Water Shortage Hits Tribes, But Is Mining to Blame?

it to where you want it to be. On the Navajo and Hopi reservations in the arid Southwest, they have neither. Many people in this part of the country rely on private wells, and those that don't have to haul water to their homes from a central location. It's not ideal in any situation, but especially not during a pandemic, when just leaving your house is risky. There are several causes

behind water insecurity on these reservations. Climate change induced droughts are certainly one of those causes, but Bloomberg Law reporter Trip Bolts also says coal mining is probably another cause. He says decades of coal mining in the area has used up so much water that the aquafer below of the reservation has significantly dropped, although by how much is

up for dispute. Trips spoke to us from his home in Arvada, Colorado about the impact mining has had on water availability and about what can be done to address this. But he started off by talking about exactly where the Navo and Hope Reservations are the Navajo Nation. It's geographically the largest Indian reservation in the US, and it is in the Four Corners region. Most of it is in Arizona and New Mexico. There's a small piece of it in Utah, but it can be a hard scrabble existence

to live there. It's one of the most arid places in the United States. There's very little surface water and there's very little water infrastructure, like folks in urban and suburban areas of the US have come to rely upon. So a lot of the water is ground water, huge underground aquifers that people have to tap into, and it's expensive to drill a well. So you know, previously the folks who live in the area are dependent upon seeps and springs, the water sort of naturally coming to the surface.

That happens when the aquifer is full. But when it's under stress, those seeps and those springs run dry. Yeah, And we're going to get into why the aquifer is under stressed right now in a little bit. But I think that that's an important thing for people to understand, is that it's not like in Tucson or Phoenix, or San Diego or La where it's very dry places. But you know they have that public water infrastructures. It seems like it's you know, if you have a well, it's

your own private well. And if you don't have a well, you have to go get water in a barrel and put it in your truck. Right, That's exactly correct. Yes. In addition to about a third of the households on the nation not having running water, many of them also don't have sewer, they don't have electricity, they don't have internet. They have to drive fifteen, seventeen twenty miles once a week or even more often to get water. Sometimes they're loading this water up into fifty five gallon drums on

the back of their pickup truck. They run them back to their house. I talked to one of the Navajos who would siphon the water out of the barrels on his truck into some barrels on his porch, and that was his weekly water supply. So you know, it's been tough to have to do that for a long time.

But of course now we throw in the context of the COVID nineteen pandemic, right, I mean, first off, you need water to wash your hands, obviously, and also you know, the last thing you want to be doing right now is waiting in a big line for water. I mean, I guess it's not as bad because you're in your car, but still, I mean, you know, it's like you have to you have to gather to get the water just so you and wash your hands. I mean, it's an

amazing situation, absolutely true. And the water is being given out for free or very low cost by the tribe. And we should mention that there are two tribes affected by this, the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Reservation. The Hope Indians' lands are contained entirely inside of the Navajo Nation and they're and they're just as hard hit in many respects by by this lack of infrastructure. So but

you're absolutely right. They gather around these community centers. One or two of the centers have have actually had coronavirus outbreaks and so they're closed. Uh, they were places where people were washing or showering, and so they don't have access to that even for just personal hygiene. So let's talk about why this, as we mentioned earlier, the aquifer is under stress and why the water table in this part of the country has gone way way down. I

guess it's from what you're reporting. It's colon mining. There's been a long history of coal mining in this area, and the coal industry, the mining industry has used a lot of water. Can you talk about why they were using so much water? I guess I don't totally know how coal mining works. So maybe if you can give us a sort of coal mining one O one, that'd

be great. You bet well. It's a large industrial undertaking coal mining like oil and gas and timber and even waste management, and these processes use a lot of water. On top of that. One of the mines, now, these two mines that oral in the Navajo Nation were owned and operated by Peabody Energy, the number one coal producer in the United States, and at one of them, Black Mesa, which is now closed and ceased operations in two thousand

and five, they were running a coal slurry pipeline. Coal slurry, Okay, now, what that is is they would take the coal out of the ground and then they would grind it up and it with water, which makes it easier to transport. They were able to transport it at the rate of about four miles an hour in this pipeline. But the pipeline ran from the mine Black Mesa, which again is on the Navajo Nation, two hundred and seventy three miles away to a generating station that primarily produced electricity for

Los Angeles. They take the slurry out of the pipeline, they let it dry so they can be burned, and then that's how you fuel coal fire generating plants. So you need to basically have water running in that pipeline at all times to keep continually feeding the plant with coal all the time. Absolutely, while Black Mesa was running, they siphened as much as one point three million gallons a day in some cases, an estimated total of forty

five million gallons out of the Navajo Aquifer. Now, the Navajo Aquifer, which runs underneath the reservation, is the primary source of potable water for the Nava hose and for the hopies. So that was just a ton of water that came out of there. As I mentioned, Black Mesa closed in two thousand and five. The second mine, Keensa,

stopped operating in August of last year. Right, And we actually loyal listeners to Parts Rebellion will remember we talked about that, I think at the time when the Peabody Company was trying to sell the mine and was having a lot of trouble finding buyers, and it sounds like they did not find a buyer. That's absolutely correct. And so now back to how this affects the water situation

at the nation. The environmentalists on the reservation and many of the residents who who lived near the lease area for Peabody say that the drilling of so much water has caused the aquifer to drop and has caused these seeps and springs to dry up. And they rely upon these seeps and springs, which are essentially natural, to water their livestock, to water wildlife in the area, and of course they draw the water up from the aqua for themselves for their own drinking water. It's super expensive to

drill a well. Ordinarily you'd like to drill a well that's maybe three hundred, four hundred, five hundred feet deep. Some of the folks who've been studying this up there believe that the aquifer is now some about two thousand, maybe even as much as three thousand feet deep. So you're talking about a million dollar well for people who are living on about thirty thousand dollars a year. So the water table there has dropped by like an order of magnitude. Is that what that means? Yes, it is now.

There's there's some disagreement about this. This is where the controversy is. A Peabody has come back and said that by way of its own studies, they believe the aquifer to be very deep and naturally recharged. It's separated from the geology above by layers of impermeable rock. They think that the dried up springs and seeps are attributable to community use and that there's been no adverse impacts. They say, no adverse impacts to municipal water supplies from what they

characterize as minimal water use by coal mining. So we've got to he said, she said, dispute about the impact of mining on the water table. When we come back, we'll talk about how Congress may be about to step in and resolve this. So we're back and we're talking with Bloomberg Blog correspondent Tripball. It's about the impact of coal mining on tribal water supplies. Trip says Peabody could be on the hook for a ton of money if it's determined that it's past operations on the reservation lowered

the water table. There. The federal law that governs mining smackras called Surface Mining Control Reclamation Acts MACRA. It essentially does charge coal operators with reclaiming and restoring the soil, the water, the air, even the natural resources to the condition that they were in prior to this, to the beginning of coal mining. Now that is a fiercely fought

over thing. Determinations as to the extent of cleanup and what gets cleaned up and how much money is spent is generally the subject of big litigation after a coal mine closes down. So there's again some disagreement as to whether they have to restore the groundwater. How that would be done is sort of unclear. Injecting water, supplying a new water source, We're not sure about that. But these are the fights that they could and are probably likely

to occur in the coming years between the residents and Peabody. Well, it sounds like even Congress may be getting involved because because you reported that there's a bill that would address water rights issues on and around the reservation that already passed the Senate. It sounds like it was sponsored by Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah. Can you tell me a little bit about this bill and about its

prospects in the House. Yeah, good question. This bill passed the Senate recently, and it does essentially recognize the Navajo Nation's senior right to eighty one thousand, five hundred acre feet of water from the Colorado River. We should say, I sorry to interrupt. I just want to pause because senior right is a term I really want to linger on you, and I know what that means, but I think listeners may not when you're talking about water rights.

Senior right means you have the right to take water from a body of water before anyone else. And if people who have junior rights, and you know there's only enough water for the senior rights holders, the junior rights holders get no water. Absolutely correct, Yes, it's just the doctrine of prior appropriation, and the simplest way to define that is first in time, first in rights, So if your rights are senior to somebody else, you get to

pull that water out first. Interestingly, any rights that the Navajo Nation would have to water in the Colorida River basin has never been formally recognized by the federal government or a state, So that's what's historically significant about this act. But in addition to that, it's providing a lot of new funding for exactly what the Navajos need water infrastructure.

It's about two hundred and ten million dollars, and you're going to get another eight million dollars that will be appropriated from the state of Utah to start to build some of these pipelines and waterways and bring running water to residents of the nation. Now, one of the concerns here is that some folks say that this is only going to bring online about an additional three hundred homes, although we've seen number maybe as high as five thousand ultimately.

But there are some folks on the nation who say that this is a little bit too little, too late. And let's briefly sort of talk about where this bill is headed. I mean, if it's already past the Senate that I have to imagine prospects are good. I mean, is the House planning on passing this soon? And could it make it to the President's desk? It very well could. The prospects are considered to be good. The House sponsor is Utah Representative Rob Bishop. He has five co sponsors.

It is a bipartisan bill. One of the co sponsors is Utah's only congressional Democrat, Ben mccadams. However, of course it would have to be signed by President Donald Trump, and because it is a water right settlement, it would need to have final approval in the judicial system. So, as you know, David, waterlaw is extremely complex. Don't even get me started. Yeah, this bill still has a little ways to go, I see. And then finally, I wanted

to ask you about the situation on the reservation right now. Now, we already talked about what's going on with COVID, but I think it must be even more complicated the situation because the company also employed hundreds of people on the reservation in an area that is really starved for jobs. What is the attitude there? Do they do people on the reservation? I guess blame Peabody for the environmental issues

that they've caused or allegedly have caused. Or is it a situation where they just want to see Peabody get back to work and maybe reopen some minds and start bringing people back to work again. Yeah, that's a very good question. You're absolutely correct. There's a long history of coal mining on the Navajo Nation and the Hopey Reservation.

It's actually true across the American West. The relationship between coal mining employment and the economy of the tribes is a big one historically speaking, and so it can be very delicate for the residents to get into discussions with the companies about what they can do when keen to shut down in August and then along with Navaja Generating Station, it wiped out about seven hundred and fifty Native jobs.

This is perhaps one reason why the Navajo Nation Council has been reluctant to hammer away at Peabody on this. We're not sure where they're going to wind up in this ultimately compared to some of the residents, the ones who are having to truck in their water. But it is a delicate economic and political issue that was trip also Bloomberg blog correspondent speaking from his home and are that of Colorado. If you want more environmental news, check

out our website newstot Bloomberg Environment dot com. That website once again is news doop Bloomberg Environment dot Com. Today's episode of Parts Pavilion was produced by myself along with Josh Block. Special Health Today came from Anna yugononov Parts Revillion was created by Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel. Think for today's episode is a message by Jazarre and Upstate by Henning Schmidts. They were used under a Creative Commons license.

Thanks everyone for listening. Hi, I'm Laura Carlson, and I'm dropping into your feed to tell you about Prognosis, a new daily show from Bloomberg Monday through Friday. We'll spend a few minutes with you every afternoon to help you understand life in the time of COVID nineteen. The show is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. So come back every afternoon for our coverage and stay safe.