Hopis face uncertain future
Chairman Taylor laments lack of water, jobs and mine closures

By Kathy Helms
Staff Writer

FORT DEFIANCE — Loss of revenue from the closure of Mohave Generating Station and Black Mesa Mine would force the layoff of at least 150 of the Hopi Tribe's 500 employees. In addition, 13 percent of the Navajo Nation government's non-mine labor force would lose jobs along with 300 mine workers.

Hopi Tribal Chairman Wayne Taylor Jr., at the invitation of the Arizona State Senate Natural Resources Committee, traveled to Phoenix Wednesday to brief the group on potential impacts to the tribes from the impending closures.

The Hopi Tribe is in a fight for its very survival as a people, faced with an economic crisis of enormous proportions. Already a poor nation, the closure of Mohave and Black Mesa would be an economic disaster for the Hopi people, Taylor told the committee.

"I carry within me a very real fear that our way of life the Hopi Way will soon become a way of the past," he said. "Our culture one of the oldest in North America is dying. Our crisis is both immediate and long-term."

By the end of this year, environmental lawsuits likely will force the closure of Mohave, which in turn will force the closure of Black Mesa Mine, a joint Hopi-Navajo enterprise, the chairman said. The mine has supplied coal slurry to the 1,580-megawatt generating station in Laughlin, Nev., since 1970 through a 273-mile pipeline. Mohave provides electrical power to Southern California, Arizona and Nevada.

Taylor said coal royalties paid to the Hopi Tribe by Peabody Energy, operators of the mine, generate more than one third of Hopi tribal government revenue. "Try to imagine, if you will, a municipality, a county or a state losing one-third of its government revenues," Taylor said.

With declining funds, the Hopi Tribal Council and leaders of the largely autonomous villages are desperate for funds to provide adequate housing and municipal services to residents. "Power, telecommunications and water and sewer services in most villages is lacking or woefully inadequate," the chairman said. "Three villages Old Oraibi, Walpi and Lower Moenkopi have no running water or electricity at all."

Desperate needs
There are 12,000 members of the Hopi Tribe, 7,000 of them living on their ancestral homeland. More than half of Hopi adults are unemployed. The average household income is less than $16,000 a year.

"There is a desperate need for housing. Many of the traditional sandstone homes are crumbling and in disrepair. Forty percent of the houses lack adequate plumbing and kitchen facilities," he said.

Because many of the tribe's young people are being forced by economic realities to leave the homeland and find opportunity elsewhere and are taking their children with them, the children may not learn to speak the Hopi language or participate in traditional ceremonies.

Taylor said the Hopi people are not without many tools to grow a strong economy, but they also have needs, the most urgent of which is water. "Of all the ingredients necessary for economic development, none is more important than water and the means to deliver it to homes, businesses and industry. Water is crucial to our existence and our way of life. Indeed, it defines who we are," he said.

Snow and infrequent rain supply moisture for Hopi fields, while the Navajo Aquifer feeds the washes and springs, providing water for drinking and for use in katsina and religious ceremonies. The Hopi homeland receives only about 10 inches of rain per year. "Our situation has worsened with the prolonged drought," Taylor said.

He told the committee that a recent study commissioned by Congress and conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) concluded that the Hopi and Navajo nations have insufficient water to meet their needs for the next 100 years. The report also found that the Navajo Aquifer was insufficient to meet the future municipal and industrial needs of the Hopi people.

The study predicts that continued reliance on the Navajo Aquifer will have devastating consequences for Hopi. "The study states that within 20 to 30 years our wells and springs on culturally sacred lands will dry up, causing and I quote 'substantial harm to tribal societies and cultures ... adversely impacting the economy of the region,'" Taylor said.

Water is key
Nearly 230 of the 340 tribes in the lower 48 states now operate casinos as a means of generating government revenue; however, Taylor pointed out, "We are, in fact, the only non-gaming federally recognized tribe in Arizona."

Though the Hopi respect the decision of other Native nations to engage in gaming as a means of strengthening tribal governments and building tribal economies, "The Hopi people in two referendums rejected casino gambling as a means of generating economic development. Gaming is not the Hopi Way," Taylor said. "We must be more creative. Our challenges are greater."

The Hopi Tribe agrees with conclusions in the BOR study, which states the need to import water to the Hopi and Navajo nations. "We are taking steps to do just that," Taylor said. "The Hopi and Navajo nations are working with parties to the lawsuit to negotiate the myriad of complex legal agreements necessary to keep the mine and the power plant operating."

Both tribes are working with the Department of the Interior, BOR, the owners of Mohave and Peabody Energy to develop a pipeline to bring water from the Coconino Aquifer (C-aquifer) that lies beneath Hopi and Navajo land to the mine and Hopi villages.

"We are not talking about taking water from non-Indian land. This is water from Indian land which we wish to utilize for desperately needed economic development on Indian land," he said.

BOR is now performing a $6 million study of the hydrology and environmental impacts to determine the viability of drawing 6,000 acre feet of water per year from the C-aquifer to meet the future needs of Black Mesa Mine. The study is being paid for by Peabody and Southern California Edison, which also have agreed to fund construction of the 120-mile pipeline, estimated to cost at least $200 million.

Preliminary results show the aquifer can provide the water without causing a negative impact to surface waterways, endangered species habitat or current municipal/industrial uses. A final report is expect in late summer.

According to the chairman, several other communities in Arizona as well as three power plants are currently using the C-aquifer. Each of the plants draws about 20,000 acre feet of water per year. "Together, the plants are using more than 10 times the amount of water Hopi is seeking," Taylor said.

Loss amounts to billions
Environmentalists have expressed concern over mining and water issues on Hopi, "but stewardship over the land is very much a part of the Hopi way of life. We have lived on our ancestral lands for more than 1,200 years," he said.

"We have learned over the years to preserve our precious resources, particularly the waters of the Navajo Aquifer. We have no intention of doing harm to our lands or surrounding communities," Taylor emphsized. He said he hopes environmentalists will work with the tribes to extend the consent decree over the scheduled closure of Mohave.

Also, Taylor said, the tribe is hopeful that the federal government and others will provide an additional $15 million to expand the pipeline. "We hope and anticipate this money will come from settlement of the Little Colorado River adjudication," he said.

Closure of Black Mesa would represent a loss of at least $15 million a year in taxes to the state of Arizona and another $85 million a year which Black Mesa and Mohave inject into the local community in the form of coal and water royalties, taxes, wages, vendor contracts, scholarships and charitable contributions, according to Taylor.

A layoff of at least 150 Hopi tribal employees would lead to poverty for them as well as their immediate and extended families. "For the Navajo, the situation may be even worse," he said. "We understand that 13 percent of Navajo government's non-mine labor force would lose their jobs." Additionally, the 300 Navajos who work at Black Mesa would lose their average wages of $60,000 to $70,000, Taylor said.

"Shutting Mohave would result in a $1.7 billion loss to the tribes over the expected 20-year remaining life of the plant," much of which is spent in non-Indian border towns, according to the chairman.

Taylor said that in addition to the Coconino Pipeline project, the Hopi Tribe has acquired 6,000 acre feet of Colorado River water rights in the Cibola Basin and is hoping for cooperation from the state, federal government, and other Arizona tribes to complete a pipeline project from Lake Powell to bring needed water to Hopi and other Arizona communities.

He asked the committee to help bring water to Hopi so that the tribe can grow an economy that will benefit its people and others throughout Arizona.

"Nothing causes me greater concern than the preservation of the Hopi way of life in this complex, modern world. I ask that you help prevent the Hopi Way from becoming a way of the past," the chairman said.