social writing assignment

https://news.vice.com/article/heres-what-coal-mining-is-doing-to-communities-in-the-navajo-nation

Here's What Coal Mining Is Doing to Communities in the Navajo Nation

By Laura Dattaro

March 18, 2015 | 1:25 pm

For sixty years, the billions of tons of coal found beneath Arizona's Black Mesa have

powered the cities of the Southwest. But getting at all that coal has meant the

displacement of more than 12,000 people of the Navajo Nation, one of the largest

removals of Native Americans since the 19th century. For those that have remained, the

mining process has compromised their health and their environment.

The mesa rises up from the dry Arizona landscape a few miles south of Kayenta

Township, where Peabody Energy operates a mine that in 2013 produced nearly eight

million tons of coal. The company proposed in May 2012 to expand its excavation, a

plan that needs approval from the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining,

Reclamation, and Enforcement (OSMRE). Locals are concerned because that would

add 841 acres of land to the Kayenta Mine complex — which would displace even more

Navajo and ensure continued air and water contamination for decades to come.

A VICE News crew traveled to the Black Mesa area to document the effects of coal

mining on their health, the environment, and the local economy.

The conflict between the company and locals extends beyond health and environmental

concerns, though. The Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has

threatenedmany Navajo with arrest if their sheep graze on company-owned land,

Marsha Monestersky of the grassroots Navajo organization Forgotten People told VICE

News. As many as 200 families, she said, remain on land the company has eyed for

expansion.

In October, the agency sent SWAT teams to detain Navajo elders for owning too many

sheep. Many in the region believe the BIA is using concerns about overgrazing as an

excuse to intimidate the Navajo into abandoning their land, leaving the way clear for

Peabody Energy to expand.

The Navajo obtained in December a US Department of Justice moratorium on BIA

efforts to terminate their permits to keep sheep and other grazing animals. The

moratorium expires this month.

"We're not sure what's going to happen," Monestersky told VICE News. "We haven't

heard anything at all. It's the uncertainty that really is traumatizing for the people."

The situation in Kayenta isn't the only conflict over coal in Navajo Nation. Across the

border, in New Mexico, tribal authorities purchased the Navajo Mine, which powers the

Four Corners Generation Station in Fruitland. But not everyone was on board with the

purchase, which cost millions of dollars that some residents say could be used for better

purposes.

"They shouldn't have done that," Joe Allen, a lifelong resident of the Fruitland area, told

VICE News. "It's just more pollution."

Earlier this month, a US District Court judge in Colorado ruled against a planned 714-

acre expansion of the Navajo Mine, calling OSMRE's analysis of environmental and

health impacts of the expansion insufficient.

"We don't need the mine. The pollution, we don't need," Allen told VICE News. "Are they

going to keep on going until they get the last bit of the coal?"

Follow Laura Dattaro on Twitter: @ldattaro