Black Mesa Peabody Coal debate

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The Black Mesa plateau lies in the arid Four Corners region of the United States, overlapping the reservations of the Navajo and Hopi tribes. The debate over the Black Mesa coal mine arises from two sources: an unusually generous mineral lease agreement negotiated under irregular circumstances, and coal company Peabody Energy's use of a potable source of water to transport coal it extracts from the southwestern tip of Black Mesa.

In 1964 Peabody Energy (then Peabody Western Coal), a publicly-traded energy company based in the mid-west signed a contract with the Navajo tribe and two years later with the Hopi, enabling company use of the water source. The contract, which offered unusually advantageous terms for Peabody and was approved despite widespread opposition and the lack of clear government authority on Hopi, was negotiated by prominent natural resources attorney John Sterling Boyden, who claimed to be representing the Hopi tribe while actually on the payroll of Peabody as well.^[1]

Peabody Energy pumped water from the underground Navajo Aquifer in a slurry pipeline operation to transport extracted coal to the Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, NV. The Navajo Aquifer (N-aquifer) is a main source of potable water for the Navajo and Hopi tribes which use the water for farming and livestock maintenance as well as drinking and other domestic uses. The tribes have alleged that the pumping of water by Peabody Energy has caused a severe decline in potable N-aquifer water and contamination of water sources. Both tribes, lying in a arid semi-desert, attach religious significance to water, considering it sacred, and have cultural and religious objections to over-use of water.

The Peabody mine, a coal strip mine, used the slurry to pump its coal through pipes 273 miles away where the coal will be filtered and used for energy in the Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada. The generating station produces energy for the southern parts of California and Nevada. This was the only coal slurry operation in the country and only plant that used groundwater in such a way.

The Black Mesa Mine's last day of operation was December 31, 2005. One of the power plants served by the coal mined at the location had the highest emission levels in the Western United States.