Navajo Administrative History

One classic instance of the problems occurred with the emergence of an extractive natural resource-based economy for the Navajo Nation. Resource development of the reservation had begun with an oil boom in the 1920s, but little growth followed. During the 1950s, oil production again increased dramatically. In 1950, there were fifty-one producing wells on the reservation; a decade later, the number had grown to 860. This spurt helped further more comprehensive development programs, as federal legislation that promoted such goals became one of the cornerstones of the New Frontier and Great Society programs of the 1960s. In 1965, the Tribal Council decided to explore systematic development of the minerals of the reservation. Among the projects was the Black Mesa Mine, a coal mining operation near Navajo National Monument. [7]

From its inception, Black Mesa Mine was controversial. In 1964, the Peabody Coal Company negotiated a lease with the Navajo Nation for 40,000 acres on the reservation; two years later, an agreement with the Navajo and Hopi tribes added 25,000 acres of the Joint Use Area that the two shared. Black Mesa was a sacred place to traditional Navajo and Hopi peoples, but the need for cash to fund the affairs of the tribes was great. By the middle of the 1960s when Peabody Coal requested the lease, the oil and gas revenues of the Navajo Nation had begun a steep decline since the salad days of the late 1950s and early 1960s. This source of revenue paid most of the expenses of the tribal government. Beginning in 1954, oil and gas revenue made up no less than fifty percent of tribal income for the next seventeen years. Faced with growing expenses and declining revenue, the Navajo Nation found the proposal enticing. The $2 million per annum for thirty-five years that the company offered seemed a phenomenal amount of money, and with coaxing from the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the lease was signed.

In the early 1970s, Black Mesa Mine became a cause celebre for the emerging environmental movement. Members of the Hopi tribe sued the Secretary of the Interior for approving the lease. Although the suit was overturned on a technicality, it attracted the attention of the national press. The result was a polarizing public debate in the charged climate of the early 1970s that left the impression of naive Indians victimized by a rapacious company. [8] As was generally the case in such situations, reality was much more complex.

The two mines Peabody Coal Company developed in the vicinity of Navajo National Monument had a significant impact on the lives of local Navajo people. The coal mining operation was one of the few on-reservation industries that hired many people. The jobs it provided paid well, particularly by the standards of the area. By the early 1990s, some of the jobs at the mine paid in the $20 per hour range. They enabled many local people to achieve a standard of living previously unavailable in the region. [9]

The coal mining operation had socio-economic and environmental consequences. The 1966 agreement allowed the company to establish a slurry to convey pulverized coal to the Mojave Power Plant on the banks of the Colorado River in Nevada. This became the first instance in which the Navajo and Hopi tribes were paid for the use of their water. The Navajo Nation agreed to provide more than 3,000 acre-feet of water each year. For this constant supply, Peabody Coal paid five dollars per acre-foot. The initial agreement created a source of cheap water for the company, but later renegotiations raised the cost significantly in an effort to limit use by the coal company. [10]

The sale of 3,000 acre-feet of ground water each year and the fact that no water from the Colorado River was used in the slurry meant that there was an impact on the water table in the vicinity of the monument. The water traveled one way--from Black Mesa to the Colorado River--providing jobs and income for Navajo and Hopi people in the area but creating a long-term threat to their survival. An economic backbone for the region had been developed, but it too had costs.

For Navajo National Monument, the slurry posed a potential problem. Drawdown of the water table could result from the consistent extraction of water beneath Black Mesa and the rest of the region. The monument depended on its wells, sunk into the same aquifer as the slurry. The Peabody Coal slurry had the potential to become a long-term threat to the monument.

Even before the emphasis on out-of-park threats in the Park Service, Navajo National Monument prepared to assess the impact of the slurry. Monitoring efforts began in 1970, when the U.S. Geological Survey made preliminary calculations in response to a request from the Park Service. USGS studies predicted a drawdown of nearly 100 feet at Kayenta by the end of the 1990s, with lesser impact on the vicinity of the monument. The study projected that at Shonto, the decline would be between five and ten feet. The figures for Betatakin were similar. [11]

But the well at Betatakin left little room for a decline in the water table. Even the small drop in the aquifer had the potential to affect the monument. Its staff and visitors were dependent on the water, as were the many Navajos who filled their fifty-five gallon drums at the pump in the monument. The Park Service needed to closely monitor the situation.

A monitoring process was established to assess the impact. The USGS and the Navajo Nation began their own monitoring in 1970, and the Park Service received reports from them throughout the 1970s. Late in the decade, there had been no apparent impact at the monument. A gentle downward slope towards Black Mesa seemed to retard the impact of the slurry on the monument, and seasonal increases in water drawn off for agricultural irrigation and school and local use in Kayenta offered the only consistent decrease in the level of any of the monitored wells. But in some places the water table had fallen as much as seventy feet by the late 1980s, and the projections of some federal scientists suggested a drop of nearly 200 feet by 2030. Vigilance for the park remained a necessity. [12]

The potential for drawdown remained strong. In 1979, Superintendent Frank Hastings assessed the problem as a long-term threat that could deprive Betatakin Canyon of water in the twenty-first century. The 1,000-year-old biotic community in the canyon depended on the water that Peabody Coal had leased into the twenty-first century. "It is probable," he wrote, "that the pumping will have an effect on the flora and fauna of the canyon." [13]

As in many similar instances at Navajo National Monument, the Park Service had little control over the fate of the water. In this situation, the agency was only a peripheral participant. The NPS had not been privy to the lease, nor were its needs considered by either Peabody or the Navajo Nation during negotiations. In cases such as this, the Park Service could only watch. In 1987, when the Navajo and Hopi tribes increased the price for the slurry water from $5 to $600 per acre-foot, with a doubling of the charge for usage over 2,800 acre-feet per year, park officials certainly applauded. [14] But despite the limits on the threat that the increased cost assured, Navajo National Monument remained potentially vulnerable to the activities of the Peabody Coal Company.