Agriculture is supposed to be dead or dying in the Four Corners, but every year, the Four States Ag Expo makes it clear that reports of ag’s death are quite premature.

The Four States Ag Expo in Montezuma County is now in its 28th year and is the largest agricultural exposition between the Great Plains and the West Coast.

It generally attracts 10,000 to 12,000 people every year, according to Elizabeth Testa, a member of the Ag Expo board. “They come from all four of the states in the Four Corners area,” she said.

The event, which will take place March 18-21 at the county fairgrounds, features vendors with expertise in everything from large farms to backyard gardens, raising a few animals to running large ranches, harvesting techniques, sustainability, bee-keeping and organics.

There will be hands-on demonstrations, competitive events, children’s activities, and FFA activities for the next generation of ag producers. More than 20 educational clinics, seminars and demonstrations will provide information on a variety of topics. In addition, there will be entertainment including antique tractor pulls and draft horses pulling trolleys.

“We have a bull sale and a big horse program, ranch rodeo and ranch sorting,” Testa said. “We have a youth and family day on Sunday. So we try to be all things to all ag people.”

This year, organizers are excited about the appearance of journalist and photographer Lisa Hamilton as a featured speaker on Saturday, March 20. Hamilton is the author of the critically acclaimed book, “Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness.”

Hamilton has researched issues of sustainability and economic viability in agriculture, and profiled three families who have adopted a new approach to farming on a small scale. Her basic question is: What practices result in a sustainable food supply, and how do farmers and ranchers embrace these good practices while remaining economically viable?

It’s a complicated matter, but there are solutions that she will present at the expo Saturday, beginning at 11 a.m.. A panel discussion at 3 p.m. will address the topic as it applies to different aspects of agriculture, such as sustainable cattle-ranching, boutique specialty farming, the community-supported agriculture movement, and the 21st century grange.

“This marks an expansion of the Ag Expo program into the realm of the sustainable and new approaches to agriculture,” Testa said.

She mentioned an historic-orchard project being done by Let It Grow Nursery in Cortez to capture and propagate the cuttings from historic trees in the area. “That’s the kind of new/old farm interests we want to attract to the Ag Expo,” she said. “I’m excited about this because I don’t think we’ve tapped into this before. We have had good coverage of traditional agriculture, and we will continue to do so, but now we’re also moving into orchardists, wine-growers, the real artisanal stuff like cheese-makers and organic wheat farmers in Dove Creek.”

In addition, there will be a full schedule of equestrian events to participate in or to watch, including workshops and demonstrations, equine clinicis, mounted shooting, ranch sorting and ranch rodeo.

Animals of all sorts will be on display and for sale, including at the second annual Four State Bull Sale. There will be beef/equine and swine judging and showmanship.

And on Sunday, the expo will offer “hands-on happiness” in a day for kids and families. All four days of the Ag Expo will offer events for kids such as carriage rides, a petting zoo, animals and more, but Sunday will have some especially kid-friendly bonuses: a stick-horse rodeo, face-painting, mutton- bustin’, and a beef show with a youth showmanship contest.

“We want to attract multiple generations,” Testa said, “so people realize agriculture is for the young generations as well and that the young people are involved in it.”

As for agriculture’s continued viability, she quoted something that Jude Schuenemeyer, owner of Let It Grow, likes to say: “If you eat, you’re involved in agriculture.”

The fairgrounds is 3 miles east of Cortez on Highway 160. Parking has been refined this year to increase capacity and reduced confusion.

For more info, see www. FourStatesAgExpo.com or call 970-565- 3414.

A judge’s decision earlier this year to halt the expansion of coal-mining at Black Mesa near Kayenta, Ariz., drew cheers from environmental groups opposed to the mines. But a closer look reveals that celebration may not really be in order.

“Peabody Western Coal Company’s Black Mesa Coal Complex has suffered a major setback as an Administrative Law Judge for the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) vacated a permit for the massive coal mining complex,” announced the Sierra Club and other environmental groups in a Jan. 8 press release, under the title “Hopi and Navajo Residents Stop Peabody’s Coal Mine Expansion on Black Mesa.”

The language is strange in part because no one involved with the mine – least of all Peabody Energy or the federal Office of Surface Mining, charged to regulate it – has noticed the major setback.

“Kayenta mine continues operating in a business-as-usual fashion with its existing permit,” said Beth Sutton, an Arizona-based Peabody spokeswoman.

Added OSM’s Rick Holbrook, who manages the agency’s Western Indian lands program: “Their permit allows them to continue operations at the Kayenta mine. There is enough coal in mining areas approved for mining to last until 2026.”

The Kayenta mine still supplies coal to the 2,250-megawatt Navajo Generating Station, 80 miles away in Page, Ariz. The other part of the Black Mesa Complex, the Black Mesa mine, went dormant with the shutdown of the Mojave (Nev.) Generating Station in June 2006.

Peabody is angling to secure a new permit in the hopes that the company can find a new customer for the remaining Black Mesa coal by 2026. The celebrated order represents little more than a slowdown in that process: Judge Robert Holt vacated a December 2008 permit granted by the Office of Surface Mining for a proposed expansion by Peabody because he found that the OSM had failed to conduct an adequate analysis of the proposal, which had been substantially changed from the time it was first prepared. Therefore, OSM will have to reconsider the permit and gather more information this time around.

So why all the rejoicing? Possibly because mining opponents have little else to celebrate, in the ongoing march of Peabody Coal through Navajo and Hopi lands.

Controversial giant

Peabody Coal is the world’s largest private coal company, “with 2009 sales of 244 million tons and $6 billion in revenues,” boasts the company’s web site. “Its coal products fuel 10 percent of all U.S. electricity generation and 2 percent of worldwide electricity.” A real-time counter representing tons of coal sold in 2010 tics up too fast to track: 36,960,903 and climbing, at press time.

The Black Mesa Complex contains hundreds of millions of tons of coal that’s world-renowned for its quality; Peabody has been making bank on the deposit. The company runs 28 coal operations, and Black Mesa has long been one of its brightest stars.

It’s also been costly. Charles Wilkinson, a legal scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote in his 1999 book “Fire on the Plateau” that the mining tore up graves, forced 36 traditional Navajo sheepherders to relocate, and polluted the air and water.

“One Hopi woman, a cautious, conservative person, told me the mining and air pollution were like rape,” he wrote.

Members of both tribes remember those original hurts, as well as new insults that have come with the mine’s ongoing feeding off the land. Many of those people are the activists who have formed groups like the Black Mesa Water Coalition and Diné Alliance, both of which have joined with the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups to fight the mines.

As just one example, water is a major ongoing source of strife at Black Mesa. The Hopis are a traditional farming people who rely on springs to irrigate their crops. But many of them are struggling to cope with springs they say were decimated by water withdrawals for the 273-mile pipeline that slurried coal to the now-defunct Mojave Generating Station. A 2000 report and a 2006 follow-up analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council corroborated the link, using data from OSM, the EPA and Peabody.

“The Office of Surface Mining has not done anything about reclaiming the water that Peabody has pumped out of the aquifers, which is now over 45 billion gallons,” complained Vernon Masayesva, a former Hopi chairman and executive director of the Black Mesa Trust.

Perspectives at odds

The Peabody leases were signed at a time when the tribes had little power to protect their interests, in terms of economy, human or environmental health. Over time, both tribes have made extraordinary strides in regaining that power and building the level of respect that’s appropriate for fully functioning governments.

Injustices remain. But today, the business- savvy elected leaders at Navajo and Hopi say even if the judge’s order were a thorn in the side for purveyors and regulators of Peabody coal, that wouldn’t be good news. Because today, $3 billion in tribal revenue from mining (as estimated by Peabody), including jobs for Navajo workers and a smaller number of Hopis, is part of the tribes’ hard-won power.

The Hopi tribal council got its back up last fall, and issued a unanimous statement that environmentalists weren’t welcome on the reservation, owing mostly to their role in the shutdown of Mojave and the consequent loss of up to $8.5 million a year in revenues for the tribe.

Navajo Nation president Joe Shirley quickly issued a statement supporting the Hopi decree.

“Unlike ever before, environmental activists and organizations are among the greatest threat to tribal sovereignty, tribal self-determination, and our quest for independence,” Shirley wrote. “By their actions, environmentalists would have tribes remain dependent on the federal government, and that is not our choice.”

George Hardeen, spokesman for the Navajo Nation, said environmentalists’ celebration of the closure of Mojave has continued to rankle the Navajo government.

“Nobody was saying anything about the people who lost their jobs. There was no compassion,” he said. “That bothered President Shirley. He spent 16 years as a professional social worker. He has a lot of empathy for people who lose their jobs on the Navajo Nation.” And beyond economic hardship, Hardeen said, job losses can lead to an erosion of culture – especially when tribal members are forced to leave the reservation to find work.

However, an environmental activist like Masayesva falls into a more privileged position, given that he’s also a Hopi tribal member.

“The council is controlled by what I call pro-Peabody [interests],” Masayesva said, “people who do not represent the feelings and positions of the grassroots people. They only speak for themselves and Peabody Coal Company.” His view could be fueled partly by an ongoing awkwardness between a centralized government formed at the behest of white influences and the traditional, village-based leadership with which it has never fully meshed.

In the bigger picture, Masayesva said, “Every Hopi is an environmentalist. Being Hopi means being an environmentalist. Every Hopi knows that we are supposed to be protectors, guardians of the Earth.”

Beyond 2026

Although the official tribal positions blast environmentalists’ perceived goal of stopping all mining at Black Mesa, Masayesva says that’s not the position of all the activists.

“The Hopi people are not opposed to mining, per se. We have a teaching handed down hundreds of years about the wealth at Black Mesa. . . underneath us. We are opposed to the destructive way that coal-mining is now being done. Strip-mining is the most destructive way to mine coal,” he said.

Peabody, meanwhile, has worked hard despite the decades of controversy to portray its mining operations as being environmentally sound and progressive. Sutton, the company spokeswoman, said Peabody has a solid track record of compliance with Department of Interior requirements and EPA regulations for clean air and water.

“Peabody has a good record of compliance with the Clean Water Act and believes the issues raised by groups long opposed to mining are frivolous,” she said.

Moreover, Sutton said, a lot of good can come from mining. Peabody as a whole, for example, “is pursuing a dozen global projects and partnerships to advance near-zero emissions and carbon-management technologies.”

She said the company has been culturally sensitive in its dealings with the tribes, and points to $360,000 in annual tribal scholarships as well as reclaimed lands “that are typically 20 times more productive for grazing than native range. A first-of-its-kind cultural plant program restores plants and herbs used for medicinal and ceremonial purposes.” Last fall, that program won the Arizona State Mine Inspector’s inaugural Best Reclamation Award.

But the relationship isn’t all rosy. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled against the Navajo Nation when it sued the Department of Interior for $600 million and accused the department of failing to uphold the tribe’s interest. At issue were 1987 lease amendments that set coal royalties at 12.5 percent – well above the rates laid out in the original 1960s leases, but far below the 20 percent the tribe wanted. The tribe had produced evidence that shady wrangling by Peabody executives had resulted in the lower royalties – which are still in effect today – but the argument found no purchase.

“It’s not as if the Navajo Nation and Peabody walk in lockstep on every issue,” said the Navajo Nation’s Hardeen. “That’s not to say the Navajo Nation is eager to evict Peabody. Clearly, we need the jobs.”

Masayesva wishes that the Navajo and Hopi tribes would join together in demanding redress for what he sees as a litany of ongoing environmental, health and cultural insults. But he knows that won’t happen without action against Peabody by the tribal governments, which have indicated just the opposite intention. His hope for change lies in the longer term.

“I’m going to predict that Navajo Generating Station is going to shut down in 2026,” he said, citing tightening environmental regulations, including a pending revision of EPA rules for Peabody’s water emissions. Right now, Peabody’s discharge permit doesn’t regulate anything but temperature, but new rules would include limits for selenium, nitrates, and other heavy metals and toxic pollutants.

“When Peabody has to pay the true costs of mining, and owners of [the Navajo Generating Station] have to pay the true cost of generating energy, it’s going to be very, very expensive,” Masayesva said.

And if he’s right, Masayesva sees an opportunity – and ample time — for the tribes to be ready to replace the lost energy production with renewable energy sources.

“That’s what Hopis and Navajos should be doing — looking for the bright side,” he said. “We need to be optimistic. The people who will do it right, and become a showcase for the world, are Hopis and Navajos. That’s what I would like to see: Hopis and Navajos coming together and making a vision for the future.”

Don’t hold your breath just yet, but some improvements are in the works at the decrepit Four Corners Monument, which continues to be a popular tourist stop despite its primitive accommodations.

But the plans fall far short of what the project could have been – a $4 million landscaped oasis complete with an air-conditioned interpretive center that was originally conceived and funded more than a decade ago.

The Four Corners Monument shows signs of wear and tear, as this crumbling interpretive area demonstrates. Plans are under way for improvements, but they are far more modest than originally planned. Photo by David Grant Long

The monument marks the only spot in the country where four states touch, and it also marks a boundary between Navajo and Ute Mountain Ute tribal lands.

But now, thanks largely to the persistence of the Four Corners Heritage Council — in the person of chairman Cleal Bradford of Blanding, Utah — construction of what is now termed Phase One of the projects is under way at least and, according to the $680,000 contract awarded to Weeminuche Construction Authority last month, must be completed by fall. The work will consist of lowering the actual marker, a granite and bronze pie divided into quarters that face the states they anchor, eight feet below its current location and making other improvements to the surrounding plaza.

Entrance to the momument presently costs $3 per head, for which sum visitors get to pose and photograph one another with a limb in each of the four adjoining states — Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.

Beyond this unique American oddity, however, the present amenities are sparse. The restrooms consist of portable toilets, and the loosely named visitors’ center is a rather barren room with a rack of sightseeing brochures and a space heater. Vendors at plywood stalls around the perimeter hawk jewelry, fry bread and other Native American wares. So twelve bucks for a family of four with two hot kids may seem a little steep.

Improvements have been long sought.

Bradford is an original member of the Heritage Council, which was appointed by the four states’ governors in 1991 to develop upgrades at the monument, along with other area projects it has since taken on. He has worked tirelessly to see the monument revamp implemented, but the road to fruition has been a bumpy one.

In 1999, Congress designated $2.2 million for improvements, with a provision that each of the states contribute up to $500,000 in matching funds. In other words, the feds would match whatever amount of money the states agreed to put in up to $2 million. Arizona kicked in its share largely in kind, drawing up detailed, comprehensive plans for the landscaping, interpretive center, real restrooms and much nicer stalls for the vendors.

The other states, with Colorado in the rear, finally ponied up their shares, and in 2004 a sort of groundbreaking was held at the monument with great fanfare.

Then nothing happened for five years except squabbling between the Navajo Nation and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, which jointly own the land on which the monument is located, with the Colorado quarter controlled by the Utes and the rest under Navajo (or Dine) rule. There were disagreements about whether the interpretive center and restrooms would be built on the Ute or Navajo land, and how the fees would be split — 50- 50 or 75-25. One member of the Heritage Council board called their differences as intractable as those between the Israelis and Palestinians. During that interlude, New Mexico took back its $500,000, Utah took back $200,000 and Colorado took back $300,000 that had been committed by the Department of Local Affairs, Bradford explained.

“That leaves us $1 million short of our local match, so we can’t use that half of the federal funds,” Bradford said. “That’s why we reduced the project down to what we’re calling Phase One, and we’re not using all the available funds on it.

“We lost a million dollars of the local match because of the delay, and hopefully that can be regained, but this isn’t the year to do it — everybody’s budget is being cut.”

The heritage council is only involved in getting the project built, Bradford stressed, not in the management of the site.

“That is not part of our participation — the Four Corners Heritage Council is assisting in the construction and getting it to where it’s an upgraded site,” he said, “but the management is something they (the tribes) have put into the future — I don’t even want to address that.”

The original proposal for the monument, here shown as envisioned by an artist, has been scaled down considerably.

Still, Bradford is excited to see the project finally moving forward after the long delay.

“We don’t know exactly what it (the marker) is going to look like when we get it all torn apart,” Bradford said in a recent telephone interview, “but the idea is to preserve as much as possible (of) the granite and all those materials.” The relocation will facilitate picture- taking, he explained, since tourists will no longer have to climb to a deck area to shoot their friends, but can now take photos from ground level.

However, the much-hoped-for restrooms and running water will not be forthcoming in the near future.

“Initially, we had planned to have the ‘vendor village’ all around be part of the project and then have restrooms and the interpretive center,” Bradford said, “but because of the fact we don’t have power and water there yet, we don’t want to build the restrooms and just have them sit.” When power and water might be installed is unknown, he said.

“We still feel there would be more pressure on being able to get more matching funds (from the states) if we go ahead with the things that can be finished, and that would better serve the public. We wouldn’t want to build something just to stay vacant until other things happen.”

The monument will remain open druing the construction, Bradford noted, with access to the vendors but not to the intersection of the states, which will barricaded with chain-link fence.

The two tribes haven’t yet addressed certain issues, including revenue-sharing, according to program manager Martin Begay of the Navajo Nation’s park system, and probably won’t in the near future.

Begay said the revenues from the entrance fees are currently “retained for operation of the monument.” The Utes at present don’t receive any revenues from the monument other than what individual vendors might collect, he said. Working out a revenue-sharing agreement will come at a later date, he said.

“We haven’t reached that point yet,” Begay said. “The only thing we have (at this point) is a memorandum of agreement for the construction.

“That issue — if it is an issue — will be covered by the finance plan that will be drawn up between the two tribes,” he said, and this will only happen “when the entire facility is built.”

And given the state of the economy, that may be a long time coming.

Nuclear energy can power millions of homes without emitting significant pollution, making it an attractive alternative to burning fossil fuels. But mining the uranium to power nuclear plants can produce political division, racial injustice and environmental degradation.

Indigenous tribes still suffer from horrific health problems and lingering contamination to land and water as a result of the last uranium boom, which fueled the nuclear-arms race of the Cold War. As a result the Navajo, Havasupai and Hopi peoples have banned uranium-mining on their lands and are fighting mines proposed on their borders.

This map shows the areas near Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona that have been placed under a “segregation order” banning new uranium mines for two years. However, mines with valid existing rights can continue to operate. Photo courtesy of BLM

But elsewhere, uranium is experiencing a resurgence. Near the Grand Canyon, a mine known as Arizona 1 symbolizes the struggle between demand for the relatively clean energy of nuclear power and the desire to protect our health and natural heritage.

The mine has approval from the BLM, and is touted as a new domestic energy source and an opportunity for jobs. But it is being challenged by environmental groups who say its permit has long expired and that it should be re-evaluated based on new ecological circumstances and scientific information in the sensitive Grand Canyon watershed.

“The legacy of past uranium-mining still lingers as deadly contamination of land and water near the Grand Canyon, and to think that new mining will yield different results is foolish and irresponsible,” said Taylor McKinnon, public-lands campaign director for the Center for Biological Diversity, an activist group known for challenging industry and government in court.

“If the U.S. decides to build new nuclear plants, and intends to source that material from domestic mines on public lands, then the consequence will be adding to a high radioactive-contamination burden that already exists throughout the Four Corners area.”

The center, along with the Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust and the Kaibab-Paiute Indian tribe, is suing the BLM for allowing the Arizona 1 mine to re-start without conducting supplemental environmental reviews after it sat dormant for 15 years. The traditional hard-rock mine sits on BLM lands 10 miles north of Grand Canyon National Park, and 35 miles south of Fredonia, Ariz. The ore will be trucked through a portion of the Kaibab-Paiute reservation on its way to the White Mesa Mill near Blanding, Utah.

Last summer, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued a segregation order that bans new uranium mines for two years on nearly 1 million acres of public land surrounding Grand Canyon National Park in order to better study mining’s environmental impacts.

However, mines with “valid existing rights” issued before the July 21, 2009, order — which includes the Arizona 1 mine — are exempt from the ban, a point of contention that has spurred a legal battle for public records and calls for increased federal scrutiny of mining impacts around the park.

The temporary segregation order could expand to a 20- year moratorium on mining in the area, called a mineral withdrawal, depending on the results of an ongoing environmental impact statement on the region due out next year.

A changing landscape

The Arizona 1 mine, owned by Denison Mines of Toronto, Canada, had shut down because of a poor uranium market in 1992, but was revived in 2007 after prices rebounded and is operating today on the original permit issued in 1988.

“The segregation [order] is subject to valid existing rights, so it does not stop all mining activity,” explained Scott Florence, BLM manager for the Arizona Strip district, where thousands of uranium mining claims are located. “Arizona 1 is a previously permitted mine, so it does not stop it and neither would a longer term withdrawal.”

But environmental groups disagree, arguing in their lawsuit that the mine’s permit and plan of operation are invalid because they expired after 10 years. They say the mine’s impacts must be judged in the light of new data regarding groundwater hydrology in the area, as well as changes in the landscape such as the arrival of the endangered California condor, increased tourism and more residents.

According to the revised lawsuit filed last month, the BLM 1988 Decision Record for the mine stated that “the duration of this operation is approximately 10 years,” and that BLM regulations provide that a plan of operations “remains in effect” only so long as the claimant is “conducting operations.”

“You can’t pretend this thing is still a valid mining plan when for 15 years nothing was going on at the site, or say that nothing has changed in the area for the last 20 years,” Roger Flynn, an attorney for the environmental groups, told the Free Press. “The BLM’s own regulations say it expires.”

The BLM disagrees, noting that some changes were made to the permit, such as a larger reclamation bond that corresponds with current prices, and a requirement that the mine obtain an air-quality permit from the Arizona Department of Environment, which it did. But additional studies beyond the original 1988 environmental assessment (a less-rigorous analysis than an EIS) were not required and the permit to mine had not expired.

“The plan of operation remains in effect until for some reason the company wanted to do something that was outside the scope of the original plan; then that might trigger a revision,” Florence said. “Basically, once the plan is approved, and they continue to operate within the parameters of that plan, then they can go until the mine is mined out and reclaimed.”

As far as changes in the area, the BLM is not convinced they require additional study, not even potential impacts on the endangered California condor, introduced to the area in 1996.

Under the Endangered Species Act, federal agencies are required to consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect endangered animals near a project area. But Florence said consultation was not required in this case because the condor falls under an “experimental population” designation and therefore “doesn’t have the full protection of the ESA; it puts them outside the realm of a regular listed species.”

High-paying jobs

Are the mining claims still valid?

“We believe so,” said Ron Hochstein, president and CEO of Denison Mines, in a phone interview. “The mine still holds its full plan of operations from 1990 when the shaft was sunk, but then it was stopped because of low uranium prices. We were put on care and maintenance of the mine, and when uranium prices justified going back in, that is when we started work again.”

Hochstein downplayed the environmental impacts of the smaller mine, and said it brings good jobs to an economically suffering region.

“People wrongly think these are very large open-pit mines, but they have a very small surface disturbance, between 10 and 20 acres, and are mined out and fully reclaimed within five years,” he said. “After it is done, you would not know a mine was even there.”

The Arizona 1 mine will produce some 50 local and contract jobs, he said. The ore is being trucked 300 miles to the White Mesa Mill in Blanding, Utah, also owned by Denison. That mill, the only uranium mill operating in the country, will employ up to 130 people once it is fully ramped up.

White Mesa processes the ore into yellowcake, a concentrated form of uranium that is shipped off to be processed into a gas and then into fuel rods for nuclear power plants.

Denison Mines also plans to re-open two other uranium mines that company officials say have valid existing rights in the segregation area – the Canyon Mine and the Pine Nut Mine — and has mines already operating in Utah and Colorado.

“We are hiring at all of our mines right now,” Hochstein said. “The U.S. wants to supply its own destiny; I don’t know what’s worse, having to rely on the Arabs for oil or the Russians for uranium.”

Hochstein said environmentalists’ contention that more studies are needed “are just allegations; there is no scientific reason we should not be mining.”

Eight linear feet

The BLM has eight linear feet of information regarding mines owned by Denison Mines in the segregated area, according to an agency response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Center for Biological Diversity.

“But so far we have only received about three inches of that,” said Mc- Kinnon, whose office is suing the BLM in a separate lawsuit for refusing to disclose the public records. In order to makes its case against the Arizona 1 mine, more information is needed on the original plan of operations and environmental reviews, he said.

“[President] Obama has given very clear directions to federal agencies to carry an assumption of disclosure, but the BLM has taken the opposite approach, and rather staunchly at that. They are behaving as a fiefdom, not as public agency.”

The BLM says there are approximately 10,600 claims being mined within the boundaries of the segregation order and proposed 20-year withdrawal. Salazar’s order grandfathers mines that have “valid existing rights,” a complicated legal distinction that is hotly debated and not clearcut.

But BLM officials say they have discretion in deciding on a valid claim. Mine owners must have done exploration and must prove the existence of a valuable mineral deposit, a fact that may or may not be verified by the BLM, before operations can begin.

“That is the Catch-22 if a withdrawal were to be put in place,” Florence said. “If the claim had prior exploration and could show they had an economically viable deposit, then most likely the claim would be found valid, but if they had not done any exploration then they probably would not be able to do that after a withdrawal.”

“The clear intent of the segregation order was to limit further activity to those mining claims,” countered McKinnon. “To my knowledge, none of the mining claims have valid existing rights because despite their own regulations, the BLM and the Forest Service never required mining companies to establish those rights, which they are supposed to do.”

The saga of Summerhaven may not be over.

Pete Singleton, an agent for the subdivision proposed on Granath Mesa north of Dolores, says the developers are leaning toward appealing a district judge’s recent decision overturning Montezuma County’s approval of zoning for Summerhaven.

“We have another week to make the decision,” Singleton told the Free Press on Feb. 27. “But it’s looking like that’s the route we’re going to go.”

Whether or not the developers choose to take the case to the Colorado Court of Appeals, Singleton said, it’s likely that they will return to the county with another application for small-lot zoning. The proposal has already come to the county twice, but this time, Pete Singleton and his brother, Tim, also an agent for Summerhaven, hope to present more information about water availability.

“That [a new application] may be a quicker route [than an appeal],” Pete Singleton said. “We want to present the water information that we weren’t able to present last time and make a stronger case.”

Summerhaven is proposed for a 160- acre tract owned by the Singleton family and their company, Sin Vacas, LLC, on Granath Mesa about 2 miles north of Dolores. There is no domestic water service to the mesa, and water availability was one of the most contentious issues in the often-heated debates that took place regarding the proposed subdivision.

The Singletons came before the county planning commission early in 2007 seeking approval for Agricultural- Residential 3-to-9-acre zoning for the development, which at that time was projected at 44 lots and which was to be supplied with water only through cisterns. They were turned down both by the planning commission and the county commissioners after opponents raised a number of concerns about fire safety and compatibility with existing zoning on the mesa, which is primarily in large tracts.

They returned with a new proposal in December 2007, this time proposing 36 lots and having obtained permission from the state for each homeowner to drill a well. The planning commission again recommended against the proposal, but this time the county commissioners gave the zoning change their OK on March 10, 2008.

Three Granath Mesa landowners sued the county and Sin Vacas over the zoning approval, and on Jan. 16, 22nd Judicial District Judge Sharon Hansen overturned the commissioners’ decision, saying there had not been “substantial changes in facts or circumstances” that justified the reversal of their original decision under Colorado law.

The ruling came on the heels of another case in which Hansen found in favor of the county, which had rejected a proposal for a large evaporativepond waste facility proposed by Casey and Kelly McClellan near Hovenweep National Monument. The cases demonstrate the thorniness of land-use planning in Montezuma County and the vigor with which both proponents and opponents of projects will defend their views.

Pete Singleton takes issue with Hansen’s ruling against Summerhaven, particularly her contention that little changed from the first proposal to the second. In one portion of her ruling, she stated, “Both proposals relied upon water for the Summerhaven Subdivision through wells.” “That’s 100 percent wrong,” he said.

“That’s a complete fabrication of fact. The first proposal was cisterns only, and a covenant disallowed anyone to drill a well.”

The reasoning behind that, he said, was that the developers hoped to persuade Montezuma Water Company, the rural water supplier in the area, to run a pipeline up to the 7,000-foot-elevation mesa, something that the company has said would be cost-prohibitive.

Singleton said the developers were going to charge a per-lot fee for each tract sold, and put the money into an account as a “giant carrot” for Montezuma Water.

However, after the subdivision’s first rejection, the developers changed tactics, opting to allow homeowners to drill wells. They obtained a letter from the Dolores Water Conservancy District indicating its willingness to sell augmentation water to the owners to make up for the water that would be removed from the aquifer by the wells. In addition, they drilled a test well to ensure that water was available in the area. They have since drilled a second well, he said.

“We had a full augmentation plan, with every single residence being covered through DWCD,” Singleton said. ‘I bought water for every residence.

“For Judge Hansen to say there’s no substantial change from the first proposal is just wrong,” he said.

Another of the main objections voiced to the subdivision by opponents was that it would be incompatible with the neighborhood. According to one opponent who spoke before the planning commission, there are only 56 dwellings on the mesa now, and the subdivision would nearly double that number. David Doran, one of the landowners who sued, told the county commissioners that more than 4,000 acres of Granath Mesa is currently in tracts of 35 acres or more, while about 380 acres is in parcels smaller than that.

No AR 3-9 zoning had been formally granted anywhere on the mesa prior to the Singletons’ application, as Hansen noted in her ruling.

Singleton maintains that AR 3-9 zoning, though the smallest zoning designation allowed by the county except for PUDs and urban-influence areas, is big enough to maintain the county’s rural character, one of the goals stated in the land-use code. “They look at a three-acre lot like it’s a condominum plot,” he said of opponents of his subdivision. “But that’s a big tract. In a lot of other places, you can have half-acre lots or smaller.”

He also said opponents misunderstand the concept of compatibility by interpreting it to mean similar lot sizes.

“Their theory is larger acreage, larger acreage,” he said. “So if you have one development with small acreage, you’re going to have giant clusters of small acreage in that area.

“The land-use code describes LIZ [Landowner-Initiated Zoning] as a patchwork. There needs to be a mix. Of the 4,500 acres on the mesa, 2,500 is in 35 unsplittable tracts. There needs to be some room for other people. What the land-use code is saying about like zoning means residential with residential, not having massive industrial [projects] in a residential neighborhood. It doesn’t mean lot size.”

Singleton said keeping the lots small will make them affordable to locals and people looking for summer cabins with easy access to the national forest.

“I understand that the people opposed to this are looking basically at us having AR 10-34 but that seems out of the running for us.

“There’s only one spot in the county where there is a restriction against AR 3-9 zoning, and that’s the Dolores River Valley, so why should there be a problem with our project?

“I don’t know exactly what the right formula is for our county to move forward with preserving our rural character, but you don’t protect rural character by removing everyone’s rights.

“Three acres now sells for about $75,000. For most people, that leaves living in Cortez as their last option.

We’ve kind of reached that price point where we’re going to have a county where the prices have totally outgrown what the people here kind of need.”

Singleton agrees with opponents, however, that more thought needs to be put into land-use planning in the county. “There needs to be more public input and more planning. We need to have mixed areas, buffers between different kinds of uses — I would agree with that.”

Singleton said he is frustrated by the process his family has had to go through.

“The appeal process is insane. I waited an entire 12 months to get this done. Casey McClellan had his decision way before mine.

“I’m three years into this thing. It’s crazy. I feel like I’m Red McCombs.

“We’ve gone through the wringer, spent close to $100,000 in legal fees to zone a property that is totally unzoned.”

Ember Moreno of Mesa, Ariz., grew up in Blue Canyon, near the Tuba City/Red Lake area of northern Arizona.

She remembers, as a child, “going to get water from a water pump at the covered uranium site right there east of Tuba City,” a site now known as Site 160, where toxic wastes were dumped. “We drank the water, we washed our clothes at the spigot near the side of the road in front of where the trailers are now.

Site 160, where hazardous materials were deposited, sits on the north side of Highway 160 four miles east of Tuba City, Ariz., across the road from the site of the former Rare Metals Mill, which processed uranium ore from 1956 to 1966. Photo by Sonja Horoshko

“I was born in ’57, so this was in the early ’60s.”

She said there were always several vehicles lined up and everyone was getting water there.

“Nobody ever said, ‘Don’t drink it!’” recalled Moreno, now an insurance verification representative at the Banner Heart Hospital in Mesa.

Contaminated water

Fifty years later, the legacy of uranium- mining still hangs like a specter over the Navajo Nation.

Tourist maps call the country in the Western Agency of the Navajo Nation, the area near the Grand Canyon, a painted desert. Mineral-rich land in the yellows, salmons and reds of earth and sandstone unfolds under a cerulean sky north of Flagstaff, west of Kayenta and south of the Glen Canyon Dam.

The region spreads on both side of highways 89 and 160, dog-legging the Hopi-reservation mesas high above the Little Colorado River and other small drainages that meander past hamlets such as Black Falls, Gap-bythe Way, Coalmine, Cameron, Gray Mountain, Inscription House, Grand Falls, Black Mesa, Oljeto and Kayenta.

An Indian Country map circa 1960 hangs in a Kayenta café identifying these places with symbols. Four miles east of Tuba City, a black dot marks, “Rare Metals,” as if it were a town.

Instead, it is the site of Rare Metals Corporation, a uranium mill that processed yellow ore dug from hundreds of mines picked out of the desert to fuel atomic-energy projects during the Cold War.

From June 1956 to November 1966, the Tuba City Rare Metals Mill processed 796,489 tons of uranium ore. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, when the mill closed and control of the site reverted to the Navajo Nation, three connected milltailings piles containing some 800,000 tons of material and three evaporation ponds remained. The mill became a Superfund site.

All that is left of the Rare Metals Mill today is a fenced remediation site, some concrete building foundations overgrown with weeds near the highway, a few scattered mobile homes, used until recently as residences — and concern that the groundwater downhill from the mill contains elevated concentrations of contaminants related to milling operations.

In 1968, according to the U.S. EPA, the surface of the tailings piles was treated with a chemical binder to keep the material intact, but by 1974, the crust “was no longer effective.”

In 1972, a gamma-radiation survey of the Tuba City mill site and adjacent area found “anomalous gamma radioactivity” at 14 sites, seven of which contained uranium tailings. “The contamination was attributed to dispersal of tailings material by wind action,” states the EPA’s web site.

In June 1988 the DOE, assuming responsibility for remediation of the Rare Metals site, began construction of a disposal cell. When completed in 1990, it covered about 50 acres. Nearly 2.3 million tons of contaminated materials are entombed in the cell and, according to the DOE fact sheet, the cell contains “all of the residual radioactive materials at the mill site, the contaminated windblown materials from surrounding properties, and debris from the demolished buildings.”

Although the DOE has long-term responsibility for the site, the Navajo Nation retains title to the land.

A plume on the move?

But the hazardous materials in the area continue to defy containment. The DOE subsequently found a contaminated groundwater plume covering about 320 acres extending downhill to the the south and southwest from the former mill site.

Levels of molybdenum, nitrate, selenium, and uranium in the 3.8 millioncubic- yard contaminated groundwater plume exceed the U.S. EPA’s maximum safe limit.

The DOE’s groundwater-remediation strategy is designed to reduce concentrations of these five contaminants in the groundwater plume, which extends from the former mill site toward the Tuba City Open Dump site and beyond it to the Moenkopi Wash drainage. However, the precise source of the contamination is unclear.

Complicating the situation is the presence of the dump, which straddles the Navajo-Hopi border and operated from 1950 through 1997 with limited oversight by the BIA. During that time it was an uncontrolled dump that received solid waste from local communities in the Tuba City and Moenkopi areas. There are allegations that hazardous wastes from the mill were also buried there.

In 1995, the BIA began studies of soil and groundwater in the vicinity of the mill and dump. Those studies resulted in the shutdown of the dump in 1997. From 1999 to 2008, the BIA funded studies by the Hopi tribe to investigate the shallow groundwater near the open dump site; those studies found contaminants in excess of EPA standards.

Further studies at the dump site have concluded that most of the material in the dump is municipal solid waste. Although the assessments found arsenic, strontium, vanadium and copper at elevated concentrations compared to native soil and rock, they found that the contaminants were not due to hazardous waste present at the site.

The BIA continued doing groundwater monitoring, installing 38 monitoring wells. The results showed elevated levels of 13 chemicals in the shallow groundwater near the dump site. Uranium was one of them; it was detected immediately down-gradient of the site at up to eight times the EPA Maximum Contaminant Level, MCL, for drinking water. Outside the site, contaminant concentrations in wells ranged from non-detectable to 2 times the MCL.   By 2007 the BIA had begun investigating possible additional sources of contamination. The agency collected testimony from multiple residents who said that Rare Metals Mill wastes and tailings were deposited at the dump.

Carl Warren, project manager for EPA’s Region 9, told the Free Press that the EPA has no record of this testimony, although there may be a record with the BIA. BIA officials did not return phone calls by press time.

“Even though actual EPA records do not exist of this testimony,” Warren said, “there are enough alleged reports that waste material may have been brought there from the former milling plant. Actual records do not exist at the open dump site because it was uncontrolled, unsecured and unmanned. However, there are reports that debris was brought there. We’re taking these reports seriously and will conduct more formal investigations into the stories.”

Marbles and bolts

Residents also tell of peoples cavenging for construction material from condemned buildings in the area around Rare Metals Mill and the open dump. Whole families would go to take apart the houses near Rare Metals before they were demolished, using materials found to repair existing homes.

The scavenging was a result of the Bennett Freeze, a moratorium on development in a 1.5-million-acre area imposed in 1966 by Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert Bennett because of land disputes between the Navajos and Hopis in the Western Agency area.

“For more than 40 years, Navajo families residing in the Bennett Freeze area lived under an oppressive and unjust law that has essentially made poverty mandatory,” Roman Bitsuie, executive director of the Navajo-Hopi Land Commission Office, told reporter Kathy Helms of the Gallup Independent in March 2009.

Residents of the Bennett Freeze area were barred from making any improvements — even minor repairs to their homes and property, such as fixing a leaky roof. It was against federal regulations to do new construction or develop new businesses.

Thus, in desperate visits to the dump and mill site, people removed what they could use to save homes and buildings.

Children brought toys and odd items from the dump, while adults prized nuts and bolts, metal scraps and construction materials. People recall friends and family moving into abandoned houses and trailers near the Rare Metals Mill; some even moved the temporary homes off the site onto personal property.

The U.S. EPA agreed to work with the tribes and BIA to evaluate permanent closure options for the dump. Today, partners involved in the complex dump-remediation project include the Navajo Nation EPA; U.S. EPA; Hopi Water Resources Department; BIA; DOE and Indian Health Services, which is responsible for the permanent fence erected recently around the Tuba City Open Dump site.

Three years ago, the U.S. EPA bored an additional 250 monitoring wells, identifying MW-07 at the dump site as showing the highest concentration of uranium in the shallow groundwater.

At community meetings in Tuba City and in Moenkopi last October, EPA officials explained the Open Dump field work on MW-07. The project was completed this February. It included surface assessment, soil borings and pits, tests of soil and waste samples to determine chemical and radiological content, excavation of waste that may contribute to elevated uranium concentrates in the shallow groundwater, disposal of all hazardous wastes during excavation, installation of two shallow groundwater wells and restoration of the disturbed area.

Results of the investigation and the feasibility study evaluating long-term clean-up and closure options are expected to be done by mid-March.

A new site

The relationship between the Rare Metals Mill and the Tuba City Open Dump sites has been studied for more than 10 years. Remediation is taking place.

But, like radioactivity itself, the problems associated with the uranium mill seem to linger.

Several years ago, rumors surfaced of another waste site across Highway 160 from the former mill. Residents reported seeing trucks carrying 55-gallon drums of waste and burying them there. The Highway 160 Site is about four miles northeast and possibly upgradient of the dump.

It is listed in EPA updates as a potential source for the radioactive materials found in the groundwater at the dump.

Warren concurs, noting that Site 160 was “found about seven years ago. . . the Navajo Nation has received funding from the DOE to address the clean-up.”

In a Feb. 11, 2010, press release, Cassandra Bloedel, environmental-program supervisor with Navajo Nation EPA, stated, “In 2003, information was received by local families who knew of the contaminated site. They were witnesses to those uranium activities in the late 1950s and in the early 1960s. In February 2004, the site was reported to the USEPA, Emergency Response… investigation that followed in May that year showing radioactive waste located within the 7.6 acre site.”

According to the press release, the NNEPA hired a contractor in January 2006 to investigate. He “identified further mill-related waste, found the mill balls used in uranium processing, and showed the site had high areas of radioactivity,” added Bloedel.

Whose responsibility?

In July 1962, the Rare Metals Corp. merged into the El Paso Natural Gas Company. EPNG signed a new contract with the Atomic Energy Commission, which later was incorporated into the DOE.

Bloedel stated in the press release, “The company did their own investigation of the site and determined that Site 160 did possess waste from the Rare Metals Mill. The DOE then fenced in the site to protect humans and livestock, and a palliative cover that hardens like a crust was placed on top to prevent contamination leaving the site due to typical winds recorded as high as 50 miles per hour.”

The Omnibus Appropriations Bill passed in March 2009 provides $5 million for cleaning up Site 160.

On Feb. 11, the Resources Committee of the Navajo Nation Council passed legislation that also provides $4.5 million to clean the site.

“Responsibility at this site is a challenging question,” said the EPA’s Warren. “We may need forensic analysis to determine responsibility. With that, the EPA will evaluate all available information, ascertain responsibility and compel the responsible party to participate in the clean-up.”

Meanwhile, the people who lived in contaminated homes, drank contaminated water and breathed contaminated air are left to deal with the longterm consequences to their health.

“The DOE created a demand for uranium to feed the U.S. Cold War strategy,” said Ed Singer, president of the Cameron Chapter, one of the Navajo Nation’s Western Agency chapters.

“The Navajo people are to this very day paying for that with their health and lives. Large areas of Navajo land and scarce waters upon it as well as the lives and health of the Navajo people became the biggest sacrifice cost ever visited on a people.”