NAVAJO ENEI BEGAYE says her elders remember with sadness the glistening springs that once saturated the ponds in the ginger-colored land of Black Mesa, Ariz. Now all that remains of the pond that provided water for her people for generations – Shontíoo, or "the glimmer of the surface of water" – is a dry hole in the ground.

Begaye told the Bay Guardian that sacred springs and washes are declining at an alarming rate because British-owned Peabody Western Coal Co. continues to pump 3.9 million gallons of pristine, potable water every day from the Navajo Sandstone aquifer (also called the N-aquifer), which lies 3,000 feet beneath land that's home to more than 30,000 Navajo and 10,000 Hopi.

Peabody mixes the water with the 4.8 million tons of coal a year dug from its Black Mesa mine and transports the slurry more than 270 miles through a pipeline to the Mohave Generating Station, a two-unit 1,500 megawatt, coal-fired power plant in Laughlin, Nev. The power plant, which was built in 1967, supplies electricity for two million customers in southern California and Nevada.

Every week Begaye's family has to drive 30 minutes to fill five 55-gallon barrels with water from community wells. In June, Black Mesa residents reported droughts so severe that livestock died of thirst and families were forced to relocate. "Our elders speak of prophecies that warned our people if [water and coal] are taken away from the earth, our people will suffer," Begaye said. "That's what's happening now."

But Begaye says she has hope, because her people have one last chance to stop the destruction of their land. This year the California Public Utilities Commission will decide whether the largest shareholder of the Mohave Generating Station, Southern California Edison Co. (SCE), will have to cease operation of the plant or be able to bill ratepayers $58 million in 2003 to begin installation of air-pollution control equipment.

And as Peabody scrambles to renew water and coal contracts with Navajo and Hopi tribal councils – which could also affect the plant's future – Arizona and San Francisco activists are teaming up to shut down the power plant for good. For those who have followed the plight of the northern Arizona tribes since the late '60s, the CPUC's decision will be "the most important decision in the history of the traditional Native people of Black Mesa," said Ross Cunningham, youth intern at the San Francisco-based International Indian Treaty Council (IITC).

"Peabody has dried up all the area's traditional springs," he said. "If Mohave shuts down, then the slurry pipeline will be shut down too, which will be a huge victory."

Falling waters

Veteran activists speak of the struggle to end the exploitation of Black Mesa's natural resources as a landmark battle that started in 1966, when Peabody lawyer John Boyden secured the rights to strip-mine the largest coal deposit in the United States; more than 20 billion tons of "black gold" lie beneath reservation land, which was named for the shiny black walls of its dry washes.

In the 1940s massive deposits of low-sulfur coal, oil, and uranium were discovered in Black Mesa. In 1951 Boyden was appointed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a land claims attorney for the Hopi Tribal Council, which had been formed in the 1930s by U.S. interior secretary Harold Ickes. Despite objections from Hopi traditional leaders, he successfully brokered a deal granting Peabody a 35-year developing lease. Since then, Peabody has bulldozed topsoil and blasted mineral beds with dynamite to reach the coal, turning the land gray and killing off vegetation, filling the air with coal dust, and contaminating groundwater with toxic sulfate runoff.

According to an October 2000 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, since Peabody began tapping the N-aquifer, water levels in local wells have dropped more than 100 feet, springs are less than half of their original volume, and washes used by local farmers have declined. "They are depleting our water sources at a rate so great that nature cannot replace what they've taken. But when we raise our voices they call us terrorists," traditional Navajo elder Sheilah Keith said. "Where is our freedom to live?"

San Francisco's fight

For the past 30 years Navajo and Hopi activists have sought refuge in the Bay Area. Keith said her mother, Roberta Blackgoat, would make trips to San Francisco from her small stone house in Black Mesa to gather support for their fight. Blackgoat was one of 64 Navajo "resisters," traditional elders who refused to comply with relocation laws passed by Congress in 1974 that forcefully moved 12,000 Navajo to radioactive "new lands" near the site of the nation's largest known uranium spill, in Church Rock, N.M.

"Ever since 1969, my mother was talking about the water situation and how the U.S. government is behind it all," Keith said while selling handwoven rugs in San Francisco. "Sometimes people here were the only ones who would listen."

Blackgoat passed away this year in San Francisco at age 85. "All the suffering going on in this country with the tornadoes, flood, and earthquakes is carried on the breath of Mother Earth because she is in pain," she wrote in the 1994 book The Book of Elders: The Life Stories of Great American Indians.

Alberto Saldamando, IITC general counsel, said that for San Francisco groups, the current battle is the latest in a war that began in 1974 when the IITC and others asked the United Nations Human Rights Commission to investigate the U.S. government for violating the Navajo's right to practice religion. "Traditional Navajo have a profound relationship to the land, and moving them was in violation of their right[s]," he said.

In 1998 U.N. representatives visited Black Mesa to investigate charges of religious and human rights violations by the U.S. government, including the destruction of 4,000 ancient Anasazi sacred burial sites and ruins, said Saldamando. A year later the U.N. found the U.S. government in violation of human rights, which he said marks the first time it had ever been examined for its treatment of indigenous citizens.

"But the U.S., as always, ignored the findings," Saldamando said.

Now Bay Area musicians are joining activists to help raise money for struggling tribe members. Spearhead vocalist Michael Franti said he will travel from his home in San Francisco to Black Mesa for a benefit concert in October. He first visited the Hopi reservation two years ago while on tour, and he stayed up until five in the morning his first night to learn about the people's history with the land.

Upon visiting the Peabody facility the next day, Franti said, he almost got run over by one of the company's trucks, which made him see the infrastructure for what it really was. "It's easy for companies like Peabody Coal to run over people, but I don't see them being able to do this for generations to come," he said.

Hazy views

Thick gaseous clouds of pollution emitted from Mohave have contributed to a 30 to 50 percent reduction in visibility at the Grand Canyon, according to data collected since the 1970s, said Bruce Polkowsky, National Park Service policy analyst for air resources.

In 1998 the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit against the Mohave owners for violating the federal Clean Air Act. A year later the Environmental Protection Agency found the plant was the largest source of sulfur dioxide in the West, emitting up to 40,000 tons of it a year. That same year, the Mohave owners settled with the Sierra Club and agreed to install $1.1 billion pollution-control equipment by the end of 2005.

Rob Smith, the Sierra Club's Southwest regional director, said that the group simply wants the plant to "clean up" if it continues to operate. But San Francisco organizations say the only real solution to the devastation the Navajo and Hopi have suffered is to shut the plant down for good. "It's the only way," said the IITC's Cunningham, who traveled to the Navajo reservation in June from his home in the Mission District. "We need to put an end to the lies and abuse."

Even if the CPUC gives the green light, no one can say for sure what will happen to Mohave. SCE spokesperson Steven Conroy said the fate of the plant lies in the water and coal contracts between Peabody and the two tribal governments, which have yet to be renewed. The Sierra Club's Bessler says the "clock is ticking and no one is doing anything," while Peabody and SCE are busy pointing fingers.

Both tribes have said they will not renew their coal contracts until Peabody agrees to stop pumping the N-aquifer. Robert Allan, legal council to the president of the Navajo Nation, said the Navajo tribal council is looking at the Colorado River and its diversions as water sources for the slurry pipeline. No alternatives to slurry coal transportation have been discussed, he said.

The Sierra Club is in support of a new water source for the slurry pipeline, such as an aquifer that isn't used for drinking water, Smith said. But Begaye said that the people of Black Mesa want an alternative to slurry transportation. "Any water source available should go to the people," she said. "In an arid area that on a good day gets seven inches of rain, why continue to use a nonrenewable resource like water?"

As a member of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, Begaye is helping to create community-based businesses and encouraging the use of fossil-fuel alternatives. "Our people see the Mesa as a woman's body," she said. "Where Peabody is digging is her liver, and the water is her blood. That's why it means so much to our people; it's not just land, it's our relation. How am I going to describe what water is to my grandchildren when it's all gone?"

The CPUC had scheduled a public hearing about Mohave's future for Sept. 13 in Tuba City, Ariz., but it was canceled because of flooding. San Francisco activists are urging the public to inundate local CPUC offices with letters, e-mails, and phone calls demanding the commission shut the plant down.

"Environmental issues as devastating as this affect all of us, not just those living in Arizona or Nevada," Cunningham said. "We in California have a chance to make a difference. This plant will shut down only when all of us come together and demand that it does."

Send your comments to the California Public Utilities Commission Public Advisor's Office, 505 Van Ness Ave., S.F., CA 94102-3298, e-mail public.advisor@cpuc.ca.gov, or call 1-866-849-8390. For more information about Black Mesa go to www.blackmesatrust.org or e-mail blackmesawatercoalition@yahoo.com.