'We feel disrespected': Navajo farmers wait for justice years after EPA disaster

[cbabe]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/04/navajo-farmers-epa-disaster-new-mexico

‘We feel disrespected’: Navajo farmers wait for justice years after EPA disaster

Seven years after the EPA accidentally released some 3m of acid mine water, poisoning waterways that carry water to fields, farmers are still waiting for compensation

Michael Benanav for Searchlight New Mexico
Thu 4 Aug 2022 05.00 EDTk

Two days earlier, 115 miles upstream in Colorado, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accidentally released some 3m gallons of acid mine water from the Gold King mine, during the initial stages of a cleanup operation. Spilling from Cement Creek into the Animas River and then the San Juan, the waterways – poisoned with nearly 540 tons of arsenic, lead, cadmium and other toxic metals – turned a sickly yellow.

“It was coming like a big flow of mustard,” recalled Shawn Mike, one of 222 Diné farmers and ranchers suing the EPA for their losses. The plume ultimately flowed more than 340 miles, coursing through tribal lands and three states to Lake Powell in southern Utah.

Seven years later, despite public promises to promote environmental justice for Indigenous communities and its admission of responsibility for the disaster, the EPA still refuses to compensate the farmers.

Though the agency has settled lawsuits with state and tribal governments for some $331m, the Department of Justice, which represents the EPA in court, asserts that individual Navajos – who together are asking for $49m – have no right to sue.

…

“Their connection to the world, their sense of balance in the world, is related to the river. So when the spill happened, that balance, that hózhó, was disrupted. Everything related to the river was also out of balance – it’s a complete system, all interconnected. Because the river was imbalanced, even the corn pollen was disrupted,” she said.

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[2naSalit]

1. K&R

Same as it ever was...


And that truly sucks.