Independent – June 20, 2005: Elders fight to keep land; Peabody opponent says elderly suffer from stress disorder By Kathy Helms
Din? Bureau
[A] group of residents who turned out Saturday at Forest Lake Chapter for a meeting on the C-aquifer, which possibly will be used to replace the higher-quality N-aquifer water Peabody now uses to slurry coal to Mohave Generating Station in Nevada.
Peabody [Coal Company] hopes to expand its operation and increase its water usage. Residents want running water in their homes. They say they’re tired of giving up their resources and getting little in return. …
Paulinos’ home is located near Peabody’s Kayenta mine, and the strip-mine operation is headed south, in her direction. She said she used to hear blasting, but that has now stopped. She said the ground shook also.
“There’s a lot of blasting damage that does occur to the houses up there,” Benally said. “During the public hearing here, one of the guys that had been relocated from HPL (Hopi Partitioned Land) said the relocation home they got from the Hopi land dispute was already getting cracks.
“Historically, Peabody said that a lot of the cracks in floors of the houses were because of the poor construction of the homes. Now, these are government-built homes and Peabody-built homes and they’re experiencing the same problems.”
Paul Clark of Black Mesa works at the mine. Even so, he takes issue with how the Navajo Nation and its people have been compensated for their coal. He said that years back, Peabody was paying “12-1/2 cents for anything that they get under from the earth. Then they wanted to raise up 7 more cents, saying, ‘Now, I’m going to pay you 20 cents. I’ll pay you 20 cents for this coal a ton.’ ”
“Then people agreed and didn’t know anything about the prices like that, whether it was fair or not. That’s how Peabody tricked the Navajo,” Clark said.
Be sure to note the insanity of using water in the Four Corners desert to create a slurry of coal so as to simplify pumping it hundreds of miles. And you thought Big Oil was destroying the region.
Here’s where someone snidely asks, “Are your lights on? Do you drive a car?” I’m still entitled to my outrage (and regret) at what we are doing to our world on the cheap. mjh
And Daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg county,
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay.
“Well I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in askin’.”
“Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.”