Hopefully Coherent

I. Introduction

In the opening section of this analysis I will outline the theoretical and historical framework that will be used to situate the issues of environmental injustice brought upon the Hopi Indians. To understand how this minority group has been marginalized by the United States (and specifically our energy sector), it is important to know a little about the history of modern environmental politics. I will use this history as a jumping point to begin describing the environmental justice movement and then why it is applicable to the Hopi.

A) The Birth of Modern Environmental Politics

Oddly enough it was the presidential administration of, conservative, Richard Nixon who led us into the era of Modern Environmental Politics. On the wake of the revolutionary social change that characterized the 1960’s, and with help from Rachel Carson’s earth-shattering expose on the harms of pesticide, there was a growing public concern for several environmental issues. The groundswell culminated in the organization and country-wide participation in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. This public outcry did not go unnoticed by United States politicians. The government reacted fast by passing the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, all in a relatively short period of time.

These initial bills of legislation have been a cornerstone in the environmental movement and largely influence the way American’s regard the environment. These bills became regulation and as with most federal regulation, they became subject of intense controversy. Fundamental to this controversy is an ill-perceived idea that there is an economic trade-off between environmental protection and business.

Though many question the validity of such an assumption, it remains a prevalent idea in our culture. It also created a backlash towards the environmental movement. This backlash directly contributed to the belief that environmental issues are “a white-middle-class thing.” There has been a persistent element of truth to this belief though. Humans create concepts such as “race”, “pollution”, and “contamination”. These socially constructed terms are then used to form discourse that often serves the ends of the people who are all ready in power. Discourse and concepts aside, the “environment” has a very real and lasting impact on everyday people; who deserve to live in a healthy environment in order that they pursue the “life of dignity” that most human rights declarations describe. (Checker 16) The supposed tradeoff between the environment and jobs has been a reality, but they arise mainly in poor and (especially) minority communities. (Shrader-Frechette 6). The recognition of this led to the birth of the environmental justice movement in the 1980’s

B) Environmental Justice: Civil Rights meet Environmental Rights

In the mid to late 1980’s environmentalism and civil rights converged to begin fighting the fact that the marginalized people of the globe bear the brunt of the world’s environmental degradation. (Checker 8) The first scene of activism with regard to environmental justice was set within our state in Warren County, North Carolina. In 1982, Warren County was the center of controversy after the EPA and county officials decided to bend the rules to allow a polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) disposal site to dump its waste dangerously close to the water table. At the time, Warren’s population was 75% African-American and it was the 4^th poorest county in North Carolina. (Shrader-Frechette 8)

In 1987 activists received the scholarly backing needed to legitimate their movement when the United Church of Christ Study was published. This study concludes: “The proportion of minority members in communities with hazardous waste facilities is double that of communities without facilities.” (Westra ET. Wenz xv). This ignited the, often controversial, concept of environmental racism. Though I believe in its existence, I will be arguing from the perspective of environmental injustice towards minorities, rather than using the controversial term “environmental racism” which becomes problematic to prove.

“Besides African-Americans, indigenous peoples have repeatedly been victims of environmental injustice. Among Native Americans, some of the most serious abuses have occurred in connection with the uranium mining in the West.” (Shrader-Frechette 9). One of the longest-operating uranium mines in the countries history can be found in Churchrock, New Mexico, on land owned by the Navajo Nation. The Navajo tribal government signed a governmental mining lease without obtaining the consent of Navajo families and without knowledge of the consequences that the company’s activities would produce. After using and contaminating the regions only source of drinking water the companies came under attack. These companies in turn responded the outcry by claiming immunity to the Federal Water Pollution Control act, in light of the fact that their “activities took place on Native-American land” which they argued “is not subject to any environmental protection.” (Shrader-Frechette 9). An identical, if not, I would argue a more detrimental; situation is found in the next state to the west: Arizona. Here the Hopi fought a similar battle with our energy sector; but instead of Uranium, Hopi land is rich in coal.

C) The Hopi: Unwilling Environmental Justice Activists

The Hopi have often been characterized as a peaceful people. They claim to have had a continual occupancy on their northern Arizona land since 500 A.D. The modern Hopi reservation is estimated to be about 9 percent of the total land that they originally inhabited. Over the years their land has been claimed and reduced by Spaniards, whites, and even other Native-American tribes. Since the beginning, though, the Hopi have built their villages on top of the area’s large Mesas for defensive purposes. Ironically, it is the top of one of these Mesas that threatens the survival of the Hopi today. (http://www.hopi.nsn.us/history.asp).

The Hopi’s Black Mesa is where the world’s largest privately-owned coal company decided to expand their profits by opening a mammoth of a coal mine. I will argue that since the beginning of the mine, and up to this day, the Hopi have experienced one of the biggest cases of environmental injustice in our recent history. I will furthermore argue that this situation is indicative of the way our nation’s minorities, especially its Native-Americans, experience the powerlessness of environmental injustice. This experience is caused by a variety of factors including: the nation’s appetite for energy and development, corporate greed and unaccountability, and the government’s misrepresentation of Native-Americans. First though, let’s talk about the mine.

II. Background Relations between the Hopi and Peabody Energy

This section will describe the impact of the relationship between the world’s largest coal company, Peabody Energy, and the Hopi Indians of Northern Arizona. I will explore everything from the initial misrepresentation of the Hopi people, the 30 year operation of the Black Mesa mine, and the section will conclude with the mine’s closing on December 31, 2005.

A) May 16, 1966: The initial contract/misrepresentation

To clearly understand the dynamics of this exploitative relationship, it is necessary to trace the history all the way back to the first contact between Hopi Tribal Council members and the Peabody Energy Company in the 1960’s. The unequal playing ground was initially constructed by the long-time trusted Hopi attorney, the late John Sterling Boyden. On May 16, 1966, Boyden presented a lease proposal he had prepared for the Hopi council members to sign. This proposal was created to open up Hopi tribal lands for mining interests after Boyden had attempted in the years prior to convince council members of the benefits this would create.

When presenting this proposal Boyden failed to tell the council several of the implications that would come along with it. First and foremost, Boyden failed to tell them that Peabody would be operating one of the largest strip mines in the country on their land. He said nothing of the huge quantities of water that would be needed to operate the mines. Furthermore, he never told the tribe that the coal would help fuel the development boom in the Southwest. “With cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas on the brink of explosive growth the tribe could have exerted enormous leverage to extract the best possible price for its coal and water” (Folger 34). The omission of these facts by Boyden had grave implications for the Hopi and set the stage for more than 30 years of extreme exploitation and unequal relations between Peabody and the Hopi.

Had Boyden been honest with the Hopi about how large and costly the Black Mesa mine would be, it could be reasoned that the Hopi would never have entered into such an agreement, because the world view of the Hopi is one of reverence for the land. I will illustrate later how the relationship between Peabody and the Hopi can be characterized as a clash of cultures. Beyond the cultural component though, the Hopi were misrepresented financially by Boyden as well.

In reference to the bargaining leverage the Hopi could have had for the price of their coal and water, it cannot be stated enough that the price they agreed to under this initial contract was egregiously low and, in no regard, fair. The tribe only received 3.3% of gross sales, which is about half the rate that the federal government was getting in mining royalties at the time. In addition, in October of the same year, the lease was altered with a mysterious hand-written amendment that would allow Peabody to withdraw more than 4,000 acre-feet of potable water from underneath the Black Mesa each year (Dougherty 4).

“For every acre-foot of water pumped from the Hopi ‘n-aquifer’ (an acre-foot is the amount of water that would cover an acre to the depth of one foot), Peabody was to pay $1.67. In the arid Southwest, water from the n-aquifer should have commanded $30 to $50 per acre foot, even in 1966. Peabody continued to pay a price 30 times lower than the actual market value of Hopi water until the deal was renegotiated in the 80’s (Folger 34).

This entire Peabody deal was negotiated in secret with John Boyden acting on the Hopi’s behalf. Why did such an outrageously unfair lease get approved? Why did the lawyer representing the Hopi fail to protect the interest of his impoverished clients, who even today suffer an unemployment rate that hovers around 50%?

Part of the answer was uncovered about 20 years ago when documents were discovered showing that John Sterling Boyden secretly worked for Peabody at the same time he was representing the Hopi. Billing records and correspondence with Peabody executives have been discovered by law professor of law Charles Wilkinson that conclusively show that Boyden’s association with the company lasted from 1964 through 1971.(Folger 34).

Boyden grew up a devout Mormon in Coalville, Utah (irony?). After years of making a name for himself, he was hired by an unofficial group that called itself the Hopi Tribal Council in 1950 to represent the tribe before the Indian Claims Commission. By the 1960’s, Boyden had already banked $500,000 for representing the Hopi before the Indian Claims Commission. For his work on the land-dispute case, the Hopi tribal council paid Boyden an additional $1 million – $780,000 for legal services and $220,000 as an expression of “gratitude”, for his work. (Dougherty 3) The whole time that Boyden was being paid to represent the Hopi in these cases, however, he was also on the payroll for the Peabody Energy company. Even after the discovery of these payrolls and the damaging records of correspondence between Peabody and Boyden during the original negotiations, Peabody continued to defend their dealings with Boyden saying: “The notion that deceased attorney John Boyden was secretly involved in lease negotiations to benefit Peabody’s interests is untrue and a tragic attempt at defaming a dead and honorable man” (Peabody spokesmen Beth Sutton, 2004). Beyond this spin, Wilkinson, commented on the correspondence saying: “It just turns your stomach, reading those letters is sickening” (Dougherty 5)

It has been suggested by some that these shady dealings on the part of John Boyden and Peabody Energy could be characterized as environmental racism. The validity of such an assertion it can be very problematic, however. Though Boyden and Peabody are both non-Indians who manipulated their power to exploit the Hopi, it cannot be proven that their intention was racially motivated. What can be asserted is that this was a relationship of unequal nature. Boyden exploited what he likely saw as an easily marginalized group of people for financial gain. There are even more unequal government manufactured relationships (i.e. the appointed Hopi elite council members) that helped allow this lease to be signed without consent of majority of the Hopi population, which we will explore later. Before those aspects are explored we must first discuss the operation of the Black Mesa Mine and its impacts on the culture, environment, and sustainability of the Hopi Indians.

B) Operation of the Black Mesa Mine: A Model of Unsustainability

Black Mesa is a high-altitude plateau that rises 3,000 feet above the surrounding lowlands of the Hopi reservation, in Northern Arizona. The name Black Mesa originated as a description of the appearance of its rich coal deposit. The Mesa is composed of anthracite coal, which is highly valued by industry, in part ironically because of our government’s environmental regulation. Anthracite coal is characteristically low in sulfur content and has a high heating value (approximately 10,700 Btu’s per pound) (Glennon 155). In creating the 1970 Clean Air Act and its subsequent amendments our government has put pressure on U.S. industry to reduce the amount of sulfur pollution that our coal-fired power plants emit in their annual operation. Burning coal like Anthracite allows power plants to avoid having to make costly upgrades to their technology, for these reasons and more industry saw Black Mesa as a proverbial gold mine.

In 1968 Peabody Energy Company began strip-mining almost 65,000 acres of the Black Mesa. In conjunction with this mine, Peabody began pumping water from the underlying N-Aquifer for the sole purpose of operating the nation’s only slurry pipeline, and the Slurry Preparation Plant located near the Black Mesa Mine. The coal company delivered dry coal in 2-inch (50 mm) particles by belt conveyor into the Black Mesa Pipeline Company's coal storage bins. At the Slurry Preparation Plant the coal was again ground to finer particles and mixed with the freshwater pumped from the N-Aquifer to produce ‘slurry’. The slurry was then piped 273 miles, via the Black Mesa pipeline, to the Mohave Generating Station in Nevada. Upon its arrival at Mohave the coal was then burned to generate electricity for Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix (Glennon 155). As it became public knowledge that large quantities of high quality water was being wasted on the transportation of coal “The technology [was] universally rejected as grossly inefficient.” (Folger 33).

This process was repeated each day from 1968 to 2005. According to the E.P.A. the Black Mesa Mine was producing 4.8 million tons of anthracite coal each year. (EPA REPORT – FIND ME MATTEO). In addition Peabody was pumping approximately 1.3 billion gallons of water from the aquifer each year. It is estimated that both the Hopi and Navajo tribes received a total of $85 million a year from royalties, taxes, employment benefits, and secondary economic spin-off, associated with operating the mines. This revenue was contributing roughly 60% of the Hopi tribal government’s annual budget before the mine was closed (Folger 33).

C) Environmental Impacts of the Mine (1966 – 2005)

Even though the revenue from the mine helped to bring in a majority of the Tribe’s annual budget each year, it is a particular understatement to suggest that the price received by the Hopi was in anyway fair. Peabody continued to pay the initial contracted $1.67 per acre-foot of water, until the tribes renegotiated for closer to the market value of their water (an almost 300% increase in water price). Even so, the money in no way reflected the price the Hopi have bore in respect to the environmental degradation of their land. Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Interior failed to produce an environmental impact statement on the mine until June of 1990. The end result of the impact statement was the recommendation for Peabody to switch the source of their water from the N-Aquifer to the nearby C-Aquifer. The Department Interior included that if this should happen they would increase ‘life-of-mine’ lease until 2026 with a recommended increase of production to 6.2 million tons of coal per year. (http://www.wrcc.osmre.gov/bmk-eis/Black%20Mesa%20Project%20Description.pdf). Here again we see the failure of the U.S. government in protecting the environment and future livelihoods of the Hopi people. For all people, but the Hopi almost more so, the state of our environment and the state of our livelihood are two things that are inextricably linked. Never is this more apparent than when looking at Hopi dependence on this water source that Peabody exploited and wasted in this pipeline for over 30 years.

The Black Mesa is not an empty area where a coal mine happens to reside though. Approximately 10,000 Hopi and 27,000 Navajo live and work on the Mesa itself. Although many Hopi have entered the cash economy (either partially or completely), many traditionalists continue to live and practice the same subsistence farming techniques that their ancestors began practicing on this land at least 1,150 years ago. (Glennon 158). The water serves as an integral part of these techniques. This pristine water that was annually used to slurry coal in one of the most arid regions of the United States is also the sole source of Hopi drinking water. Of the 10,000 Hopi that live on the reservation, each person uses an average of below 8 gallons a day. Total, the entire Hopi population uses less than 3 percent of what Peabody pumps each day. (Folger 35)

The “traditional Hopi firmly believe that the earth cannot be owned. They view themselves as the caretakers of the earth, believing that they must live in harmony with the laws of the creator in order to maintain balance for the entire planet.” (Hall 131). The Hopi philosophy is congruent with many of the tenants of our modern Sustainable Development movement. The Hopi believe that the earth that we are currently living on is the 4^th incarnation of the world. In Hopi mythology 3 previous versions of the earth were destroyed by God; each time after humans became arrogant enough to think of themselves as god and used its technology in destructive ways. This belief is in many ways parallel to the suspicions Sustainable Development scholars have in regard to our technology and current state of consumption.

In contrast, however, their culture can be seen as clashing with many aspects of Anglo-American capitalist culture. Many Anglo-Americans, especially those in positions of decision-making power, view the land and its resources as a commodity that can be quantified and manipulated for mass production. They also operate under the assumption that natural limitations can be overcome by harnessing technological innovations. (Hall 131) When I visited the Hopi reservation this spring, conversations I had with members of the tribe drove this clash of cultures home for me. I will discuss in further detail later how these cultural differences helped to allow Peabody (and others) to exploit the Hopi.

D) December, 31 2005: Public Backlash and the Closing of Black Mesa

Since mining began, local Hopi and Navajo have fought its operation on the grass-roots level. By the mid- 1980’s the Hopi Tribal Council began debating amongst themselves whether or not to end mining lease. The topic generated a storm of controversy, even among Council members, in large part due to the fact that the majority of the revenue earned by the tribe was derived from the mining operation. In 1990 Hopi Tribal Council member, Vernon Masayesva, walked away from his role as council member because of his frustrations with the government’s handling of the Black Mesa situation. After several years of writing and grassroots organizing, he created a non-profit organization called the Black Mesa Trust in 1998. The mission of this organization is as follows:

“Our Mission: The mission of Black Mesa Trust is to safeguard, preserve and honor the land and water of Black Mesa. At its essence, Black Mesa Trust is about harnessing the lessons of traditional knowledge with Western science and technology to secure permanently our homeland on Black Mesa for generations of children yet to come. It is our hope that our families will always enjoy the wide-open spaces, deep canyons, majestic mesas, and clean air and water that bless our sacred homeland.” (blackmesatrust.org 2007)

Masayesva and the Black Mesa Trust immediately began challenging the water studies that showed “no significant impact” to the N-Aquifer. (Reily 2). For many years Peabody had been arguing that “…study after study has shown that we are not harming it [the aquifer]” (Folger 35) The Corporation often used this misinformation to temporarily win arguments about the company’s impact on Hopi water. What they failed to mention is that the studies showing “no significant impact” are in large part Peabody-funded studies.

The Mohave Power Plant where Black Mesa coal was being sent was one of the largest sources of pollutants in the west. It attracted several protests and lawsuits from a variety of organizations including the Sierra Club and the Grand Canyon Trust, due to the large amounts of white haze it was sending up around the area (especially over the Grand Canyon). The company, Southern California Edison, who owned Mohave, was being pressured to spend an estimated $1.1 billion to retrofit the plant. Before they would make such an investment they demanded that Peabody acquire a permanent lease for the Black Mesa Mine. (Reily 4)

When Peabody went to apply for this lease with the Office of Surface Mining, the Black Mesa Trust and other organizations spread the word using a western tool – the internet. The internet and grassroots organizing finally gave the local Hopi residents a voice in the debate. This voice was manifested by the 7,000 objections that the Office of Surface Mining received within a short time, all firmly opposed to the mine’s continued use of the aquifer. (Reily 4). Faced by the unified Hopi and Navajo opposition, Edison decided not to invest in the retrofit and eventually, both the Mohave Generating Station and the Black Mesa mine were shut down on December, 31 2005.

Of course, this is where; (depending on your perspective) the story just begins. Over 30 years of a company exploiting the people and natural resources of a specific area; things like this do not repair themselves the moment the company leaves. In the next section I will explore deeper the impact that Peabody has LEFT on the Hopi from 2005 up to present day. The aftermath of this unequal relationship has important things to reveal to us about the larger state of environmental justice in America.

III. The Hopi’s Blackest Mesa: 2005 - Present

This section is composed of the unfortunate aftermath that Peabody left in the wake of the mine being closed. Here we face a sometimes dark and sometimes hopeful future of the Hopi people. I will also discuss the implications to Peabody and how the mine has affected (mostly financially) them. In the mess of things, some people have offered sustainable solutions. I will conclude the section by describing the informal interviews that I conducted, this year (2007), on my trip to the Hopi reservation.

A) Capitalistic Model of Growth: Peabody Energy and its Increasing Profits