Gathering Clouds

But that was when there was water on Black Mesa.

Today, few Navajo lead their sheep to water, the cattle troughs are no longer full, and the Hopi have abandoned many of the terraces as their springs, washes and groundwater have gone dry. Instead, they drive as far as 25 miles, often over untended roads, to water stations where they fill 55-gallon barrels roped into pickup trucks. The disappearance of their water is threatening a traditional lifestyle for the Navajo and Hopi, who so value tradition that they voted not to have gaming and the millions of dollars it has brought to other Native American tribes. They do not blame the drought that has plagued the West for so many years now. They blame Peabody Western Coal Co.'s Black Mesa mine, which they say has been siphoning their water for three decades, and their own tribal governments that have allowed that water use.

Tapping the water from the Navajo aquifer, as deep as 3,000 feet beneath Black Mesa, the mine pumps water aboveground, where it propels crushed coal as a slurry mixture 273 miles through a pipeline to Southern California Edison's Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev. There the aquifer water is drained and the coal is dried and burned, producing 3% of Southern California's electricity, or enough to power 1.5 million homes. On an average day, Peabody draws 3.3 million gallons of water from below Black Mesa.

Peabody, which pays the tribes $4.3 million annually for the water, argues that the water sources above and below ground are not related. The company has commissioned studies, hired consultants and created a computer model simulating the effects of water taken from the aquifer. Their findings show that God and the weather, not the coal company, are to blame for the Navajo and Hopi hardship. And they say they have the science to prove it.

But "that is because they are using Western science," says Vernon Masayesva, a Hopi who sits as executive director of the Black Mesa Trust, a nonprofit organization founded to safeguard the Navajo aquifer and surrounding land. "In Western science they will tell you everything is disconnected in neat little compartments. In telling you the water [on the surface] is not connected to the aquifer, they are telling you your thumb is not connected to your toes. The Hopi [and Navajo] are saying that it doesn't work that way. In our science, we know everything is interconnected. Everything is universally together, each part to make the other work."

Since mining began on Black Mesa in 1970, the local Navajo and Hopi have fought its operation on a grass-roots level, pitting their science against Western science with little result. But in recent years, they took another step. Adopting the tactics of Western politics, they began organizing, lobbying and voting—steps unfamiliar to their cultures. The result is that today, through their combination of new politics and "Indian science," they have Peabody wondering if everything is, indeed, interconnected.

Black Mesa is a hand-shaped landmass that covers 5,400 square miles near the northern border of the Navajo reservation in northeastern Arizona. Its surface eases from a scant cover of desert grasses and brush into low stretches of juniper and piñon, and ultimately rock and boulders. It's bone-dry desert land, yet beneath is the Navajo aquifer, a porous, water-bearing sandstone layer that stretches 7,500 square miles and holds about 17 times the amount of water in Lake Powell. Thousands of years of the earth's settling put the water under great pressure, so that cracks in the sandstone traditionally brought forth desert springs.

Black Mesa also is home to rich coal deposits. With Southern California's voracious appetite for energy, the U.S. Department of the Interior in the mid-1960s brokered a deal with the Navajo Nation and the Hopi tribe to open the mine. Because Black Mesa was so remote, with no access to rail or traditional shipping, the only way to move the coal profitably was to build a slurry pipeline. Black Mesa is the only mine in the world to use a water-propelled pipeline for coal delivery, yet it does so from one of the most arid regions in the U.S., where two Native American cultures consider water a centerpiece of their existence. The plan, approved by unsophisticated tribal governments at the time, was a recipe for controversy.

Masayesva, then a high school student in the Hopi village of Hotevilla, often attended the meetings of his village elders, "mesmerized" by their wisdom and oratory skills. As the mine went into operation and the elders grasped the full implications of the deal their tribal council had made, Masayesva says, they began to oppose the mine. They came from a culture that believed you could no more own water than you could own the air, but they knew they had to adapt to Western ways. They sued the mine's owners and Secretary of the Interior Rogers Morton in 1973, but the lawsuit suffered from their inexperience and eventually was dismissed on procedural grounds.

What Masayesva remembers most about their defeat was "the way the elders were being treated, ignored and ridiculed throughout that process." It made him angry, and the experience profoundly shaped his life.

In the mid-1980s, Masayesva joined the Hopi Tribal Council as a representative to get a closer look at the mine. What he saw convinced him there was a chance of throwing out the mine lease and negotiating a new one. But at what cost? Revenues from the mine today generate more than one-third of the Hopi tribe's annual general fund, or $7.7 million, and that money paid the salaries of those who managed many of the tribe's services. Mine revenues make up 25% of the Navajo Nation's general operating fund, or $30 million per year. If disconnecting from the aquifer caused the mine to shut down, where would that money come from? Masayesva says the majority of the council at the time settled for renegotiating a slightly better price for the water and the coal.

Between 1989 and 1990, Masayesva rose from council representative to vice chairman and then to chairman, but even from that post he was frustrated. "The only thing we accomplished during my time on the council was to persuade the Secretary of the Interior to withhold Black Mesa's permanent [mining] permit," Masayesva says. That permanent permit, which by law should be issued within a reasonable time, was placed on "administrative delay." That status has remained unchanged into the fourth decade of mining.

As it turns out, Masayesva's "only" accomplishment would prove to be unexpectedly significant.

He did not campaign for reelection as chairman in 1994 because he felt the tribal government system had been too compromised. "I decided instead I needed to work with the grass-roots people who had not been represented, ever," Masayesva says. "I decided to put all my energy to fighting the fight from outside the government."

He spent several years writing and organizing, and in 1998 he founded the Black Mesa Trust. In alliance with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a million-member public health and environmental organization, Masayesva immediately began challenging the water studies that showed "no significant impact" to the Navajo aquifer from Black Mesa's mining. Black Mesa Trust members, only a handful at that point, began attending, sponsoring and appearing at water summits and meetings, where they presented their grievances against the mine and their proposed solutions. They took every opportunity to educate and influence anyone who would listen, but like all roads on Black Mesa, this one would be long and bumpy.

"Because we had come out so negatively against the mining and also took on our own Hopi government, neither the government agencies or the mine were too interested in us in the beginning," Masayesva says.

But in 2001, Peabody again was forced to apply for the mine's permanent permit because of terms in the renewal of its coal supply agreement with Edison's Mohave station. Its application ignored the growing opposition to the water-based delivery from the mine. In fact, the company asked permission to mine more coal, using even more water.

"The timing of their permit application was perfect for us," Masayesva says. "That process allowed the opportunity for public comment on the mine plan."