WINDOW ROCK – The people are not to blame for closing Peabody Coal Co.’s Black Mesa or shutting down the Mohave Generating Station.

That is one of the messages carried to the Navajo Nation Council and President Joe Shirley Jr. by the “Water is Life” horseback ride.

Residents of the Arizona communities of Leupp, Big Mountain, Black Mesa, and Forest Lake traveled for four days and nights before arriving in front of the council chamber Monday morning, where they held a press conference with residents of Aneth, Utah, Farmington, and Burnham, N.M.

Nicole Horseherder, one of the rise organizers, said the people are not to blame for problems with the mine or power plant.

Meanwhile, a group of Black Mesa coal miners and pipeline workers announced they would join the Navajo Nation Council ride to seek support for keeping their jobs alive, according to a news release from President Joe Shirley, Jr.’s office. The workers fear the mine will shut down because its sole customer, the Mohave Generating Station, is under court order to end air pollution or s hut down by the end of the year.

Power plant owners resisted pressure to clean up emissions for more than two decades, saying emissions controls were too expensive. Finally, a federal court laid down a firm deadline. Now plant owners say the problems is that Navajo communities and environmentalists want to shut down a slurry line that supplies coal to the plant.

“The people with money and power could have done something,” said Horseherder, a Big Mountain, Ariz. resident.

“The (coal miners) union should have worked on a transition plan,” she said, referring to recent statements by local officials to help save their jobs. “Mohave Generating Station did. So now it falls back on the grassroots people. We are not to blame.”

Horseherder said that for the past 30 years, Peabody has been getting rich off Navajo coal and water.

“And since that day, they made work for us – hauling water because there’s no more water,” Horseherder said, referring to the disappearance of springs and shall wells in the vicinity of Peabody’s two coal mines on Black Mesa.

Some residents believe the dry conditions are due to Peabody’s withdrawal of large quantities of groundwater to feed a 273-mile coal slurry line to the power plant in Laughlin, Nev.

The slurry line uses 4,400 acre-feet of water a year. Measured in 55-gallon barrels, the most common way of hauling water for Black Mesa residents, that’s 26 million barrels of water a year.

The slurry line terminates at the power plant, near the Colorado River, but Peabody has maintained it cannot use river water for the line.

“We’re taking back our land and water and giving them (coal companies) back the work so we can go on with our Navajo way of life, with our livestock, with our farms,” Horseherder said.

Horseherder said about two dozen people rode with her over a hundred miles to help tribal leaders understand that mining Mother Earth for coal, oil, and gas is not the only way to generate money to operate the government.

It’s time to start a sustainable economy that involves livestock marketing, organic farming, and producing energy from wind and solar power, Horseherder said.

“This is what responsible people who have reverence for Mother Earth, Father Sky and all relations between do,” she said. “We would really set an example for the nation and the world.”

Delegate Leonard Chee (Leupp/Birdsprings/Tolani Lake), another “Water is Life” organizer agreed.

Chee said 95 percent of Leupp Chapter residents don’t have running water. Leupp is currently the center of a study to determine if water from the underlying Coconino Aquifer could be used for Black Mesa’s slurry line. Leupp residents, initially interested in the idea, have since reversed field and now most oppose it, Chee said.

“So that’s why I’m very concerned and rode with the group from day one,” Chee said. “We’re rich in coal and water, yet we’re without electricity and water. It does not make sense to me.”

He urged all the riders and their supporters to talk to the council.

“This honorable council will listen to you if you talk to them in a respectful way,” Chee said before excusing himself to attend the first day of the council’s five-day summer session.

No miners spoke publicly once the council ride reached Window Rock, but they said in a news release from Shirley’s office that they hoped the council would reverse a 2003 vote ordering an end to groundwater pumping for industrial use on Black Mesa.

Horseherder encouraged people to thank the council for ordering Peabody to stop pumping water from the Navajo Aquifer for its slurry.

Shirley has been looking for alternatives that would keep the slurry going, and had hoped the mine could tap the Coconino Aquifer. However, this idea has run into opposition not only from Leupp residents, but from the towns of Flagstaff and Winslow, Ariz. Both off-reservation communities draw water from the aquifer and oppose Shirley’s plan.

Under a lease with the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe, Peabody Coal Co. has been strip-mining coal from two operations on Black Mesa, the Black Mesa and Kayenta mines, for the past 30 years.

Peabody contends that it uses only a tiny fraction of the water stored in the Navajo Aquifer underlying Black Mesa, and that dry wells and springs are the consequence of prolonged drought conditions. The company says scientific research has shown the aquifer is not connected to the surface waters.

Originally published in The Navajo Times August 3, 2005