Others have argued just as vehemently to protect the revenues and employment the mine generates for the reservations.

Residents, local grassroots organizations, as well as national environmental and social justice organizations, have called for the end of PWCC's mining practices at Black Mesa from the start. However, immediate economic impacts cloud the victory-75 percent of the Hopi tribe's annual income and about 40 percent of the Navajo tribal income is generated by the Black Mesa mining operations, which employ about 300 Navajo (Diné) and Hopi people.ĭuring its four decades of operation, the Black Mesa mine has been the epicenter of some of the most controversial debates around coal and water resource extraction on tribal lands. This exercise of indigenous water rights and the preservation of the Navajo Aquifer seem to be a triumph for the sovereignty of native peoples and for the environmental community. Without a means to transport or a facility to receive their coal, the Peabody Western Coal Company will be forced to shut down the Black Mesa mine. The Mohave Generating Station, the facility that purchases Black Mesa coal, is scheduled for closure, having failed to install court-mandated pollution control improvements at a cost of $1 billion. The agreements permitted the extraction of local ground water and an average of 14 million tons of coal per year to provide electricity for southern California, Nevada, and central Arizona. The use of the aquifer dates to the 1960s, when the Navajo and Hopi tribal governments entered into lease agreements with Peabody Western Coal Company (PWCC).

This action is due in part to resolutions passed by the Navajo and Hopi Tribal Councils to prohibit the use of the Navajo Aquifer to transport coal and to the slated closing of the Mohave Generating Station for environmental violations.

Navajo reservations in northeastern Arizona, will close. coal mining operations, the Black Mesa Mine on Hopi and Navajo Aquifer and salvage jobs upon the closing of the Black Mesa Coal Mine.Īs of January 1, 2006, one of the most contentious U.S. Complex issues confront the Hopi and Navajo tribes as they struggle to protect the critical

Black mesa transit system