Speaker 1: If you think the pandemic is bad, try dealing with
Speaker 1: it without running water. That's the situation right now on
Speaker 1: several American Indian reservations in the Southwest. On this episode
Speaker 1: of Parts per Billion, we look at why and who's
Speaker 1: to blame. Hello and welcome back once again to Parts
Speaker 1: per Billion, the environmental podcast from Bloomberg Law. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: David Schultz. So it's not enough to have water. You
Speaker 1: also need water infrastructure to purify it and then deliver
Speaker 1: it to where you want it to be. On the
Speaker 1: Navajo and Hopi reservations in the arid Southwest, they have neither.
Speaker 1: Many people in this part of the country rely on
Speaker 1: private wells, and those that don't have to haul water
Speaker 1: to their homes from a central location. It's not ideal
Speaker 1: in any situation, but especially not during a pandemic, when
Speaker 1: just leaving your house is risky. There are several causes
Speaker 1: behind water insecurity on these reservations. Climate change induced droughts
Speaker 1: are certainly one of those causes, but Bloomberg Law reporter
Speaker 1: Trip Bolts also says coal mining is probably another cause.
Speaker 1: He says decades of coal mining in the area has
Speaker 1: used up so much water that the aquafer below of
Speaker 1: the reservation has significantly dropped, although by how much is
Speaker 1: up for dispute. Trips spoke to us from his home
Speaker 1: in Arvada, Colorado about the impact mining has had on
Speaker 1: water availability and about what can be done to address this.
Speaker 1: But he started off by talking about exactly where the
Speaker 1: Navo and Hope Reservations are the Navajo Nation. It's geographically
Speaker 1: the largest Indian reservation in the US, and it is
Speaker 1: in the Four Corners region. Most of it is in
Speaker 1: Arizona and New Mexico. There's a small piece of it
Speaker 1: in Utah, but it can be a hard scrabble existence
Speaker 1: to live there. It's one of the most arid places
Speaker 1: in the United States. There's very little surface water and
Speaker 1: there's very little water infrastructure, like folks in urban and
Speaker 1: suburban areas of the US have come to rely upon.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the water is ground water, huge
Speaker 1: underground aquifers that people have to tap into, and it's
Speaker 1: expensive to drill a well. So you know, previously the
Speaker 1: folks who live in the area are dependent upon seeps
Speaker 1: and springs, the water sort of naturally coming to the surface.
Speaker 1: That happens when the aquifer is full. But when it's
Speaker 1: under stress, those seeps and those springs run dry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we're going to get into why the aquifer is
Speaker 1: under stressed right now in a little bit. But I
Speaker 1: think that that's an important thing for people to understand,
Speaker 1: is that it's not like in Tucson or Phoenix, or
Speaker 1: San Diego or La where it's very dry places. But
Speaker 1: you know they have that public water infrastructures. It seems
Speaker 1: like it's you know, if you have a well, it's
Speaker 1: your own private well. And if you don't have a well,
Speaker 1: you have to go get water in a barrel and
Speaker 1: put it in your truck. Right, That's exactly correct. Yes.
Speaker 1: In addition to about a third of the households on
Speaker 1: the nation not having running water, many of them also
Speaker 1: don't have sewer, they don't have electricity, they don't have internet.
Speaker 1: They have to drive fifteen, seventeen twenty miles once a
Speaker 1: week or even more often to get water. Sometimes they're
Speaker 1: loading this water up into fifty five gallon drums on
Speaker 1: the back of their pickup truck. They run them back
Speaker 1: to their house. I talked to one of the Navajos
Speaker 1: who would siphon the water out of the barrels on
Speaker 1: his truck into some barrels on his porch, and that
Speaker 1: was his weekly water supply. So you know, it's been
Speaker 1: tough to have to do that for a long time.
Speaker 1: But of course now we throw in the context of
Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen pandemic, right, I mean, first off, you
Speaker 1: need water to wash your hands, obviously, and also you know,
Speaker 1: the last thing you want to be doing right now
Speaker 1: is waiting in a big line for water. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it's not as bad because you're in your car,
Speaker 1: but still, I mean, you know, it's like you have
Speaker 1: to you have to gather to get the water just
Speaker 1: so you and wash your hands. I mean, it's an
Speaker 1: amazing situation, absolutely true. And the water is being given
Speaker 1: out for free or very low cost by the tribe.
Speaker 1: And we should mention that there are two tribes affected
Speaker 1: by this, the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Reservation. The
Speaker 1: Hope Indians' lands are contained entirely inside of the Navajo
Speaker 1: Nation and they're and they're just as hard hit in
Speaker 1: many respects by by this lack of infrastructure. So but
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. They gather around these community centers. One
Speaker 1: or two of the centers have have actually had coronavirus
Speaker 1: outbreaks and so they're closed. Uh, they were places where
Speaker 1: people were washing or showering, and so they don't have
Speaker 1: access to that even for just personal hygiene. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about why this, as we mentioned earlier, the aquifer
Speaker 1: is under stress and why the water table in this
Speaker 1: part of the country has gone way way down. I
Speaker 1: guess it's from what you're reporting. It's colon mining. There's
Speaker 1: been a long history of coal mining in this area,
Speaker 1: and the coal industry, the mining industry has used a
Speaker 1: lot of water. Can you talk about why they were
Speaker 1: using so much water? I guess I don't totally know
Speaker 1: how coal mining works. So maybe if you can give
Speaker 1: us a sort of coal mining one O one, that'd
Speaker 1: be great. You bet well. It's a large industrial undertaking
Speaker 1: coal mining like oil and gas and timber and even
Speaker 1: waste management, and these processes use a lot of water.
Speaker 1: On top of that. One of the mines, now, these
Speaker 1: two mines that oral in the Navajo Nation were owned
Speaker 1: and operated by Peabody Energy, the number one coal producer
Speaker 1: in the United States, and at one of them, Black Mesa,
Speaker 1: which is now closed and ceased operations in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, they were running a coal slurry pipeline. Coal slurry, Okay, now,
Speaker 1: what that is is they would take the coal out
Speaker 1: of the ground and then they would grind it up
Speaker 1: and it with water, which makes it easier to transport.
Speaker 1: They were able to transport it at the rate of
Speaker 1: about four miles an hour in this pipeline. But the
Speaker 1: pipeline ran from the mine Black Mesa, which again is
Speaker 1: on the Navajo Nation, two hundred and seventy three miles
Speaker 1: away to a generating station that primarily produced electricity for
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. They take the slurry out of the pipeline,
Speaker 1: they let it dry so they can be burned, and
Speaker 1: then that's how you fuel coal fire generating plants. So
Speaker 1: you need to basically have water running in that pipeline
Speaker 1: at all times to keep continually feeding the plant with
Speaker 1: coal all the time. Absolutely, while Black Mesa was running,
Speaker 1: they siphened as much as one point three million gallons
Speaker 1: a day in some cases, an estimated total of forty
Speaker 1: five million gallons out of the Navajo Aquifer. Now, the
Speaker 1: Navajo Aquifer, which runs underneath the reservation, is the primary
Speaker 1: source of potable water for the Nava hose and for
Speaker 1: the hopies. So that was just a ton of water
Speaker 1: that came out of there. As I mentioned, Black Mesa
Speaker 1: closed in two thousand and five. The second mine, Keensa,
Speaker 1: stopped operating in August of last year. Right, And we
Speaker 1: actually loyal listeners to Parts Rebellion will remember we talked
Speaker 1: about that, I think at the time when the Peabody
Speaker 1: Company was trying to sell the mine and was having
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble finding buyers, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: they did not find a buyer. That's absolutely correct. And
Speaker 1: so now back to how this affects the water situation
Speaker 1: at the nation. The environmentalists on the reservation and many
Speaker 1: of the residents who who lived near the lease area
Speaker 1: for Peabody say that the drilling of so much water
Speaker 1: has caused the aquifer to drop and has caused these
Speaker 1: seeps and springs to dry up. And they rely upon
Speaker 1: these seeps and springs, which are essentially natural, to water
Speaker 1: their livestock, to water wildlife in the area, and of
Speaker 1: course they draw the water up from the aqua for
Speaker 1: themselves for their own drinking water. It's super expensive to
Speaker 1: drill a well. Ordinarily you'd like to drill a well
Speaker 1: that's maybe three hundred, four hundred, five hundred feet deep.
Speaker 1: Some of the folks who've been studying this up there
Speaker 1: believe that the aquifer is now some about two thousand,
Speaker 1: maybe even as much as three thousand feet deep. So
Speaker 1: you're talking about a million dollar well for people who
Speaker 1: are living on about thirty thousand dollars a year. So
Speaker 1: the water table there has dropped by like an order
Speaker 1: of magnitude. Is that what that means? Yes, it is now.
Speaker 1: There's there's some disagreement about this. This is where the
Speaker 1: controversy is. A Peabody has come back and said that
Speaker 1: by way of its own studies, they believe the aquifer
Speaker 1: to be very deep and naturally recharged. It's separated from
Speaker 1: the geology above by layers of impermeable rock. They think
Speaker 1: that the dried up springs and seeps are attributable to
Speaker 1: community use and that there's been no adverse impacts. They say,
Speaker 1: no adverse impacts to municipal water supplies from what they
Speaker 1: characterize as minimal water use by coal mining. So we've
Speaker 1: got to he said, she said, dispute about the impact
Speaker 1: of mining on the water table. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how Congress may be about to step
Speaker 1: in and resolve this. So we're back and we're talking
Speaker 1: with Bloomberg Blog correspondent Tripball. It's about the impact of
Speaker 1: coal mining on tribal water supplies. Trip says Peabody could
Speaker 1: be on the hook for a ton of money if
Speaker 1: it's determined that it's past operations on the reservation lowered
Speaker 1: the water table. There. The federal law that governs mining
Speaker 1: smackras called Surface Mining Control Reclamation Acts MACRA. It essentially
Speaker 1: does charge coal operators with reclaiming and restoring the soil,
Speaker 1: the water, the air, even the natural resources to the
Speaker 1: condition that they were in prior to this, to the
Speaker 1: beginning of coal mining. Now that is a fiercely fought
Speaker 1: over thing. Determinations as to the extent of cleanup and
Speaker 1: what gets cleaned up and how much money is spent
Speaker 1: is generally the subject of big litigation after a coal
Speaker 1: mine closes down. So there's again some disagreement as to
Speaker 1: whether they have to restore the groundwater. How that would
Speaker 1: be done is sort of unclear. Injecting water, supplying a
Speaker 1: new water source, We're not sure about that. But these
Speaker 1: are the fights that they could and are probably likely
Speaker 1: to occur in the coming years between the residents and Peabody. Well,
Speaker 1: it sounds like even Congress may be getting involved because
Speaker 1: because you reported that there's a bill that would address
Speaker 1: water rights issues on and around the reservation that already
Speaker 1: passed the Senate. It sounds like it was sponsored by
Speaker 1: Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah. Can you tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about this bill and about its
Speaker 1: prospects in the House. Yeah, good question. This bill passed
Speaker 1: the Senate recently, and it does essentially recognize the Navajo
Speaker 1: Nation's senior right to eighty one thousand, five hundred acre
Speaker 1: feet of water from the Colorado River. We should say,
Speaker 1: I sorry to interrupt. I just want to pause because
Speaker 1: senior right is a term I really want to linger
Speaker 1: on you, and I know what that means, but I
Speaker 1: think listeners may not when you're talking about water rights.
Speaker 1: Senior right means you have the right to take water
Speaker 1: from a body of water before anyone else. And if
Speaker 1: people who have junior rights, and you know there's only
Speaker 1: enough water for the senior rights holders, the junior rights
Speaker 1: holders get no water. Absolutely correct, Yes, it's just the
Speaker 1: doctrine of prior appropriation, and the simplest way to define
Speaker 1: that is first in time, first in rights, So if
Speaker 1: your rights are senior to somebody else, you get to
Speaker 1: pull that water out first. Interestingly, any rights that the
Speaker 1: Navajo Nation would have to water in the Colorida River
Speaker 1: basin has never been formally recognized by the federal government
Speaker 1: or a state, So that's what's historically significant about this act.
Speaker 1: But in addition to that, it's providing a lot of
Speaker 1: new funding for exactly what the Navajos need water infrastructure.
Speaker 1: It's about two hundred and ten million dollars, and you're
Speaker 1: going to get another eight million dollars that will be
Speaker 1: appropriated from the state of Utah to start to build
Speaker 1: some of these pipelines and waterways and bring running water
Speaker 1: to residents of the nation. Now, one of the concerns
Speaker 1: here is that some folks say that this is only
Speaker 1: going to bring online about an additional three hundred homes,
Speaker 1: although we've seen number maybe as high as five thousand ultimately.
Speaker 1: But there are some folks on the nation who say
Speaker 1: that this is a little bit too little, too late.
Speaker 1: And let's briefly sort of talk about where this bill
Speaker 1: is headed. I mean, if it's already past the Senate
Speaker 1: that I have to imagine prospects are good. I mean,
Speaker 1: is the House planning on passing this soon? And could
Speaker 1: it make it to the President's desk? It very well could.
Speaker 1: The prospects are considered to be good. The House sponsor
Speaker 1: is Utah Representative Rob Bishop. He has five co sponsors.
Speaker 1: It is a bipartisan bill. One of the co sponsors
Speaker 1: is Utah's only congressional Democrat, Ben mccadams. However, of course
Speaker 1: it would have to be signed by President Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and because it is a water right settlement, it would
Speaker 1: need to have final approval in the judicial system. So,
Speaker 1: as you know, David, waterlaw is extremely complex. Don't even
Speaker 1: get me started. Yeah, this bill still has a little
Speaker 1: ways to go, I see. And then finally, I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you about the situation on the reservation right now. Now,
Speaker 1: we already talked about what's going on with COVID, but
Speaker 1: I think it must be even more complicated the situation
Speaker 1: because the company also employed hundreds of people on the
Speaker 1: reservation in an area that is really starved for jobs.
Speaker 1: What is the attitude there? Do they do people on
Speaker 1: the reservation? I guess blame Peabody for the environmental issues
Speaker 1: that they've caused or allegedly have caused. Or is it
Speaker 1: a situation where they just want to see Peabody get
Speaker 1: back to work and maybe reopen some minds and start
Speaker 1: bringing people back to work again. Yeah, that's a very
Speaker 1: good question. You're absolutely correct. There's a long history of
Speaker 1: coal mining on the Navajo Nation and the Hopey Reservation.
Speaker 1: It's actually true across the American West. The relationship between
Speaker 1: coal mining employment and the economy of the tribes is
Speaker 1: a big one historically speaking, and so it can be
Speaker 1: very delicate for the residents to get into discussions with
Speaker 1: the companies about what they can do when keen to
Speaker 1: shut down in August and then along with Navaja Generating Station,
Speaker 1: it wiped out about seven hundred and fifty Native jobs.
Speaker 1: This is perhaps one reason why the Navajo Nation Council
Speaker 1: has been reluctant to hammer away at Peabody on this.
Speaker 1: We're not sure where they're going to wind up in
Speaker 1: this ultimately compared to some of the residents, the ones
Speaker 1: who are having to truck in their water. But it
Speaker 1: is a delicate economic and political issue that was trip
Speaker 1: also Bloomberg blog correspondent speaking from his home and are
Speaker 1: that of Colorado. If you want more environmental news, check
Speaker 1: out our website newstot Bloomberg Environment dot com. That website
Speaker 1: once again is news doop Bloomberg Environment dot Com. Today's
Speaker 1: episode of Parts Pavilion was produced by myself along with
Speaker 1: Josh Block. Special Health Today came from Anna yugononov Parts
Speaker 1: Revillion was created by Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel. Think
Speaker 1: for today's episode is a message by Jazarre and Upstate
Speaker 1: by Henning Schmidts. They were used under a Creative Commons license.
Speaker 1: Thanks everyone for listening. Hi, I'm Laura Carlson, and I'm
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