Wellspring: A Story of Life & Water on Black Mesa, Part 2

Nicole Horseherder, Diné, is from the Black Mesa region of the Navajo Nation. Nicole is one of the original founding members of Tó Nizhóní Ání and has been an active member since its establishment. Nicole is a graduate of the University of Arizona with a Bachelors in Family and Consumer Resources. Nicole received her Master of Arts in Linguistics from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. Canada. Nicole began her work with Tó Nizhóní Ání as an outreach coordinator and interpreting hydrology and legal documents for Diné communities fighting coal-mine impacts. Today Nicole is leading efforts towards transition away from fossil fuel development in the Navajo Nation. Outside of Tó Nizhóní Ání, Nicole enjoys her time with family, horses, ceremonies, and traveling.  Photo by Darcy Padilla

Tó Nizhóní Ání

Black Mesa Map

Black Mesa Trust

“Drawdown: An Update on Groundwater Mining on Black Mesa”
A 2006 update to the original NRDC report (2000) on the Navajo aquifer.

Largest Strip Mine In The Nation Threatens Tribes’ Water Source
NRDC press release announcing the 2006 updates to the 2000 report, “Drawdown: Groundwater Mining on Black Mesa.”

USGS Arizona Water Science Center Black Mesa Monitoring Program

Science Moab: This is Science Moab, a show exploring the science happening around Southeast Utah and the Colorado Plateau. I’m Carrie Schwartz, and today we’re talking with Nicole Horseherder, co-founder and executive director of Tó Nízhóní Ání, or Sacred Water Speaks, a Diné-led nonprofit organization based in Black Mesa, Arizona on the Navajo Nation.

This is the second of two episodes where we’re talking with Nicole. I’d suggest listening to the first one before diving into this one. In the first episode, Nicole talked about her upbringing and the circumstances that led her to start Tó Nízhóní Ání and to advocate for water preservation on Black Mesa.

In this episode, Nicole speaks about her science communication, advocacy, and policy work since the founding of Tó Nízhóní Ání.

This episode was made possible by the Colorado Plateau Foundation, a Native-led funder supporting Native-led organizations protecting water, sacred places, and endangered landscapes, preserving Native languages, and uplifting sustainable community-based agriculture. Since 2012, the Colorado Plateau Foundation has awarded more than $5 million to over 200 Native-led initiatives across the Colorado Plateau. Learn more at coloradoplateaufoundation.org.

Now, our conversation continues with guest Nicole Horseherder of   Tó Nízhóní Ání.

Science Moab: At this point in the story, we’ve just crossed into the new millennium, and your organization is off the ground running. What was work like for you in those early days?

Nicole Horseherder: Yeah, from 2001 to 2005, we were on I guess I would call it an N- Aquifer campaign. 

So we were educating communities about the N- Aquifer, which is the abundant aquifer beneath Black Mesa. The N- Aquifer provides water to not just the communities of Black Mesa, which includes the Hopi, but also communities around the plateau, like Kayenta, Shonto, Tuba City.

The N-Aquifer beneath Black Mesa is highly pressurized, whereas the N-Aquifer beyond Black Mesa that serves these growing towns is not pressurized. The N-Aquifer beneath Black Mesa is confined. The N-Aquifer away from the plateau is unconfined. The pressure from the confined portion of the aquifer allows water to get all the way to the surface.

Other aquifers that are not as pristine, that are not the same quality as the N-Aquifer also bring water to the surface. And, people throughout the generations, thousands of years of living on Black Mesa know where the good water is and the salty water and the brackish water.

Scientists or at least industry experts, they try to tell us like “we’re only taking from this aquifer, so it doesn’t impact the other aquifers.” But scientists who are not bought out by industry have been telling us that all these aquifers are interrelated. What you do to one aquifer will impact the way another aquifer behaves.

And so the scientists that we work with, [including] Dr. Daniel Higgins, have determined that the overuse of the N-Aquifer has caused the aquifer above the N-Aquifer, to push down on the N-Aquifer. And so they once thought that these aquifers were impermeable. And now we know that enough pressure from the aquifers can actually cause leakage. So we have a situation now where the water from an aquifer that is of lower quality has the potential to leak into an aquifer of high quality water. And so we really needed to take action.

We know very little about it, and here we are, we’re making big decisions and acting like it’s gonna be there for us forever. And we have got to get out of that mindset that is the wrong way to think about anything on this earth that we live on. I don’t know where that thinking comes from, capitalism? Industry? Money? The end goal being money, make sure the shareholders are all happy. That’s the problem right there. That’s where all these really disjointed, unreasonable decisions come from.

Science Moab: Could you share just a little bit about what your science communication looked like? 

Horseherder: We were trying to convey the idea that, okay, the aquifer is pressurized and it’s the pressure that brings the water to the surface. And how do we convey that idea that Black Mesa is like a water barrel where if you siphon the water, it’s not just the water, but it’s the pressure that allows the water to come out. And so when the water comes down to the bottom of the barrel, you tilt the barrel sideways and you can continue to siphon the water. And the tilting of the barrel and collection of the water in that one spot creates the pressure needed to continue to siphon the water out.

So we were like getting all scientific with this, but in a way that local people could understand, they understood these concepts. And so we were saying that this is why the water is not coming to the surface anymore, is because not only is the water being depleted, but it’s being depressurized.

This work taught me so much. It has taught me to move with urgency and to move swiftly on something and to talk about things really, in a way so that people can understand how very critical it is to ensure that your water sources are safe and protected.

 Science Moab: That sounds like some really creative, culturally rooted science communication happening alongside your advocacy work. Uh, who was your audience, and what were you wanting people to do with this information?

Horseherder: Of the 110 Chapters that exist across the Navajo Nation, we went to maybe 60% of those Chapters, many Chapters are supportive of mining. There are quite a few Chapters that wouldn’t even allow us to present the information. But we were able to get about 60% of the Chapters to hear us out and pass resolution in favor of our work and in favor of the end to the pumping of the N-Aquifer for Peabody Western Coal Company, who at that time was using the groundwater, the N-Aquifer, for their slurry. 

We were focused on the way that water was being used at the slurry line. Pristine groundwater was being used to push coal through this water pipeline 270 miles to Laughlin, Nevada. Peabody was operating two mines when we were going throughout the communities across Navajo and educating people about how our water was being used and trying to get support for the end of the pumping.

 Once we got the first 20 resolutions, we started pushing our council delegate to create legislation so that it could be heard in the Navajo Nation Council. And every time we met with him, we would add 2, 3, 5 more resolutions. And as he began this process of getting this legislation heard, we had Navajo Nation attorneys putting up little roadblocks here and there.

“You can’t do this” or “this language is not good” and “we have to change this language here because this is not accurate.” And, all the stuff that we had in the resolution came straight out of studies, straight out of USGS data reports. There was nothing made up in that, but yet they didn’t like language in there that talked about these compliance issues. They were helping the company cover up this stuff and that in itself was alarming. We were shocked actually at first by the Navajo Nation attorneys. So willing to defend the company that was depressurizing and depleting a precious Navajo water source.

But right around the same time Vernon Masayesva became an intervener in the California Public Utility Commission on the disposition of Mohave Generating Station. This proceeding whether to allow Southern Cal Edison to renew coal and water contracts with Peabody and the Navajo Nation. Vernon at that time asked us to join him and be interveners alongside Black Mesa Trust. 

Science Moab: A couple of quick notes here. First, Vernon Masayesva is the executive director of Black Mesa Trust and a former Tribal Chairman of the Hopi Tribe. Nicole talks about him in the previous episode. He’s long been a leader in advocating for clean water within the Hopi communities, And he helped to inspire Nicole to start  Tó Nízhóní Ání to organize and advocate for Diné communities. And also an intervener in a court case is someone who isn’t the plaintiff or defendant, but someone with a direct personal stake in a lawsuit who voluntarily joins ongoing litigation to protect their rights.

And the various companies and utilities here, without going too far into the nitty-gritty details, are basically all entities that were involved somehow with the mining, transport, or use of coal for energy generation.

All right, back to Nicole.

Horseherder:The California Public Utility Commission made their decision whether to renew coal and water contracts just before their expiration date in 2005. And by that time, we had submitted all the resolutions that we had collected to that point in time. So over here on the Navajo Nation side, we kept coming to the Navajo Nation Council and they kept tabling the legislation. They gave us the runaround, they sent us from one committee to another. They were really delaying it. 

Science Moab: Ultimately, the coal and water contracts were not renewed. The California Public Utilities Commission ordered the Mohave Generating Station to shut down at the end of 2005. The slurry line stopped operation, and this also prompted the end of the Black Mesa Mine. 

How did this decision come to pass? 

Horseherder: I think that the decision to not renew the water contracts came before the decision in the Navajo Nation Council to support our resolution. It was a big blow for Peabody and the mine workers that were working at Black Mesa Mine. The decision not to renew the coal water contract and to end that slurry line was major, but immediately the Navajo mine workers that were working at Black Mesa mine felt it. They were laid off. Yeah.  And it was a bittersweet moment.

It was so intense. The question to us was, what would you put in place of the coal mining that would replace the energy generated from coal combustion. And we said solar. Solar is the only energy generation that could ensure that our water sources would not be used. Solar still wasn’t efficient at the time, was still expensive. Maybe you might not get it at night, but you’ll get the energy generation and our water would not be used to support it in any way.

And so this is one of the solutions we want to go with. And then I remember the other solution that was also submitted on our behalf and we had nothing to do with this one. Our representative was this water and energy expert, and he loved this kind of stuff and he loved this kind of like what was considered emerging technology. And it was clean coal combustion technology. Yeah, there’s no such thing as clean coal!

But this was something that they felt like they could refit some of the infrastructure and burn it hotter and somehow make it more efficient. And that’s what this technology was. And he was big on this. So we submitted two alternatives to the end of the operation at Black Mesa Mine, and that was solar and this ‘clean coal technology’. I don’t like that word. 

Navajo Nation Council followed up with a decision to support the resolution and then followed up again, saying that because we are in this legal contract with Peabody Coal, we cannot legally end the operation. We have to allow them to keep operating the way that they are operating. So basically saying we support this, the community and their issues here, but on a legal side, we can’t do anything.

That was basically the Navajo Nation’s decision. But nevertheless, the acknowledgement of the issue was important. But very few people know that the battle was actually won in the California Public Utility Commission the CPUC.  The decision to, to shut the slurry line down came from that direction.

So clearly, somebody over on that side had enough expertise and wisdom to know, ” Hey, this is a real thing happening there.” Somewhere in the future, the state of California is gonna have this black eye because they’ve depleted the water source of the Navajo people and the Hopi people living on Black Mesa. I really think that somebody over there came to that realization and didn’t want that for themselves. And it’s just a matter of being human, understanding that you’re depleting the life giving resources of somebody else, just for this cheap power. 

Talking to hydrologists, they were like, we don’t know if the aquifer’s gonna recover. We don’t know if the seeps in the springs will return. You might see it in your lifetime. Some of these seeps and springs might never return. There might already be some kind of structural damage that has already occurred. Now it’s about waiting.

Now it’s about ensuring that this doesn’t happen again, where a company comes in and just has no controls—there was regulation, but nobody was enforcing it. It was just kinda like a rubber stamp process. Nobody was really out there really looking at how the land and the water was being impacted. By this time we’ve realized that the federal agencies might’ve been initially established to protect people and resources, but it became clear that isn’t something that they were really concerned about. Also, I realized that the Navajo Nation attorneys were also very disconnected with the impacts. I was totally disgusted with the Department of Justice at the Navajo Nation.

So I took some time off. I didn’t wanna continue working. I actually thought that my job was gonna end. What we set out to do, we had done, I could go do something else.

We needed this time off because we just got done getting a bunch of people laid off at the mine. These people were our relatives. These people were our relatives relations, and they were jobless, so there was nothing to celebrate. I got lots of text messages during that time, from mine workers like, “it’s all because of you. Lost my job.”

These were real things. But you know, my position has always been “this water belongs to all of us, and if we lose it, that means all of us. No one’s job is gonna mean a damn thing on black Mesa, we don’t have water. We’re all gonna have to move off and away.”

And that’s what I maintain—it’s through standing your ground, sometimes that’s how people realize that you’re serious. You’re not backing down. You are 100% invested in this. This is not just a bunch of propaganda that you’re spreading around and you’re bringing your life experiences to this.

You’re bringing your knowledge of having walked the land, that you live in the actual place that you’re advocating for, and you’re living the life that you’re trying to protect.

So through this work, lots of those kinds of realizations came to me and I think people woke up because, after three years of educating communities, three, four years, people- even people who had no Western education started talking about the impacts I’d be walking in the local grocery store and somebody would come up to me and say, such and such, spring near my home, quit producing water 10 years ago and just telling me data, bits of information like this data. And I really appreciate a lot of what’s come out of this. It’s really made, at least if people didn’t like us for what we did, and causing family members to lose their jobs, at least there was respect. People respected the work that we had done.

In 2007 somebody, I don’t remember who tipped us off to the fact that every 10 years the Navajo Nation has the opportunity to renegotiate the lease. It’s called a lease reopener. And during the lease, reopener, the Navajo Nation can advocate for a higher coal rate and tax rate. And then after the lease Reopener is agreed upon, then the nation has 90 days to open a case on the renegotiation of the water lease as well.

So we jumped on that. We dove into it, did our research, knew what the going market rate for the coal was and the tax rate, immediately started putting it all into resolution format, and about 2010 is when that resolution got heard in the council. Once again, Department of Justice attorneys blocked it. They said, no, we’re not gonna raise the coal rates or the tax rates. We were just advocating for the market rate and we were told, no, you can’t do this.

We lost that battle. But it raised a lot of interest and it raised a lot of awareness. And more and more people were beginning to understand how these leases and agreements were being made and who is really working in the interest of the Nation and who is really worried about their relationship with the coal company?

So we lost that one. However, we knew that 90 days after the lease reopener is settled, we can begin negotiations for the water. And right at that time we had a newly elected council delegate. His name was Dwight Witherspoon. And he went to bat renegotiating the water rates. So at that time the water rates was something like $477 per acre foot or something like that. Real low. We found out at that time that the Animas River was being sold to the city of Durango, I think it was, for $3,000 an acre foot.

He went and started this process of negotiating with Peabody, a new water rate. And of course there was pushback from Peabody. But he was able to negotiate something like a thousand got it up to a thousand dollars, which was way better than what it was before.

And I think part of their willingness to settle on this rate was the fact that they no longer had to pay for water for the slurry line. the only water that they were gonna have to pay for was whatever they were using for basic mine operations. So that was a small thing at least it brought awareness to the Nation and to the leadership that, “Hey, why is this coal company paying industrial rates for this pristine Navajo water?”

At the very least, people started looking at the resources differently and started doing research outside the Navajo Nation.

 Soon after that I got involved in water rights. We moved to the little Colorado River water rights negotiation. And lots of our local Dine colleagues, people our age, late twenties, early thirties were involved in this. Young folks coming outta college were getting very political about Navajo resources.

So at this time, New Mexico water rights had already been settled, and now we were trying to settle Arizona’s water rights. Towards the end of these negotiations, senators, Kyle and McCain added provisions to the settlement that would extend the life of NGS to 2044, extend the use of the upper base in Colorado River, which everyone understood as Navajo, but wasn’t settled yet and extended the life of the mine. And the kicker was that these operations would continue unregulated. So they were lifting the regulations from these operations, very sneaky.

Science Moab: A note for listeners. NGS is the Navajo Generating Station, also known as the coal-burning power plant near Page, Arizona. Around the time Nicole is discussing, it was operated by Salt River Project, or SRP, which is an Arizona utility company. It’s a lot of acronyms flying around!

Horseherder: Of course, us young, most of us educated, newly educated with our western training coming outta college and everything, nothing but the love of our Nation in our hearts immediately found this. And we, it was created just the uproar on Navajo. And we launched this campaign and we fought it every step of the way.

And by the time it got to council, there wasn’t even a very long debate on it. It was voted down.

Our tribal attorneys were angry and they were lashing out and they were punishing us and speaking in ways to us, as if we were the Nation’s enemies, that here , they have crafted this wonderful water rights agreement and all these young people who don’t know what they’re talking about put pressure on the Navajo Nation Council and voted it down. They completely ignored the fact that we knew that these provisions that were added at the tail end were destructive and we weren’t having it.

And we would push back any time we could, and we studied that settlement agreement so much that we could repeat it word for word to tribal leadership and attorneys.

So we spent the next couple years after 2014, a lot of backlash. But the great thing about it was as a group, as a coalition, we had each other’s backs and we were in it together and we knew what we were doing. We knew what was happening. So that helped us be able to endure that constant backlash from a few council delegates, more the Department of Justice attorneys. But I think for the most part, people who were listening carefully understood that we were right.

And then as soon as it was defeated, SRP quickly came to the Navajo Nation with a contract and said, ” in order to be sure that we are acting in good faith in our projects together. I have this renewal contract for you to sign, and even though the renewal of NGS is not up yet, I just want you to sign it ahead of time.”

And the Navajo Nation signed it, and this was in 2014. And we didn’t mobilize quick enough to see this coming and did the best we could trying to block it. But at the end of the day, I think defeating that water rights bill a year prior was people were still reeling from it and industry included.

I don’t know what they were thinking, but I’m sure they were worried.

Of course, they come with this renewal agreement and the Navajo Nation signs it. And the expiration date was not coming up until 2019. It was strange. It was, I was just like, they’re worried about something. I didn’t say this to anyone, but I felt like, oh, these guys are worried about something.

So then 2016 came along and we knew that the closure of NGS was around the corner, but all of a sudden, February of 2017, there was this big announcement that we will be closing by 2019 and worst yet none of us realized that what they meant when they said that was that they would end operations that summer 2017 and move to decommissioning and be out of the final stages of reclamation or be out of Page NGS by 2019. That was not my understanding of the agreement. My understanding of the agreement was that NGS was shut down in 2019, and then they would move into decommissioning reclamation. So this was sudden. Everybody was freaked out.

People getting laid off in six months. No one was prepared for that. They might’ve been ready. We were not ready. Navajo Nation was not ready. And what was worst is Navajo Nation Council delegates, attorneys had not followed up on that lease renewal that was signed in 2014.

This announcement came and they were operating as if they hadn’t heard that, and they were going about their business as if, hey, we signed a renewal lease and we’re going to 2044 or whatever that date was.

Within a matter of a couple weeks, they found out that no, that lease renewal that the Navajo Nation signed was still sitting at BIA with nobody else’s signature on it except Navajo. So SRP hadn’t signed it, BIA hadn’t signed it, the Department of Interior hadn’t signed it. Only Navajo Nation’s signature was on it. Nobody had followed it.

So SRP’s announcement was becoming a reality and through this confusion, we had furious council delegates.

“What? We signed a lease Reopener to 2040. What is this? ” They were angry at SRP. “How could you do this to us? You didn’t sign it? You came to us, you were begging us to put our signature on this document, and you told us, you wanted to ensure that we were acting in good faith.”

And they were mad. They were mad at SRP. But the nation negotiated what’s now known as the lease extension. They got SRP to agree to operate to the end of 2019, which is the original expiration date of the contract, and then move into decommissioning and cleanup after that. So that’s what happened.

And a year later, after the contract had ended, three of the stacks at NGS came down. And once again, I didn’t, I wasn’t excited or. No, no real emotion from that ’cause all the work had already been done prior to that. All the pushing and pulling and educating and talking to council, to leadership and advocating and researching. All of that had been done prior. So these were just basic outcomes related to the work that had already been done.

So that’s a question I get frequently is how did you feel when the smoke stacks came down? And I always say I felt nothing. I just witnessed it.

 Science Moab: And what does your work look like today? 

Horseherder: So today, our work is primarily trying to impact, just transition, urging the nation that it’s important to move with intention towards clean, renewable energy to save the only source of water we have left on Navajo. . We have dedicated so much of it to industry, we can’t dedicate anymore. We have young children among us that will have no clean water to drink in the future if we continue to do this.

There is so much that we have to learn about ourselves and the way we’re living in this world today. We’re moving through it, like ” we gotta do the next thing and the next thing, this is the latest, greatest technology. The latest, greatest invention. It’s gonna improve our lives.”

We don’t stop to think about what the impacts and the implications are for where the resources are coming from to make these things that we think improve our lives. Most of all, we have to know where our water and our energy comes from. If everybody could start thinking in ways in which they’re producing everything locally that would help ensure future generations will have a chance.

If we think about those things, think about how we can decrease our need, instead of thinking always about, oh, we need more energy. That’s not the answer. The answer is, how do we use less? How do we produce locally? How do we reuse? How do we create and use something in a ways that we don’t have long lasting pollution, long lasting destruction? So we have a lot of life lessons. Yeah.

Science Moab: Thank you so much, Nicole. It really means a lot that you shared your story and, these parts of your story, these parts of Tó Nizhóní Ání’s story, these parts of the Black Mesa community stories, today.

Science Moab: That was our conversation with Nicole Horseherder, co-founder and executive director of Tó Nízhóní Ání, or Sacred Water Speaks This was part two of a two-episode series with Nicole. So scroll back in the feed if you haven’t heard the first one. Thanks for joining us for this powerful conversation.

To learn more or listen to other Science Moab episodes, visit sciencemoab.org or anywhere you get your podcasts. Our theme music is by Jeremy Spalding, and this episode was produced by Science Moab Schwartz, Mary Langworthy, and KZMU.

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