For more than three decades the Peabody Western Coal Company has been mining coal from Black Mesa, Ariz., transporting it as slurry to a power plant 273 miles away in Laughlin, Nev. Anyone who’s traveled to the Grand Canyon via U.S. Highway 160 has driven under the coal chute that crosses the highway near Kayenta.

The coal-mine brought millions of dollars in revenue to the Navajo and Hopi reservations where it operated. But it also sparked concerns about the enormous amount of water it was drawing from a pristine aquifer on Black Mesa to supply the slurry operation.

So when the mine shut down on Dec. 31, 2005, it was a relief to some and a disaster to others.

But the story is far from over. Peabody still hopes to resume its coalmining operation, and many tribal members would welcome the revenue and jobs. But Peabody’s proposal faces fierce opposition from environmentalists from both tribes.

A coalition of Navajo and Hopi citizens has come up with a bold plan to provide new tribal revenue sources without sucking more water from the aquifer. They want to see solar and wind power developed on their reservations.

And they want traditional energy to pay for it.

“About 60 percent of America’s energy needs are met by coal,” said Wahleah Johns, field organizer for the grassroots Black Mesa Water Coalition. “We want a transition to something healthier.”

So she and others have formed the Just Transition Coalition, which is working to provide exactly what its name implies — a fair and just transition for the tribes from dependence on coal to cleaner, alternative forms of energy. They hope this will mitigate the loss of jobs and money caused by the closure of the Black Mesa Mine.

Dirtiest power plant

The mine’s closure came not because of its own occasionally spotty environmental record, which included a dozen failures of the Black Mesa pipeline between 1994 and 1999, at least eight of which caused discharges of coal or coal slurry into local washes, and eight more spills along the 273- mile route since 2001.

Instead, the mine shut down because of repeated Clean Air Act violations by the 1580-megawatt Mohave Generating Station that burned the Black Mesa coal. Mohave, the dirtiest power plant in the West, pumped some 19,000 tons of nitrous oxide and 40,000 tons of sulfur dioxide into the air, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In 1997, the Grand Canyon Trust, Sierra Club and National Parks Conservation Association sued under the Clean Air Act and forced an agreement by the power plant’s owners to either retrofit the plant and reduce emissions, or to close by the end of 2005. No retrofitting was done, so the plant closed, and with it, the Black Mesa Mine.

But in 2004, Peabody Western — which is a subsidiary of Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company — submitted a permit application to the Office of Surface Mining in Denver, seeking permission to mine Black Mesa for the “life of the mine,” expected to be until 2026 or 2032.

The owners of the Mohave power plant are waiting to see whether Peabody can continue to supply them coal before they decide whether to spend the $1 billion it might take to retrofit the plant and cut its emissions. Mohave could reopen by 2010 or so under the best-case scenario.

In its application with the OSM, Peabody says it hopes to obtain access to another aquifer, the Coconino, some 100 miles away, which provides water for Flagstaff and other northern Arizona cities. But Peabody does not know if it can obtain rights to use that water, so it is also seeking continued access to the Navajo Aquifer, called the N-aquifer, and wants the right to increase its withdrawals by more than 50 percent — from 4,000 acre-feet a year to more than 6,000 acre-feet. An acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons.

The OSM is expected to release its draft Environmental Impact Statement for Peabody’s application this month.

Secret deals

The notion of further withdrawals raises the hackles of many Navajos and Hopis, who say the slurry operation has been drying up springs used for drinking water by both humans and livestock, and sometimes for religious rites such as the Blessing Way.

“There are several springs that my ancestors used to use and we used to use for different purposes, and the water is really low,” 18-year-old Kristopher Barney of Rough Rock, Ariz., told the Free Press. “We are concerned that we won’t have any more water here some day.”

On April 17, Barney was among supporters of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, Just Transition, Diné CARE (Citizens Against Ruining the Environment), C Aquifer for Diné, and other groups who marched on Navajo council chambers in Window Rock, Ariz., to protest the tribal administration’s private negotiations with Peabody to reopen the mine. The Hopi government is also negotiating with Peabody.

“We don’t want any more secret deals,” Barney said. “We want the tribes to come out to the communities and spread what they’re doing.”

On April 19, a handful of concerned citizens met with representatives of the Sierra Club and the NRDC in Window Rock to hear about damage to the N-aquifer allegedly caused by Peabody’s slurry operation. The prevailing sentiments there were definitely against resumption of coal-mining.

Barney said there is deep division within the Navajo Nation over the issue. People who lost jobs are angered, but others worry about the environment if the mine reopens.

“There’s a lot of opposition (to mining) from the grassroots, from elders and people who live on the land, who need water for their livestock and crops and stuff,” he said.

1.3 billion gallons

The scarcity of water on the Navajo and Hopi reservations, and the purity of the N-aquifer, isolated by barriers of mudstone and sandstone, make any industry that uses 1.3 billion gallons of water a year inherently controversial.

“The N-aquifer is one of the most pristine aquifers we know of in the world,” Tim Grabiel, project attorney with the NRDC, told the citizens on April 19. “It naturally meets the EPA’s standards for drinking water.”

It’s precisely because the water is so pure that Peabody wants it for its slurry, he said. That way, contaminants aren’t added to the coal.

When Peabody originally negotiated lease agreements with the two tribes — the mine lies on a former “joint use” area where subsurface rights are split between both sovereign nations — back in the 1960s, Grabiel explained, the Office of Surface Mining delineated four criteria by which to judge whether the N-aquifer was being over-depleted.

In 2000, prompted by concerns of local activists, the NRDC examined monitoring data that had been collected by the U.S. Geological Survey for the OSM and prepared a report called “Drawdown” that disputed Peabody’s and OSM’s sunny claims that no harm was occurring to the aquifer.

“No one had looked at the actual monitoring data and compared it to the criteria,” Grabiel said. “We reviewed the data and we found, much to our surprise, that there were actual violations of the criteria.” This year, the NRDC reviewed new data and again found indications that damage to the aquifer is occurring, he said.

The criteria address groundwater level, water quality (there can’t be too much leakage from the relatively dirty Dakota aquifer that lies on top of the N-aquifer), discharge to springs, and discharge to washes. Each of the four showed troubling evidence of overdepletion.

Both the 2000 and the 2006 studies strongly indicated that the aquifer is declining faster than allowed under the criteria and faster than a computer model had predicted, Grabiel said.

For instance, the simulation said if Naquifer stream washes showed a (mining- related) reduction in flow of 10 percent or more, damage was occurring. Data to assess this are limited, Grabiel said, but there are four streamflow- gauging stations where the USFS has collected data since the 1970s. They show that, since 1995, flows have generally decreased. At three of the four stations, reductions ranged from 50 percent to a startling 94 percent.

Computer models

In addition, people living on the land report anecdotal evidence of damage: drying springs and deep cracks in the earth. Marshall Johnson of To’ Nizhoni Ani, another grassroots group opposing the slurry operation, said cracks run from the tops of Black Mesa to down along the washes. He said subsidence and sinkholes are occurring.

“One of the telltale signs of overwithdrawals is sinkholes,” Grabiel said.

More than 44 billion gallons of water have been sucked from the N-aquifer since Peabody began mining, according to the NRDC. However, the OSM maintains that the aquifer is not being over-used, relying on computer models that Grabiel said have not been updated since 1994 and do not correlate with actual evidence.

“What we’ve seen is an over-reliance on modeling,” he said. “If you created a model that said you were going to be 6 feet tall, would you walk around claiming you were 6 feet tall if you only grew to 5 feet?”

In its original projections, the USGS predicted the N-aquifer would be recharged at about 13,000 acre-feet per year. According to the NRDC, the USGS later revised that estimate, downgrading it to 2,500 to 3,500 acrefeet per year, which would make the original model seriously flawed.

“But despite all the evidence, Peabody continues to claim that material damage is not occurring,” Grabiel said. “I don’t know how they can continue to claim that.”

$2 million a week

A Peabody spokesperson did not return phone calls for this article. However, according to the Peabody Energy web site, the Black Mesa Mine shipped some 5 million tons of coal every year to the Mohave Generating Station and “injected more than $2 million weekly into area communities in direct economic benefits in 2005,” the site states. Such benefits include payroll, benefits, taxes, royalties, and fees.

Peabody is the largest private-sector employer on the Navajo Nation, and the vast majority of its employees are Native American. The mine shut-down chopped one-third, about $7 million, out of the Hopi government’s annual budget and about 15 percent from the Navajo budget. Some 200 people reportedly have lost their jobs.

“Any time there’s a huge loss of revenue, peole get scared and start panicking,” said Barney. “(Navajo Nation) President (Joe) Shirley is pushing whatever he can to reopen the mine.”

Never been tried

Replacing those lost jobs and revenues through clean energy is the goal of Just Transition, which has come up with a startling idea for obtaining money to jump-start renewable energy on the reservation.

Johns, of Black Mesa Trust, said that while the Mohave power plant is closed, it can sell its sulfur-dioxide allowances to other power plants. In other words, it can sell the right to emit a certain amount of sulfur dioxide.

Mohave has allowances for 53,000 tons of sulfur-dioxide emissions annually, Johns said. Southern California Edison owns 56 percent of the station. SCE’s share of the allowances could be worth $20 million, she said.

“This Just Transition initiative is really a visionary thing,” she said.

Just Transition — which includes the NRDC, Sierra Club, Black Mesa Trust, Indigenous Environmental Network, To’ Nizhoni Ani and others — is asking that this money be set aside for the tribes. On Jan. 11 of this year, it submitted a motion to the California Public Utilities Commission to that effect.

In response, an administrative law judge has made a preliminary decision requiring that SCE put that money into a special account starting in May, according to Andy Bessler, Southwest representative for the Sierra Club.

On May 11, the California PUC will vote on whether to continue keeping the money set aside until a final determination is made. The PUC has asked SCE to submit an application by Jan. 1, 2007, stating what it wants to do with that money, Bessler said.

If SCE says it wants to distribute it to ratepayers or shareholders, the legal battle will begin, Bessler said. The PUC will hold hearings on the proposal and Just Transition proponents will work to garner grassroots support.

“Nothing like this has ever been tried before,” Bessler said.

A penny a gallon

Just Transition members say the money is justified because the tribes have been exploited by Peabody and the utility companies.

“For over 30 years Black Mesa has subsidized cheap electricity for southern California and Nevada and Arizona,” said Johns. “We have had unjust coal leases, unpaid penalties for air pollution, and damage to a solesource drinking-water supply.”

If the tribes do obtain the money, Johns said, she would like it go toward retraining mine workers, developing renewable-energy sources such as wind and solar, and helping local communities.

“This is the only way we can be sovereign,” agreed Johnson of To’ Nizhoni Ani, “to go with this new idea, producing electricity from the sun and the wind. It uses 6 acre-feet of water a year. That old man (power plant) uses 21,000 acre-feet a year, plus the water for slurry. Anybody can see that’s wrong.”

Johnson noted that Peabody used one 55-gallon barrel of water per second for its slurry operation. “My family of five, we haul three 55-gallon barrels when we make a trip for water, and it lasts us a week,” he said. “We pay a penny a gallon from the tribe, and Peabody pays one penny every four gallons. We need some elected leaders that can do math.”

Liability relief

The Just Transition proposal has garnered resolutions of support from about eight Navajo chapters and has sparked interest among both tribes’ councils. However, tribal administrators are continuing to pursue negotiations with Peabody.

Some citizens were outraged when word leaked out of a March 7 confidential draft agreement being proposed with the coal company and Mohave that would grant them immunity from liability for any environmental damage done to the N-aquifer and would also dismiss complaints brought under a racketeering lawsuit filed by the Navajos against Peabody in 1999. The complaint alleges that Peabody and others acted unlawfully to obtain favorable coal-lease amendments. Damages sought are at least $1.6 billion. The Hopi tribe filed a motion to join the lawsuit in 2000.

The agreement, however, would reportedly drop those claims in return for a $250,000 payment and the resumption of the mining operation.

“They’re seeking liability relief in the confidential agreement,” said Grabiel. “Those claims could be worth billions. To pay $250,000 and say you don’t have to pay, that’s atrocious. It’s astonishing that was even under consideration.”

“I’m appalled that Peabody and lawyers are negotiating our future, our land, our water away without allowing the people to have a say,” said Johns.

A Navajo administration spokesman could not be reached for this article.

Bessler said the Black Mesa Mine issue exemplifies environmental conflicts worldwide.

“These are the front lines of how human beings are impacting the environment,” he said.

Bessler said coal-fired power plants are the No. 1 contributor to global warming. In addition, they use a great deal of water for cooling purposes. In contrast, solar power uses hardly any water, he said.

At best, the Mohave plant could operate only till 2026, when Colorado River water will no longer be available to it, Besseter said. “There would be only 10 or 12 years of profit to the tribes. We could be using that time to look at alternatives” to conventional energy, he said.

And water is a resource worth conserving, the advocates agreed.

“Fresh water is quickly becoming the scarcest resource on earth,” Grabiel said.

Early this spring I sat up late reading a book entitled “River Flowing from the Sunrise,” by James Aton and Robert McPherson. Sometime around midnight I stepped outside and within 10 seconds I was drenched in a wet, heavy snow; it landed on my eyelids, my lashes, and the pale yellow lights of the Mission cast their rays among the flakes, producing an hallucinogenic, floating radiation of cold light. In the morning the entire Mission was drenched in white, the red bluffs and the canyons, too, in a miraculous soft blanket, the first snow of the long winter season, a season that hadn’t yielded enough moisture to fill a demitasse.

I was scheduled to go on a river trip with Wild Rivers Expeditions, the oldest commercial company on the San Juan River, and when I arrived at their headquarters I learned that the “peeps” (the customers, a group of students from Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs) were stranded on the wrong side of Wolf Creek Pass. Officials were measuring snowfall in feet up there in the higher passes of the Southern San Juan Mountains; indeed the entire San Juans, the La Sals, the Chuskas and the Abajos, were all inundated with a blanket of white.

Much of that snow will eventually come, as brown sedimentladen water, past our door here in Bluff — at least that which is left after agricultural and other needs are met upstream. The river downstream from Bluff to the Glen Canyon Dam serves but one principal human purpose: recreation. The natural requirements of the river are myriad, diverse, and many thousands of years older than the first humans.

The great blue herons, with their broad span of graceful wings, wind their way up and down the canyons. Ducks, geese, canyon wrens, peregrine falcons, bighorn sheep, beaver, otters, willows, cottonwoods, Indian rice grass, globe mallow, squawfish and silvery minnows, a harmonic medley of inextricably related flora and fauna, depend on the San Juan for their existence.

A boater leaving Sand Island and floating the San Juan to Clay Hills Crossing 83 miles downstream will encounter many of the types of wildlife that call the San Juan home.

The San Juan basin drains 25,000 square miles of mountain and desert, some of the harshest, most beautiful country in North America. The distance from its headwaters in Colorado to Lake Powell is 350 miles.

The earliest river-runners on the San Juan were Bert Loper and Norm Nevells, regarded as pioneers by modern- day boatmen. Kenny Ross, founder of Wild Rivers Expeditions, ran the San Juan River for more than 50 years.

It is a new century, a time for new blood, new energy and a new vision of commercial river-running: Now the company is owned by Jay and Kelly Carson, Taylor and Kristen McKinnon, young folks out of Flagstaff, Ariz.

About 13,000 people float the San Juan each year (of those, half are private, the other half commercial). Private boaters obtain permits from the BLM in Monticello, Utah, on a lottery basis; commercial companies are allotted so many launches a year.

A decade ago, Sand Island campground was one of the best-kept secrets in the Four Corners. You could camp for a night, or a week, and chances are no one would notice. There were no fees, or toilet paper either — a small price to pay for freedom — and no volunteers in uniforms to come over with clipboards and pencils to ask you how you are doing.

The government manages all aspects of the river, or tries to. It measures stream flows, fish numbers and movements, makes sure campground assignments are adhered to and campgrounds are left clean.

In order for the river to support the number of recreationists who use it, it must be managed. Still, old Ed Abbey turns in his grave, disturbing the work of the worms.

A short San Juan primer

In a desert land of sand, wind, rock, and heat, a river is a precious thing. Imagine Bluff under water, from cliff to cliff. It was, back in ancient times, during the Pleistocene — more than a mile wide. The San Juan was a vastly different river then. It still flowed out of the southern San Juan Mountains in Colorado, fed by the Piedra, the Blanco, and the Navajo; down into New Mexico, where it was and is joined by the Animas and La Plata, through Farmington and Shiprock, up through the Four Corners, where the Mancos River joins the orchestra. Then it turns northwest, its northernmost point near Bluff, and then southwest and west until it becomes the San Juan arm of Lake Powell just below Clay Hills, where river-runners take out.

There it resembles nothing of the vibrant San Juan of a mere 50 years ago. Now, the river at Clay Hills reminds us of Bogie and Hepburn, arduously poling the African Queen along that sluggish stretch of the Ulonga-Bora River.

An ancient people, about whom we have only the vaguest notions, hunted mastodons along the banks of the San Juan; there were camels, and greatwinged birds, and the world along its course was a very different world than the one we see from the comforts of our floating Hypolon vessels, replete with stoves, toilets, coolers (full of beer, we hope), water containers, modish river sandals, sarongs, umbrellas, and orange life jackets.

The first human habitation of the San Juan country began about 14,000 years ago. The world was a wetter, cooler place; the flora and fauna were different; the San Juan country was verdant, abundant.

One Clovis site was found on Lime Ridge, where early hunters killed mastodons, gigantic (10 feet tall) precursors to the modern elephant.

Sitting atop Lime Ridge, I try to imagine what it must have been like, the hunters watching the big animals lumbering along Comb Wash. There were no high-powered rifles with scopes, where the hunter could sit off 200 yards and shoot. No, Clovis hunting was up close and personal, close enough to smell the animals and feel their hot breath, the great curled tusks, the enormous tramping feet.

Evidence, albeit sparse, of Archaic occupation (6500 B.C to 1 A.D.) has been discovered in the San Juan basin. These hunter-gatherers probably followed a routine, closely attuned to the seasons, of living off the flora and fauna provided them.

The Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi, as they are popularly known) were the first humans to establish permanent communities in San Juan country. Numerous testaments to their habitation, as exhibited in surface sites, can still be found. The most noted of all these are the cliff dwellings, the most dramatic of which can be found at Mesa Verde. Many less-dramatic cliff dwellings can be found throughout southeastern Utah.

The Anasazi were farmers, probably the most successful (judging by the many food-storage sites they left behind) of any group that has ever lived along the San Juan. At the pinnacle of their existence they were a prosperous people. In 1000 A.D. there were many more people living in southeastern Utah than there are today.

The archaeologists tell us that the Anasazi were gone by about 1300 A.D. Did other tribes move in and drive them out? Or were they driven out by climate changes? No one is certain.

As the Anasazi removed themselves from San Juan country, Navajo (Diné), Paiute, and Ute people moved in. The largest of these groups was the Navajo. They made their homes along the south bank of the San Juan, with Ute and Paiute to the north.

For all of its meandering, the San Juan weaves approximately the same route for thousands of years; people’s relationship to it, from Paiute to Mormon, has been less precise.

An untamed menace

In 1859 the U.S. government sent a scientific expedition to study the San Juan Basin. Soon geologists such as John Newberry began to discover its importance. Richard, John and Al Wetherill penetrated the area in search of archaeological sites. Scientific exploration of the San Juan Basin put it on the world map.

Bert Loper signed on as head boatman for the Trimble Expedition, which surveyed the San Juan from Bluff to Lee’s Ferry on the Colorado.

The first permanent Anglo-American settlement of the San Juan country came in the form of the Mormon pioneers. After enduring incredible hardships, the Hole-in-the-Rock group stumbled into Bluff in 1880.

The Mormon, Gentiles and Indians competed for rangeland. There was squabbling about land use; the Mormons felt that the Navajos should stay on their reservation south of the river, while the Navajos believed they should have use of their traditional grazing grounds north of it.

Here we see the river not only as an essential resource but as a boundary. To many it was a menace, untamed and unmanageable. Mormon attempts to farm by using the river water in irrigation ditches eventually failed. Seasonal fluctuations in the river wiped the sandy ditches out in spring and left them dry in the critical months of July, August and September. The Mormons eventually abandoned the San Juan and moved to the high country, where present-day Blanding is located.

Today, below Bluff, the San Juan River forms the northern boundary of the Navajo Reservation. The BLM manages the river, its uses and permits. Although the Navajo Nation also issues permits for the San Juan, this process is not enforced and many boaters, both private and commercial, continue to camp along the reservation shores, sans Navajo Nation permits. Over the years there has been a fair amount of dissension between boaters and Navajos downstream from Bluff.

A bleak future?

The Federal Water Powers Act of 1920 signaled the end of the San Juan as a free-flowing river, as it paved the way for the construction of Navajo and Glen Canyon dams, the former in New Mexico, the latter at Page, Ariz. Glen Canyon and Navajo dams serve several purposes: hydroelectric power generation (Glen Canyon), sediment control, flood control, irrigation, and recreation.

At one point proponents planned a dam below Bluff, near the mouth of Chinle Wash. Had they built it, Bluff would be under water today.

There are agricultural demands along the river south of Navajo Reservoir to Bluff. But between Sand Island and Clay Hills there is no farming, thus no irrigation. The water taken out of the San Juan is taken out above Bluff.

Below Grand Gulch, where much of the river’s sediment is deposited, the river becomes braided, and boaters often must push, pull, and drag their boats along the sandy bottom.

The question of sustainability of the San Juan Basin is critical. As you travel through northern Arizona and come upon the small Navajo community at Cameron, you may see a sign marking the passage of the Little Colorado, once an important stream cutting through the vast desert country. You will notice no water in it. It is dead. And much has died with it.

I asked Doug Ross, veteran river guide and son of the late Kenny Ross, what he thought of the San Juan’s future, considering increased water demands and the ever-tightening drought cycle. “Bleak,” he said.

Multiple demands

In the last decade of the 20th Century it appeared that efforts to build the Animas-La Plata project south of Durango had been defeated, but as a last act President William Clinton signed legislation providing the funds to build it. This project will satisfy Ute demands for water promised them by treaty; it will provide for expansion of Durango southward; it will also take water out of the San Juan.

The Navajo Nation is negotiating with the city of Gallup, N.M., to sell part of the tribe’s water rights. Gallup and Farmington are the two fastestgrowing cities in New Mexico.

In 2003, during the historic drought that gripped much of the West, the water level in Navajo Reservoir sank lower than it had been when the reservoir was first filled. Releases from Navajo Dam had to be slashed — bad news for the trout fishery below the lake. But fish are a minor concern relative to many other water uses.

Two major drains on the San Juan River are the 1,800-megawatt San Juan Generating Station and the 2,040- megawatt Four Corners Power Plant, both of which use water for cooling.

In 2003 the San Juan Generating Station cut back its water use from 24,200 acre-feet to 22,000 acre-feet. The Four Corners Power Plant uses 15,000 to 20,000 acre-feet a year. In an extreme drought, officials say, there might not be enough water for the plants to operate unless other waterusers cut back severely.

New Mexico’s explosive growth is sucking water from the San Juan as well. Under an interstate agreement, the state is entitled to a portion of the flow of the upper Colorado River because the San Juan, a tributary of the Colorado, runs through New Mexico. Under the San Juan-Chama Project, up to 110,000 acre-feet of San Juan water is diverted from upper tributaries of the river into the Rio Grande basin, transported via tunnels gouged through the Continental Divide. The water flows to the city of Albuquerque, to the city and county of Santa Fe, to the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District for irrigation, and to numerous other smaller entities.

Settling Navajo claims

Then there is the massive Navajo Water Rights Settlement to be considered. Passed by the Navajo Nation Council in December 2004, the settlement agreement would grant eventual control to the Navajo Nation of 56 percent of the San Juan Basin’s diverted water supply, a total of 606,040 acrefeet annually.

The settlement agreement, prompted by a 1975 lawsuit, was designed to resolve historic Navajo Nation waterrights claims without litigation. Negotiations to resolve the issue were begun in 1993; a tentative settlement proposal was reached a decade later.

The agreement includes more than $850 million in infrastructure for a massive, rural water-supply system to bring water to the Navajo reservation. A pipeline is planned that would run from the Nenahnezad area to the city of Gallup, N.M., 100 miles south.

The San Juan Settlement Agreement was signed by the state of New Mexico and the tribe on April 19, 2005. Now it faces a lengthy struggle to obtain funding from Congress.

Critics of the settlement say the San Juan is already over-allocated, but proponents argue that the project will bring water to arid, impoverished areas. It is also expected that the Navajo Nation will sell or lease some of its water rights for projects such as the proposed $2.2 billion coal-burning Desert Rock Power Plant near Burnham, N.M.

Make a difference

The Wild Rivers Expeditions group had returned from its trip with the Fountain Valley kids. I sat around a table at Wild Rivers’ headquarters listening to guides and other company members. They described the enthusiasm and intelligence of the international students, their awe-struck impressions of the river canyons, the archaeology, the breathtaking beauty.

Education has always been a key part of the Wild Rivers experience. These young people, breathing fire with every breath, agree on one thing: By emphasizing environment, ecology, and intelligent use, they can make a positive difference in the river’s future.

Sustainability of the San Juan River is crucial to those who live and visit here. It would be tragic if, because we humans could not meet our water demands, the San Juan would have to be sacrificed, as has the Little Colorado.

Gail Binkly contributed to this article.

In April four Navajo (Diné) poets were invited to the Fourth Annual Celebration of Diné Authors for a week-long program at Rough Rock High School and a community event: Orlando White, Esther Belin, Velencia Tso-Yazzie, and Sherwin Bitsui.

The purpose of the program, organized by Barney Bush (Shawnee), who teaches Native American Philosophy and Logic at Rough Rock High School, was to expose students in this rural Navajo Reservation community to the art and work of these accomplished writers.

“In the community of poets and writers, these writers are recognized,” Bush said, “but here on the Navajo Reservation they are practically unheard of.”

Three of the four authors spent their childhood on the Navajo Reservation; the fourth, Esther Belin, grew up in urban Los Angeles, but has returned to her community. The other three have moved to urban areas, but all maintain strong connections to their Diné homeland.

As I rode my moto south down Highway 191, I had but one thing on my mind: pie and ice cream. There’s a café in a little waterhole named Mexican Water on Highway 160 that’s a favorite of mine. The friendly waitresses there know how I like my pie: hot, Hot, HOT!, with vanilla ice cream on top. I was hoping for cherry, but settled for a slice of pecan, and was not disappointed.

I picked up 191 again, straight south, down through the beautiful redrock country around Round Rock, where a sandstone whale looms out of the desert. Near dark I arrived at Rough Rock, as out-of-the-way as any place on “the Rez.”

As I walked into the school gym a Navajo lady was singing a folk song from the ’70s, belting out the chorus, strumming an acoustic guitar. Bitsui came over and greeted me; I took a seat next to White.

A graduate of Red Mesa High School and the College of Eastern Utah-San Juan Campus, White is now receiving his bachelor’s degree from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe and will leave this fall for an MFA program at Ivy League Brown University. The four writers had just finished the third day of their program at the school.

I asked White about his expectations going into the program:

“I thought it was a great opportunity for me,” he said. “I want to teach someday and my favorite group is high-school students. I remember my high-school experience and it wasn’t that great. I think I read one book in high school and I don’t remember what it was. I am really proud to have an opportunity to come to Rough Rock and share what I’ve learned.”

It is difficult to imagine the lives of these young Navajo students. Even though I live on the northern edge of the Navajo Reservation and see these young people on a daily basis, I have little insight into their lives, their thoughts, their sense of worth.

I’ve worked with them in a variety of programs in the arts, education and humanities, and when you get to know them you’re always impressed at how intelligent and insightful they are. Many seem as closed as stone but beneath the surface there is often a surprise. The secret is empowerment. Young people need to know it is all right to write about their feelings.

“There was this one kid,” White said, “and he came up to me and said he liked my stories. He talked about how his mom found his poems and stories he had written about death and suicide and love, and his mom took him to a psychiatrist and he was put on medication. I think my stories helped him understand that it’s OK to write about these things.”

Students’ exposure to the outside world comes largely through television, shopping trips to Farmington, N.M., one weekend a month, and visits to family members who have moved to the big city (Phoenix, Albuquerque , Flagstaff, Tucson).

Barney Bush introduced Bitsui, who, like White, grew up in northern Arizona, near White Cone, west of Ganado. He graduated from the IAIA program with an associate’s degree and matriculated at the University of Arizona, where he received a BFA, and published his first book of poetry, “Shapeshift,” three years ago.

He is perhaps the most popular young Navajo poet in the world today. He has given readings in South America, Europe, Canada, and coast to coast in the United States.

Here’s a stanza from “Shapeshift”:

He sings an elegy for handcuffs,
whispers its moment of silence
at the crunch of rush-hour traffic,
and speaks the dialect of a forklift,
lifting the cedar smoke over the mesas
acred to the furthest block
— “Atlas”

“We (artists) all collaboratively worked together,” Bitsui said. “We talked about our experiences as Diné writers. All of us have moved off of the reservation so it was a kind of a homecoming for us.

“Navajo students have problems in the family and in the community,” Bitsui continued, “and a lot of literacy issues are pandemic on the reservation. I hope our experience here gives the students a sense of writing. A growing number of young writers are learning the importance of writing.”

Tso-Yazzie, who lives and teaches in Santa Fe, originally hails from Chinle, Ariz., 30 miles or so from Rough Rock. I asked her about the students she worked with during the week:

“We were working on a play, and these two students, both of whom seemed very hard-core, came up and volunteered to be part of the program. They wrote some really wonderful pieces, and it truly amazed me that these kids can write such beautiful things with the hard lives they live. As a result of writing, these kids are going through a healing process. I hope my presence there helped expose them to the writing world.”

Belin, a mother of four and a graduate of UC-Berkeley, has studied writing at IAIA, and currently teaches “Native American Support and Culture” at Durango (Colo.) High School. She is the author of “From the Belly of My Beauty.” At a ceremony that night she gave copies of her book to some of the students involved in the program.

And wail
my anger trapped in my own brain cells
the thought behind the unspoken
is more than
what rolls off the tongue
—“Sending the Letter Never Sent”

“I think I learned that there are a lot of things that need to happen with the Navajo kids,” Belin said. “There’s a lot of mismatch between their lives as Navajos and the bigger world. There are a lot of rough edges and frayed spirits out here.

“We’re all natural writers, I think. We can all overcome obstacles. I think we, as artists, modeled for them that ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality. As a culture we have been strong enough mentally and physically to survive this long.”

Programs in the arts, education and humanities work. Exposing the students to writers, visual artists, dancers, musicians and dramatists allows them the opportunity to express themselves, to be who they are.

Rub the magic lantern and the genie emerges.

Durango attorney and environmentalist Jeff Deitch is a man determined to have his way with voters in the 59th legislative district — at least through the Democratic primary in August, when, if things go as hoped, he’ll face off against the one candidate for state representative the party assembly has already chosen, Joe Colgan.

The winner earns the chance to face Republican Ellen Roberts in the general election.

Deitch at first considered trying to get on the ballot through the party’s caucus process, but then announced he would petition his way onto the ballot instead. One thousand valid signatures must be turned in to election officials by May 25, and the candidate thinks he has a good shot at making the deadline.

“We’re off to a good start and circulating petitions in all four counties (Archuleta, La Plata, Montezuma and San Juan) — every day we’ve got people out there,” said Deitch, adding that one difficulty is catching people at home when he goes door to door.

Seeking signatures of registered Democrats presents an opportunity to hear voter concerns he might not have otherwise, Deitch explained.

“You learn the needs in Montezuma County are different in many ways than the needs in Archuleta County in many ways,” he said. “It’s a good opportunity to talk to people personally.”

Former Durango councillor Colgan was nominated at the Democratic assembly last month to run for the seat, now held by term-limited Republican Mark Larson. Deitch and his supporters have accused Colgan’s campaign team of spreading rumors about his professional standing and other ad hominem attacks to foil his primary bid.

In a recent interview, Deitch discussed his decision to go the petition route and what he sees as a “smear campaign” designed to prevent him from getting on the ballot.

Deitch said 75-year-old Democratic party activist Hank Buslepp of Pagosa Springs informed him in January that Colgan supporter Joan Cornell had called to urge him not to support Deitch because, she said, he’d been “reprimanded several times by the bar,” an allegation Deitch says is patently false.

“I’ve never been reprimanded by anyone for anything ever,” Deitch said. “I said, ‘Gosh, this was the sort of thing I was expecting from the Republicans but certainly not from my own party,’ and (Buslepp) said, ‘Get used to it’.”

Colgan refused to sufficiently disavow such tactics, Deitch charges, instead only responding that he hadn’t made any such statement after Deitch broached the subject at a Democratic meeting attended by Cornell and Colgan.

Deitch said Cornell’s response in a subsequent Durango Herald article that there is a difference between an organized smear campaign and a casual conversation was absurd.

“So if you say it casually enough, it doesn’t count?” he said. “This is a direct attack on my professional ethics and this affects my career, because elected or not elected, I’m still an attorney.”

He said a March letter from Colgan supporter Jim Callard published in local papers was another example of such personal attacks.

In that letter demanding he withdraw from the race, Callard compares Deitch to George Bush and calls him a “divider, not a uniter,” an “immature kid” and a “spoiler” for deciding to petition his way onto the ballot rather than go through the caucus process, which Deitch has repeatedly criticized as failing to reflect true voter preference, and instead guaranteeimg control by party insiders.

Colorado is one of only two states that still use a caucus system in which neighborhood precinct meetings are held to determine whose supporters will attend county, district and state assemblies where the candidates are then nominated. A candidate must get support from at least 30 percent of the assembly delegates to get on a primary ballot.

“. . . Deitch attacked all the volunteers from four counties that spend their time and effort making sure the caucus and assembly process work,” Callard wrote.

Indeed, Deitch does have harsh words for the selection process.

“The caucus system as it’s being used is a farce,” he said. “It has nothing to do with the democratic process — I defy you to find three people who could explain the caucus system to you — and I wouldn’t be one of them — because it doesn’t make a bit of sense. It’s a way for good-old-boy politics to keep its hold on things because (most voters) don’t understand it.

“At least with a petition, people are affirming they want this guy on the ballot — they want the party to have a choice.”

Responding to Deitch, Colgan last week defended the caucus system.

“It favors anybody that wants to get involved at the grassroots level,” he said, but admitted he wasn’t totally clear himself on exactly how Democrats are informed of the precinct meetings.

“It may be mostly through the newspaper — I don’t remember getting a specific notice through the mail,” he said, adding that the Democratic party tries to educate voters about the caucuses by encouraging them to participate. “It’s such an open process — anybody who says there’s an attempt to exclude anybody — they do it by their own volition,” Colgan said.

“This is not a spectator sport,” he added. “Whether you like it or you don’t, that’s the system we’ve got in place — unless you’re involved in the process, what you do from then on is just affirm someone else’s decision.”

When asked if he would disassociate himself from Cornell’s alleged remark about Deitch being reprimanded by the bar, Colgan said, “I don’t know Jeff Deitch well enough to do that.

“All I can tell you is I know who he’s talking about and I asked this question directly to her — she said, ‘I did not do that’,” he said. “His saying that I’m trying to conduct a smear campaign on him simply isn’t true.”

Regardless of all the lawyer jokes and regular Republican attacks on trial lawyers as Democratic stooges, Deitch believes that his occupation could actually be a plus with voters.

“There are some people out there who think it’s a very good thing,” he said, including those who want their state representative to be able to support litigation to stop the Wolf Creek Village, a proposed project that would create a city of 10,000 in one of the most pristine parts of the San Juan Mountains near Pagosa Springs.

Deitch highlighted what he sees as the significant policy differences between him and Colgan, whom he accused of being pro-development during his tenure on the Durango council.

“Everyone has their number-one issue, but I’ll just say the most glaring differences are these.

“Do you know how much more of Durango got paved, how many more units got approved (during the time Colgan was on the council)?,” he asked. “One thing he didn’t get away with was River Trails Ranch — 800 units in the Animas Valley. People were just grieving over that and he voted for it,” Deitch said.

Colgan later conceded that he hadn’t reflected the “will of his constituents,” but maintained his vote was “legally appropriate.”

Deitch also lambasted Colgan for supporting the Three Springs development in Grandview east of Durango, where 2300 residential units plus commercial space have been approved for development along with the new Mercy Medical Center about to open.

The resulting traffic is going to create terrible congestion in the area, Deitch predicted.

“All you’ve done in Three Springs is put 8,000 people and 12,000 cars out in Grandview on Highway 160 that can’t handle the traffic it has now,” he said, “and Farmington Hill is close to becoming an intersection that is not viable. And what about the impact on downtown Durango and the impact on wildlife?

“I think Three Springs was a huge mistake, and if that’s (Colgan’s) environmental vision, then it speaks for itself.”

“I don’t see that (Colgan) has associated himself in any way with environmentally conscious projects and his votes on the city council reflect that,” he said. “I think he has a vision of suburbanization, or urbanization, and I don’t.

“I have a vision of maintaining a largely rural area because that’s the only way to save it from being ruined.”

“We have to preserve agriculture . . . we can do a whole lot more in the region to feed ourselves and we have to, because you can’t truck in food with gas at five or six dollars a gallon for trucks.”

Uncontrolled growth in the district is also causing air and water quality to deteriorate, yet the state legislature has done little to address that.”

Readers interested in signing or circulating petitions to get Deitch on the primary ballot can call Deitch in La Plata County at 259-2474 or Deborah Karn in La Plata County at 385-6721, Denise Rue Pastin in Archuleta County at 731-9672, or Greg Rath in Montezuma County at 533-9019. His web site is www.jeffdeitch.com.

To get in touch with the Colgan campaign, see www.electjoecolgan.org.

The tower rises on the cliff, elegant as any European castle, even after standing a thousand years.

“There may have been more people living in the Four Corners in 1250 than there are now,” says LouAnn Jacobson, manager of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument and the Anasazi Heritage Center.

Wow! That’ll make a person catch her breath, not from the climb up the mesa to the tower, but because she realizes whole cultures existed in the Four Corners before anybody thought of her.

She has time to ponder that thought because of a unique conservation law, the Antiquities Act of 1906. Signed by Teddy Roosevelt 100 years ago, the Antiquities Act made possible an organized effort to preserve America’s important cultural and natural resources.

Under this law, the President of the United States may declare as national monuments “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest situated on lands controlled by the Government of the United States….”

The Antiquities Act came about for several reasons, according to Dr. Larry Baker, executive director of the San Juan County Archaeological Research Center and Library at Salomon Ruins in Bloomfield, N.M.

Formal interest in conservation began with the Lewis and Clark expedition. At that time, people focused preservation efforts on the East. After the Civil War, they began taking an interest in cultural and natural resources in the West. Newly created organizations like the U.S. Geological Survey and the Bureau of American Ethnology grew concerned about protecting these sites.

In 1900, President Theodore Roosevelt saw the need for a quick way to set aside important sites without wrangling protective bills through Congress. He asked for the power to create national monuments.

“The first was Devil’s Tower in Wyoming,” says Terry Nichols, park ranger at Aztec Ruins National Monument in Aztec, N.M. “The second was El Morro, in New Mexico. Chaco Canyon was the fifth.” Aztec Ruins made the list in 1923, Canyons of the Ancients in 1999.

Canyons of the Ancients may have been late to the list of national monuments, but its cultural resources are unmatched in the country.

“We have the highest site density in the United States,” explains Jacobson. “About 110 archaeological sites per square mile in some parts of the monument.”

The Antiquities Act provided penalties for people caught vandalizing cultural and historic sites on federal land. And it did one more thing.

“The basic legislation doesn’t just set aside lands for no reason,” emphasizes Paul Reed, preservation archaeologist for the Center for Desert Archaeology in Tucson, Ariz. “(Land) is set aside to be studied in a scientific framework to lead to an understanding of …how to conserve (it.”)

Under the Antiquities Act, anyone excavating on federal land must obtain a research permit. “They would submit a research design,” explains Baker.

“They would need to spell out how much they would excavate, and why,” adds Jacobson. “They would have to show a curation agreement to demonstrate how artifacts and excavation records would be preserved in a museum.”

Besides research guidelines, the Antiquities Act spawned further conservation legislation and policy. The 1916 Organic Act created the National Park Service. “The National Park System grew quite a bit, after that,” says Nichols.

The Historic Preservation Act of 1966 supplemented the Antiquities Act, as did the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, and The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990. Each regulation further expanded and clarified the Antiquities Act.

States and municipalities use these federal laws to develop protection for sites in their jurisdictions, according to Baker. Some of these local statutes also guide research and resource development, such as subdivisions and gas exploration, on private lands.

“I think most of the archaeological research in the country relies on these laws,” muses Reed.

Very true. The Antiquities Act profoundly affected archaeology as a scientific discipline. To explain how, the Anasazi Heritage Center in Dolores has opened an exhibit called “Archaeology Grows Up: 1906-2006.”

“At the turn of the (20th) Century, archaeologists collected whole pieces,” says Jacobson.

Museums fought over artifacts. Researchers ignored small objects and didn’t take field notes.

That changed in the 1930s when Chicago’s Field Museum sent Martin to the Lowry Pueblo near Cortez. He took notes, and worked with an architect to discover the pueblo’s layout.

Next, archaeologists began paying attention to artifact layers in individual rooms, noting relationships of objects.

That led them to examine how rooms related within a community.

Today, the National Science Foundation and Washington State University have developed The Village Project. Archaeologists across regions examine how communities interacted. Researchers at Aztec and Salmon ruins, Chaco Canyon, and Canyons of the Ancients have joined this project.

“Archaeology Grows Up” includes many items that show this evolution, including some borrowed from the Field Museum and the Lowry dig. Other artifacts come from the collections at the Heritage Center. The exhibit contains historic photographs of digs around Canyons of the Ancients.

“People will see a nice variety of things. We have every kind of site,” says Jacobson. “Hunter gathers, pit houses, field houses, pueblos with 400 rooms. There’s limited evidence of paleo Indians from 10,000 B.C. “

She pauses. “And there’s still a lot to learn. With the Village Project we’re looking at the larger picture, of how people interacted with the landscape.”

The Antiquities Act of 1906 will ensure that the research goes on, for scientific advancement, recreation, and many other things.

“These are places where we can connect with people who passed before us,” says Nichols. “We can connect with ourselves.”

“It’s not about sites, it’s about cultural values,” adds Baker. “Preserving our national and world heritage.”