Posted on 04/11/2016 9:02:44 AM PDT by george76
New exhibition shows how tribe dealt with blowout last August.
Navajo artist Venaya Yazzie wrote the Diné expression Tó éí ííná beside a photograph of a friend sullenly looking out on the tainted San Juan River in the days after the Gold King Mine spill.
It means Water is Life, and for the indigenous tribes affected by the mine blowout in August, the words sum up months of confusion, fear and sadness surrounding the health of critical southwest waterways.
On Aug. 5, the Environmental Protection Agency breached the portal of the mine north of Silverton, sending an estimated three million gallons of orange mine wastewater down the Animas and San Juan rivers, and through 215 miles of the Navajo Nation.
The river, for desert people, is everything its gold, Yazzie said. Mentally. Spiritually. Physically. It covers the whole human spirit of life.
The incident elicited strong feelings from those living on tribal land, from farmers who depend on its waters for crops to residents with a spiritual attachment to the river.
In March, Navajo President Russell Begaye claimed Navajo suicides spiked just three weeks after the spill, alleging 15 Navajos had taken their own lives in the eight-month time span.
...
Just last week, the EPA found itself in further controversy with the tribe when the agency declined to send a representative to a field hearing on the EPAs treatment on Navajo Nation residents in the wake of the spill.
...
The EPA continues to add insult to injury by refusing to send even a single representative to the upcoming field hearing on the spill
(Excerpt) Read more at durangoherald.com ...
ROOT CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM
And no one in the EPA was held accountable. That’s because they’re special—the rest of us are just schmucks. Imagine the endless panel discussions on CNN demanding the private sector employees who should go to jail for this.
There is this issue, which I think is 100% deliberate pollution by the EPA, and nobody is held accountable.
There is the IRS Data Breach which has put hundreds of thousands of people at risk (One of my closest friends was victimized by it) and nobody, and I mean NOBODY even so much as had their hand slapped.
FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY OUT OF CONTROL AND UNACCOUNTABLE TO THE CITIZENRY.
But as it is, it is "just" national security. No big deal.
It is infuriating, and endemic.
The republicans will not allow me to vote so they are out of control also.
Not the first time the Animas has been polluted. Quite a few years ago a retaining pond at Silverton collapsed sending mine waste down the river.
I caught my first fish in the Animas back in 1956, Farmington NM.
The pollutants always get diluted down by the San Juan, La Plata, Colorado and Green Rivers before it hits Lake Powell.
“Affected by the mine blowout”???
It was not a mine blowout - it was a deliberate action- what they heck did they think was going to happen when they started digging into the side of a containment reservoir????
***Navajo suicides spiked just three weeks after the spill, alleging 15 Navajos had taken their own lives in the eight-month time span. ****
Might do a blood alcohol test on the corpses. Betcha it is high.
It is a form of deliberate disenfranchisement.
Not innate stupid ignorance, racism, or sexism as may have been the case in the past at various times.
Planned and thought out.
Correlation does not imply causation.
John 4:10-15 NIV
10 Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.
11 Sir, the woman said, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?
13 Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
15 The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I wont get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.
It appears that Navajo prohibition is working as well as the American model did in between 1920 to 1933.
I may be out your way the last 2 weeks of June.
Many Navajo families have been affected by the Radon gas coming from 1/2 century old uranium mines in the area.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_and_the_Navajo_people
On July 16, 1979, the tailings pond at United Nuclear Corporation's uranium mill in Church Rock, New Mexico, breached its dam. Over 1,000 tons of radioactive mill waste and 93 millions of gallons of acidic, radioactive tailings solution and mine effluent flowed into the Puerco River, and contaminants traveled 80 miles (130 km) downstream to Navajo County, Arizona.[8] The flood backed up sewers, affected nearby aquifers and left stagnating, contaminated pools on the riverside.[9][10][11]
More radioactivity was released in the spill than the in the Three Mile Island accident that occurred four months earlier,[12] and it has been reported as the largest radioactive accident in U.S. history.
Betcha never heard much about this; have you!
Wait for the movie:
Kachina Syndrome.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.