its appeal in a case involving how personal property owned by oil and gas companies is taxed.

A three-judge appeals panel on Nov. 18 upheld a previous decision by the Colorado State Board of Assessment Appeals that slashed the county’s valuation of pipelines and equipment owned by Questar Exploration and Production for the 2007 tax year.

“Obviously we don’t know if the Supreme Court will take the case, but we’re going to ask them to consider that,” said Assessor Mark Vanderpool after the commissioners unanimously voted Nov. 22 to continue the fight.

Vanderpool, the commissioners, and commission attorney Bob Slough have long contended that the state’s recommended methods for assessing energy companies’ equipment and production are inadequate and allow the industry too much leeway.

At stake is hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue annually in Montezuma County and potentially millions of dollars statewide.

The dispute began in 2006, when Vanderpool – concerned that oil and gas companies were essentially self-reporting the value of their personal property – sought approval from the county commissioners to hire an accounting firm with expertise in energy appraisals to provide a valuation. The commissioners agreed, and the county contracted with Visual Lease Services, of Oklahoma, to conduct new appraisals and inspections of equipment and pipelines. The resulting valuations were 300 to 500 percent higher than had been reported by the companies, according to Vanderpool.

The actual value for personal property owned by 16 energy companies operating in Montezuma County jumped from $24.6 million in 2006 to $56.8 million in 2007 after the audit.

Local taxing districts received approximately $595,000 in additional revenue as a result of the increased property valuations in 2007.

Most of the companies accepted the new valuations, but Questar appealed to the Board of Assessment Appeals, saying the methodology used to arrive at the new valuations was not the one recommended by the state Division of Property Taxation.

The state provides appraisal guidelines and instructions that include a method of valuing oil and gas equipment. Vanderpool, however, believes those guidelines, which are not mandatory, do not result in an accurate value.

One of the main points of disagreement in the different methods is the typical “lifetime” of pipelines. The shorter the lifetime, the greater the amount of depreciation allowed for when deciding the equipment’s value.

The state guidelines set a lifetime of 14 to 17 years for pipelines, but Visual Lease Services believes the typical lifetime is 30 years or longer, according to Vanderpool.

Following the independent audit, the county set Questar’s valuation at $6.6 million and later increased that to $7.65 million after the company appealed the first amount to the county board of equalization, which is the three commissioners acting in their assessment-judging capacity.

But on Dec. 9, 2009, the state Board of Assessment Appeals found that Questar’s own valuation of $2.02 million was “more persuasive” than the $7.56 million, according to the decision written by the Court of Appeals panel. The county appealed, claiming the board had basically just rubberstamped Questar’s valuation.

But on Nov. 18, the appeals court supported the Board of Assessment Appeals, stating, “Our review of the BAA’s order is limited to determining whether the BAA committed procedural errors or errors of law. . . .The BAA, not this court, acts as the fact finder. . .Because there is sufficient evidence in the record to support the BAA’s findings of fact, we decline to disturb the order.”

The Court of Appeals ruling was an unpublished decision, meaning it does not set precedent or become case law. However, if the Supreme Court should decide to hear the case, its ruling would have broad ramifications for counties statewide that depend on property taxes from oil and gas companies to bolster their budgets.

If the Supreme Court refuses to hear the case or the county ultimately loses at that level, the extra tax dollars would have to be abated, or refunded, to the companies, and the only likely recourse would be to try to persuade legislators to change state law to support a different method of valuing oil and gas equipment.

A decade after she became manager of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, LouAnn Jacobson is finally getting a chance to enjoy the backcountry of the enormous, rugged landscape west of Cortez.

That’s because she retired Oct. 1.

LouAnn Jacobson has retired from her position as manager of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. Photo by Wendy Mimiaga

Until then, she had little time to explore what is one of the nation’s premier areas set aside to protect ancient cultural resources.

On her final day, she went for a hike, she said. “I wasn’t going to spend my last day in the office. I hiked to an archaeological site I had never been to before. It was a beautiful day.”

Ten years of hard work marked by periods of controversy and criticism have not changed Jacobson’s love of the 170,000- acre, BLM-managed monument, which was designated by President Bill Clinton in June 2000 over the stormy objections of many local citizens concerned about restrictions the new status would bring.

“One of the things that I want to do now that I have more time is explore a lot of backcountry, having that same sense of discovery that the public has. I have never lost that excitement of finding an archaeological site or seeing artifacts on the ground. I still have the little-kid approach.”

Many delays

Jacobson has been the monument’s first and only manager so far. (Heather Musclow is acting manager since her departure.) She served as interim manager for five months immediately following the designation, then was named to the permanent position.

“When they were getting ready to advertise the job, I decided – after months of saying I didn’t want to do this permanently – that I was emotionally and mentally invested in what was going to happen. So I sort of made the conversion that this was something very important to me and something I wanted to do.

“I started out with a certain level of trepidation of what I was getting into, but ultimately I’m really glad that I spent my last 10 working years doing this. It was an incredible experience.”

The experience had its ups and downs, of course. One of the most difficult tasks – and one of the main causes of criticism leveled at Jacobson – was the process of getting a management plan in place. That process took 10 years.

“Never did I think it would take so long to get the plan done,” she said. “Never in my wildest dreams and/or nightmares.” She said the BLM generally expects resource management plans to be completed in about three years. Because of bureaucratic delays, it took almost two years just to get the notice of intent to start the process published in the Federal Register, she said.

“That should have been a sign of what was going to happen.”

Part of the subsequent delay was the result of the high level of public interest in the plan, she said.

“The agency’s expectation, and it’s the proper one on some level, is that there be a lot of public involvement and public meetings,” she said.

“But the expectation of having all this public involvement and doing it in three years is pretty unrealistic.”

LouAnn Jacobson shows then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt around the Lowry Ruins in 2000, before Canyons of the Ancients was made a national monument. Photo by Gail Binkly

The BLM decided to form a monument advisory committee, and didn’t want to start the planning process until those individuals were chosen, so that further slowed the process. The openings had to be advertised in the Federal Register and the committee members had to be appointed by the secretary of the Interior after a selection process.

Then the contractors the BLM had hired to handle writing the plan turned out to be a disappointment, Jacobson said. “We ran into problems with unsatisfactory performance and escalating costs. My decision to terminate those contracts, which is pretty unusual, also led to delays.” New contractors had to be hired and brought up to speed, she said, but in the end the change “certainly saved the government money – potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

The plan was finally approved in June of this year, despite appeals filed against it by about a dozen parties, including Montezuma County. The current commissioners have been vocal critics of the monument, saying it imposes too many restrictions on livestock-grazing and oil and gas extraction.

Jacobson said the level of scrutiny and controversy, however, has not always been so high. “For awhile the local scrutiny actually diminished, and I would credit the monument advisory committee. They were meeting almost every three weeks and identifying the issues that were of concern to them. This provided an opportunity for the public to express their concerns, to talk to the advisory committee and BLM in an open forum. Those meetings and discussions helped to bring the level of concern down a bit.

“Along the way, [then]Secretary [Gale] Norton sent a letter to local governments and asked if they wanted to do something about the Clinton monuments, and the Montezuma County commissioners at that time sent a pretty complimentary letter back, talking about the committee.

“It’s only been in the past three or four years that some of the controversy has risen to the top again, particularly around some of the issues about oil and gas, and grazing.”

Now that the plan is in place and a logjam over a proposal to drill carbon-dioxide wells in an area with high cultural-site density has been broken, Jacobson hopes the controversy will subside again.

“I think we’ve demonstrated on the oil and gas side that we’ve set the tone to move forward with some pretty complicated projects,” she said. “Kinder Morgan [the CO2 company] hung in there for the time it took to work it out. They addressed our concerns and we learned how not to do things. Mistakes were made on both sides and we figured out how to resolve those. But along the way the commissioners were expressing concern about what we were doing and how long it was taking.”

Jacobson said she now gives a presentation to land managers about the Kinder Morgan project and how the issues were worked out.

Managing Canyons of the Ancients has always been tricky, Jacobson said, because of “the juxtaposition of really high cultural resources site density and fluid mineral leasing.”

The monument is part of the BLM’s decade- old National Landscape Conservation System, a collection of some of the country’s most spectacular public lands.

“Every area in the system has unique qualities,” she said. And each landscape has different issues. “The ones in Arizona are seeing horrific problems with illegal immigration, people tramping through the desert,” she said. “Other areas have more conflicts with grazing than we do. I’m thankful for many of the things I don’t have to think about.”

Canyons’ special concern, of course, is pot-hunting – the illegal looting of ancient artifacts. “It comes and goes, but right now it seems like pot-hunting and vandalism is on the upswing,” she said. “Our law-enforcement officers have their hands full. We’re lucky that we have two full-time law officers and a third to help, but with 170,000 acres, [catching offenders] still means being in the right place at the right time.”

There have been successes in recent years in nabbing pot-hunters, she said, but getting the cases through the court system remains a challenge. “There have been some disappointing sentences coming from the 2009 Blanding actions [that resulted in the arrests of 24 people for pot-hunting-related charges],” she said. “It’s still difficult getting people in the courts to understand that there is harm in these crimes, that they’re harming the Pueblo people and the Native Americans living today. It’s very emotional for them. And looting means the loss of opportunities for research and science and future generations.”

More people, more rules

Jacobson said she believes conflicts over public-lands management will intensify in coming years.

“More and more people are seeing public lands as a place to recreate, so it’s the lovingto- death syndrome. Unfortunately, some of the impacts that come with the increased interest result in more regulation. You see all the issues arising with travel management with the Forest Service – it’s occurring on the BLM side too. There are so many usercreated roads that are duplicative and are impacting resources.

“The interest in public lands is going to increase as people seek respite in the backcountry from urban intensity and busy lives.”

Another huge issue facing public lands, she believes, is the spread of invasive species and their impacts on native species and natural resources.

“I think those were the two top priorities we were looking at in implementation of the RMP for Canyons.”

Jacobson’s philosophy as manager was to keep most of the monument fairly rugged and undeveloped. “I think the outdoor-museum concept is working pretty well for us.

“The day after the monument was established we sat down and thought about, where are we going to send people that want to come here? We picked places the BLM had already been sending people to – Painted Hand, Lowry Ruin, Sand Canyon Trail, Sand Canyon Pueblo – and the next 10 years we stuck with that really, really close.”

Volunteers and staff at the Anasazi Heritage Center, which is the administrative center for the monument, have become good at matching visitors with appropriate destinations, depending on the vehicle they drive, how fit they are and how much time they have. Visitors are urged to stop at the Heritage Center first to get information about trails and sites, as well as the “Leave No Trace” ethic.

Changing the name of the Heritage Center (“Anasazi” is considered an outdated and somewhat offensive term) was something Jacobson never had time to do. “We had other things to deal with first,” she said. But some day a new name will be chosen.

In addition to finally getting a plan in place, Jacobson is proud of having helped to establish solid relationships between the monument and Native American tribes to enhance the center’s interpretation and education programs. Twenty-five tribes have affiliation with the monument, and there are close personal relationships with individuals from 10 or 12 of those tribes, she said. “Every time we get together with tribal elders I learn something new,” she said. “It’s a different way of thinking about things, and I think a better way.”

Another accomplishment during her term, she said, is the acquisition of approximately 7,000 acres of private land in parcels within or adjoining the monument. “As controversial as the acquisitions are on some level, we have worked only with willing sellers and have acquired some incredible archaeological sites – some of the most important sites in the history of Southwest archaeology. Those resources are now protected by federal laws and I think that’s very important.” Some key riparian areas have also been purchased, she said.

The volunteer program has been another success, she said. “We went from no volunteers on the ground to almost 250 people now, both with the Heritage Center and the monument. A lot of people deserve credit for that – the San Juan Mountains Association, the Elderhostel, the colleges.”

In the future Jacobson plans to be a volunteer herself, working mainly on projects outdoors.

“The volunteers set a great example for how to be retired,” she said, “and I intend to follow their lead.”

A child peeked out from behind the serape blanket covering the door of the shack where Marlene Kerley and her three children live. Her home is located behind a small rocky escarpment that hides her from the view of tourists driving the scenic highway in the Painted Desert to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Broomstick dowels served as the posts to hold up her roof, while layers of towels covered the windows above her children’s beds. The stove pipe intersected the roof near the broomstick. There was no plumbing and only a plastic dish pan for a wash basin.

Marlene Kerley stands at the door of the shack where she raised her three children on the western side of the Navajo Nation. Housing remains a problem on much of the reservation as younger generations seek to abandon traditional hogans for more modern shelter. Photo by Sonja Horoshko

Every fall she wrapped the home inside and out with plastic that to keep away the snow and cold.

Walter Phelps of Leupp, Ariz., organized a house-raising project when he learned about Kerley while campaiging in the rural Navajo area during his successful bid to represent the Navajo people of Cameron, Coalmine, Leupp, Birdsprings and Tolani Lake as their council delegate in the new 24-member legislature.

“I do feel that Marlene’s situation is much more common than leaders want to admit,” Phelps said. “Navajo’s situation can be compared to other tribal communities, especially San Carlos here in Arizona, who I know have some serious housing needs as well.”

Kerley walks with a cane. She is hopeful that her dislocated hip is healing because of the care she receives from Indian Health Service in Tuba City, 28 miles away.

That care feels right, even hopeful, unlike the community assistance she requested at her chapter for repair of the leaking layers of second-hand roofing material that did not materialize. “I have been asking for help from our delegates and the Navajo Housing Authority, but no one responds to me.”

Although Kerley fell through the cracks of public assistance she persevered, raising her family in two lean-to rooms built with her own resourcefulness, nearby refuse at a transfer station, and materials cast-off from neighbors.

“Mr. Phelps came inside to talk to me about our community issues. It was the first time anyone had come to talk to me,” said Kerley. “I showed him the pole holding up the roof, and the mold growing on the beam there. I told him the truth about home conditions and showed him mine.”

Substandard conditions among Native housing are staggeringly common. April Hale, communications manager for the National American Indian Housing Council in Washington, D.C., provided statistics to the Free Press showing that 1 in 5 Native Americans live in overcrowded homes and on some reservations, nearly 25-30 people live in a three-bedroom home.

“About half of Native American homes are considered inadequate by any reasonable standard and less than half of all reservation homes are connected to a public sewer,” Hale said.

Although 20 percent of Indian homes nationwide lack complete plumbing facilities, on the Navajo reservation, nearly 31 percent lack complete plumbing.

Housing and Urban Development defines a home as substandard if it is dilapidated and does not provide safe and adequate shelter, endangers the health, safety or well-being of a family in its present condition, has one or more critical defects, or has a combination of intermediate defects in sufficient number or extent to require considerable repair or rebuilding.

It is also considered substandard if it does not have operable indoor plumbing or a usable flush toilet, bathtub or shower inside the unit, no electricity or inadequate, unsafe electrical service; no safe, adequate source of heat; or if it should, but doesn’t, have a kitchen.

Jack Colorado, current and outgoing council delegate representing Cameron Chapter, said the first he heard about Kerley’s situation was at a chapter planning meeting when she requested help. “I was told the discretionaryhousing funds at the chapter were depleted. I suggested she see the IHS because sometimes they help with environmental issues, like the mold in the inside of her home. After that, I never received any updated information on her.”

When Kerley welcomed Phelps into her home he says he was shocked “by her living situation and how kind she is,” said Phelps, “even in this circumstance.”

Kerley showed Phelps the documentation for her home-site lease and requests for help, telling him, “I paid for this.”

Initially, when he discussed her circumstances with his staff and family, “I just wanted to repair her roof, patch it to keep rain from coming through, stop the mold and mildew. But one of my staff members took a camera over there to see for herself. She literally cried when she returned after meeting Marlene and seeing how she fell through the cracks of the bureaucracy.”

The staff member challenged him, asking how he thought walls that weak could hold up a new roof. Then, he added, “I asked her and the staff if they are suggesting I build a new house? The answer was, ‘yes.’ I asked them in return to volunteer, back me up.”

That was the turning point. The group announced the project as a house-building event, hoping to attract the volunteer construction muscle and the skill they needed to erect the framing for sides and roof in one day.

Phelps went to the Navajo Housing Authority with a pick-up truck and a flatbed. He was sent out to the material yard behind the offices where he was told to load up whatever he needed.

“I took everything I could think of to get the job done, even a doorknob set and some roofing,” Phelps said, but he wondered if the Navajo people would come to help one of their own.

Early on the morning of Sept. 4, Phelps drove over to Cameron, 82 miles north of his home at Leupp on the reservation. Turning in to the site on the rocky road, he saw 15 vehicles parked in a circle around the stem-wall foundation.

Men in work clothes with tool belts strapped to their hips waved at him. Women pitched tents for cooking. Teens from the Church of the Nazarene in Flagstaff unfolded tables and chairs, and an elder uncle from the Cameron community carried wood to a fire pit, stacking it beside the cook pots and the camp fire where vegetables were chopped for mutton stew to feed the construction crew at noon.

Women came bearing watermelons for dessert, and men rolled up their sleeves and worked on the framing with hammers and levels in hand, balancing on wood rafters under the hot sun. The temporary community hummed with excitement.

At 10 in the morning ten people lifted the first wall upright under the clear blue sky. Applause erupted while Kerley and her three children watched from the shade of a golf umbrella.

“My children heard Mr. Phelps tell me he would get some people together from here to build us a new, safe house. When he left, my children said they didn’t believe him and I shouldn’t either because nothing good ever happens anyway.”

Although volunteer crews went back the next weekend to pour the concrete floor, install the electrical wiring, hang the three windows and a door and partially shingle the new roof on the one-room house, according to Phelps there is still more to do before the family can move out of their shack.

That first weekend, “we ran out of roofing,” but he was hopeful they’d get the last three squares needed and the dry-wall up before the weather turns cold out here. “I am confident we can do it. It is a new beginning.”

Skip Curley, president of the board of directors for Fort Defiance Housing Corporation, dba Sandstone Housing, a not-forprofit organization providing housing for Navajos, describes “substandard” as a culturally ambiguous term.

“Elders love their hogans, which lack amenities like flooring and plumbing. But the structures are culturally traditional and they prefer to live in them. They are,” in fact, very beautiful in their simplicity. “The elders are very comfortable in them.”

But he describes their grandchildren as the “other group,” the younger generation with a higher, urban standard of living. They expect to drive new pick-ups and live in homes with amenities their grandparents never dreamed of.

He added that modern reservation families find it difficult to get a loan on trust land, “so they get their home-site lease and then build out themselves.”

Sandstone Housing’s loan program is federally subsidized because loans from the private sector are non-existent. “You cannot collateralize trust land.”

The federal government developed construction guidelines to support the subsidized loan programs.

“On the reservation the guidelines include a construction engineer to oversee the code,” said Curley. “But traditionalism plays into the code, too. When I worked for pueblo housing, the federal government wouldn’t let them build with adobe even though the buildings there had been standing for hundreds of years.”

After years of debate, “they finally compromised. Pueblos would have to put rebar in the adobe to help keep it from falling down.”

HUD interactive maps show 2009 statistics for low-income households in Coconino County, where Kerley lives, as typical of all the counties in the Navajo reservation: 10,125 (76 percent) are low-income houses. Of those, 945 are substandard units; 960 are overcrowded, 5,780 are cost-burden units (paying more than 30 percent gross income towards housing costs.)

Homes lacking complete kitchen or plumbing facilities are the most severe housing problem, followed by overcrowding, followed by cost-burden. But if a household has more than one of these problems it is counted with the most severe problem.

Progress on Kurley’s new one-room home continued during the next eight weeks. The roofing was donated, a new outhouse built. And when electricity and water arrive Kerley’s house is ready with wiring and plumbing.

The doors and windows are thermal panes and located where she is protected from the frigid wind coming down Gray Mountain.

Early in November, Phelps sent out a succinct e-mail: “During the past couple of months we had the privilege to help build a small but safe dwelling for Marlene Kerley in Cameron.

“Marlene had been living in a ‘shack’ with her three children, but through the generous donations of many individuals with caring hearts and the skilled labor of many others, she will be spending this winter in the newly completed home. She has invited us all to attend her house warming on November 13. . .”

The housewarming was a celebration. The Kerley family even has a few new furnishings. Her home is secure, the roof won’t leak and the stove’s warmth will spread evenly through the one room they now call home.

She hopes to add on some day, but in the meantime she is convinced that her life is turned around.

“This changed my children. It changed my family. Now they will believe. I prayed and prayed for help. I think an angel brought everyone to us.”