FORGOTTEN PEOPLE NAVAJO NATION LABORATORY - GEOLOGY THREATS AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

In Navajo Nation creation stories, Monster Slayer and Born for Water twins stopped monsters from killing people. The monsters today are uranium, coal and carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants threatening land, air, water resources and public health.

The Navajo Nation produces most of the energy for the southwest, but many homes lack sanitation and access to safe drinking water. In 1966 the US government imposed the Bennett Freeze denying all infrastructure repairs or construction, meaning today three percent of families has electricity and 10 percent have running water.

During the Freeze, more than 100 million tons of mill tailings accumulated in the Four Corners area of the southwest. These mill tailings contain radium and thorium with a half-life of 5.3 billion years.

Superfund reports 1,300 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation and the leeching of uranium from the slag piles into drinking water supplies. 25 percent of the unregulated sources in the western Navajo reservation exceed drinking water standards for kidney toxicants, including uranium and arsenic.

Continued coal mining and proposed carbon sequestration threatens drinking water supplies. The injection of CO2 can set into motion a series of geochemical processes that have the potential to trigger seismicity, reactivate faults, change water chemistry and cause acidification and contamination of drinking water aquifers without a NEPA review, ecological risk analysis and exposure assessment of pipeline leakage and plumes. Forgotten People believes the legacy of past practices mirrors what future experimental projects have in store.

The United Nations is currently making the right to water and sanitation an international human right and is holding consultations on private sector participation. Partnerships are needed with directly affected people to deliver safe drinking water and basic sanitation to curb disease.

The lifting of the Freeze will afford grassroots organizations the opportunity to shift Nation building to consolidate and expand the quest for autonomy among Navajo people. Traditional principles of Indigenous peoples and environmental justice will ensure the US government meets its commitment to protect public health, the environment, and reduce Indigenous households lacking sanitation and safe drinking water.