This is a great story about how all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle have harmful consequences. At the end, it references a harmful proposal to mine uranium in a different way that could contaminate groundwater -- there was a subsidy for this in the house energy bill, but none that i can find in the Senate bill.

May 13, 2003

NAVAJO MINERS BATTLE A DEADLY LEGACY OF YELLOW DUST

New York Times Science
by Ben Daitz, M.D.

CROWNPOINT, N.M. - I drove west across an ocher sagebrush plain, past pinto ponies grazing next to a Pentecostal revival tent, past the ribbed, rutted dirt road that leads north to Chaco Canyon, the sacred, ancestral home of the Anasazi, the ancient ones.

I was on the eastern edge of the vast Navajo Reservation, heading toward Crownpoint, a Navajo community of almost 3,000 people astride the Continental Divide about 100 miles northwest of Albuquerque. It is the administrative and educational hub of the Eastern Navajo Agency and the site of the Indian Health Service Hospital.

The Crownpoint I.H.S. hospital serves more than 20,000 Navajo who live in small communities and isolated traditional hogans across the high desert of northwestern New Mexico. I was driving to the Crownpoint Hospital to meet my good friend John Fogarty, a medical officer in the Indian Health Service. The Navajo in these parts call John the uranium doctor.

The Dini (pronounced dee-NAY) or "the People," as the Navajo call themselves, have many stories about their origins. One says that as they emerged from the fourth world into the fifth and present world, they were given the choice of two yellow powders. One yellow powder was corn pollen, and that was the one they chose.

The other was the color of the dust that seems to give this land its golden hue, dust the color of yellowcake, the uranium oxide that fueled the nuclear age. So much yellowcake lies below the surface that a mining executive called this place the Saudi Arabia of uranium.

The Spirits said it had to be left alone. But from the late 1940's through the mid-80's, yellowcake was picked and shoveled and blasted and hauled in open-bed trucks, and then dried in mountainous piles at multiple sites in the American West. The Navajo, whose lands extend over western New Mexico, eastern Arizona and southern Utah, were at the epicenter of the uranium-mining boom, and thousands of Navajos worked in the mines. More than 1,000 abandoned mine shafts remain on Navajo land.

The consequences are measured today, decades after the mines closed, in continuing health problems and degraded land.

Under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, people exposed to radiation through uranium mining and milling or through weapons testing are eligible for government compensation.

On that recent day, Dr. Fogarty and Dr. Bruce Strumminger were conducting a clinic for former Navajo uranium miners, most in their 70's and 80's. Dr. Strumminger, also a physician for the Indian Health Service, is medical director of the Radiation Exposure Screening Education Program at the health service hospital in Shiprock, N.M., 100 miles northwest of Crownpoint. He told me that four uranium miners' health clinics screened 3,000 to 4,000 miners in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.

More than 500 uranium miners died of lung cancer from 1950 to 1990. Hundreds more will die of lung cancer in the coming years, a study by the Public Health Service predicts. A majority of the deaths stemmed from exposure to radiation from the breakdown of uranium products. These so-called radon daughters attach to dust particles, and when workers inhale the dust, the particles lodge in their lungs, where they release high doses of radiation.

Navajo uranium miners run a risk of developing lung cancer that is 28 times as great as those Navajos not exposed to uranium, according to a study in The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Thomas Desiderio was the first patient of the day. Mr. Desiderio, 75, handsome with short-cropped gray hair, wore jeans, a Western shirt and a big smile. His wife sat by his side in her wide pleated Navajo skirt, her hair coiled in a bun at her neck.

The Desiderios are accompanied by Trudy James, a caseworker with Dr. Strumminger's clinic, who is a patient's advocate and a translator. Like many Navajos in the Eastern Agency, the Desiderios do not speak English well, and the clinic doctors' questions are interpreted and reinterpreted in their complex sonorous language, which was used as a secret code in World War II.

The miners' compensation is determined by their health status and work histories, how long they worked underground and where. They fill out 22-page applications.

Mr. Desiderio tells us he worked off and on in the mines from 1953 to 1981 in a variety of jobs. Many miners worked in "dog holes," primitive tunnels with no ventilation that men crawled through to dig uranium ore by hand. "Mom-and-pop operations," Dr. Strumminger calls them.

The larger mines were frequently no better, with substandard ventilation, no face masks for workers and little or no information or education about the long-term health risks.

Mr. Desiderio's overall exposure has been calculated at 94 working-level months; 40 is the minimum for compensation. The physicians listened to his heart and lungs, working down his chest with dual stethoscopes. "How far can you walk without getting short of breath?" Dr. Fogarty asked.

Ms. James translated the question and the reply. Mr. Desiderio said he could walk 30 miles in elk hunting season. His wife said he had to stop every 10 feet to catch his breath.

Mr. Desiderio has not yet qualified for the $150,000 compensation. Although his blood oxygen concentration is low, showing some lung damage, his last chest X-ray did not show enough chronic changes in his lungs to support his claim fully.

"Why is this taking so long?" Mr. Desiderio finally asked in broken English. "Why haven't we been paid?"

The doctors will order a special X-ray, to be read by a radiologist trained to interpret the subtle changes of pneumoconiosis, the chronic nonmalignant respiratory disease common to underground miners who inhale rock dust. The death rate among Navajo miners from respiratory diseases like pneumoconiosis and emphysema is also extremely high, about the same as the death rate from lung cancer.

The next patient, John James, 67, started mining underground in 1956 in Moab, Utah. Then he went to Ambrosia Lake, N.M., and on to the Homestake mine in Grants, N.M.

"We brought dust home on our clothes," he told the doctors. "We contaminated our families. I saw the yellowcake there. It looked like it was burning."

"He means glowing," said Ms. James, who is not related.

Mr. James is on home oxygen. He said that two weeks ago he coughed up some blood. Dr. Strumminger ordered a chest X-ray and drew an arterial blood gas to check the oxygen-carrying capacity. He said Mr. James's arterial blood gas result plus the chronic disease changes on his chest X-ray would probably qualify him for compensation.

The doctors saw six patients that morning. Most of the old miners drove at least 100 miles to get there, and they will keep returning for testing, betting that the sad chapter of their past will somehow compensate them for the present, before they die.

No one is mining uranium here now. But Dr. Fogarty and Dr. Strumminger are worried about plans to resume it.

Hydro Resources Inc., a subsidiary of Uranium Resources Inc. of Dallas, wants to begin a new mining effort in Crownpoint and nearby Church Rock using a process called in situ leach mining. In the process, a mixture of water, dissolved oxygen and sodium bicarbonate is pumped deep into underground uranium beds. The mixture dissolves uranium, and when the liquid is pumped back to the surface, the uranium can be removed, dried and processed.

The water for the leaching would come from the Westwater Canyon Aquifer under Crownpoint, the sole source of drinking water for Crownpoint and its surrounding area.

Hydro Resources plans to provide uranium for the nuclear power industry, create jobs and leave the aquifer safe for drinking.

But Dr. Fogarty and Dr. Strumminger are worried. Dr. Fogarty wrote his thesis for his master's in public health on the health risks of uranium mining. Underground mining led to lung disease, he said, but if leach mining pollutes the aquifer, a result may be widespread kidney disease.

"The Navajo are more vulnerable to the toxic kidney effects of uranium," he said, "because they already have three times the national rates of diabetes and kidney disease."

When he heard about the leaching plan, Mitchell Capitan, a former mining technician, became an opponent. Mr. Capitan is president of the Crownpoint chapter of the Eastern Navajo Agency, the Navajo equivalent of a mayor, and he founded Endaum, Eastern Navajo Dini Against Uranium Mining.

"The aquifer right underneath us provides water for 15,000 people," he said, standing on an outcrop on the western edge of Crownpoint. He pointed to the leaching site and said:

"People come here from all over these parts, from 50 miles away, to truck this water back to their houses, to drink it, because it's the only pure supply. Their own water is bad - contaminated."

Later, Mr. Capitan made his case to a gathering in the cafeteria of the Crownpoint elementary school. The cafeteria walls were painted with scenes of sheepherders and red rock mesas, with hawks floating above.

The occasion was the opening of the Water Is Life conference, sponsored by Endaum. A woman gently waving a sage incense bundle circulated through the audience. Old women in traditional velvet skirts and turquoise pendants and young Navajo men and women, about 100 people from all over the reservation, were there to talk about the future of water in their high desert environment.

The unemployment rate in the area is almost 70 percent, but there is little sentiment that mining jobs are worth the risk. Endaum has the support of all 31 chapters in the Eastern Navajo Agency Council, as well as the new president of the Navajo Nation, Joe Shirley Jr.

In alternating Navajo and English, Mr. Capitan explained how Endaum had obtained a moratorium against leach mining - with the help of the Southwest Research and Information Center, an environmental advocacy group, and the New Mexico Environmental Law Center - until a hearing has been completed before a judge for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The groups expect a decision soon.

Mr. Capitan stood under an Endaum banner. In Navajo and English, it said, "One Mind, One Voice, One Prayer, One People."

"This uranium impacts on our water, our air and our cultural identity," he said. "We've already had enough uranium."

Dr. Fogarty put it another way: "This decision should not come down to which hydrologist the N.R.C. believes. When you think about the history of uranium here, what it did to these people, the N.R.C. should support the people's health, first and foremost."

April 14, 2003

Gov. Davis signs legislation to protect Quechan sacred site

by: James May / Indian Country Today

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - In a signing ceremony staged at his capitol office, California Gov. Gray Davis signed Senate Bill 22 into law, which is aimed to protect a Quechan tribal sacred area from a proposed nearby open pit gold mine.

"We're sending a message that sacred sites are more important than gold," said Gov. Davis in a short speech that preceded the actual signing of the bill.

The signing ceremony included tribal officials as well as state legislators who had worked on the bill, including its author Sen. Byron Sher, D-Palo Alto.

The bill is the result of several months’ effort by the Davis administration to protect the Quechan site after he had vetoed a more broadly based sacred sites protection bill last year. After vetoing that bill Gov. Davis singled out the Quechan tribe and said he would specifically work to protect that site.

The language of the bill essentially deals directly with open pit mining operations near sacred sites and requires that all such projects be back filled and restored to "pre-mining conditions." The protected area effects an 880-foot deep, one-mile wide open pit, cyanide leaching gold mining operation originally proposed by Reno, Nevada-based Glamis Gold, Ltd in 1994. The proposed project sits about a mile from the Quechan sacred site, which is located in the Indian Pass area of Imperial County.

Essentially this restores a federal decision on mining that was signed by former President Clinton in the closing hours of his administration and was later reversed by the Bush Administration’s Department of Interior. It is unclear, however, how the new state law will fare against the federal reversal.

In fact when Davis was questioned during the ceremony whether this was a warning shot to the Bush Administration, Davis recalled the Clinton order and called the current bill a restoration to the former mining regulation.

"California has done what the (federal) Department of Interior won’t do, he (Davis) protected our sacred site," said Quechan tribal President Mike Jackson. Jackson had at one point in the preceding months asked Davis if he would stand in front of the bulldozers at the proposed gold mine; an anecdote that Davis wryly recalled during the ceremony.

Though the state had only recently agreed to take up the tribe’s cause, Quechan has been fighting the proposal for the past seven years and in the past two has launched a major public relations blitz for their cause. Just last year the tribe’s efforts paid off. Shortly before the first, more comprehensive bill was vetoed last year, the Quechan managed to get the site registered as one of the 50 Most Endangered Historic Sites by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Though the Quechan site is now protected some tough issues regarding sacred site protection remain. Though last year’s more comprehensive bill only covered about 75 total acres in California, it was opposed by a variety of business interests and was notable for making some strange political bedfellows that included the decidedly unusual joining of liberal Democrats and social conservatives opposing pro-business conservatives.

Though Davis referred to the Quechan site protection as a triumph over "corporate interests" the Quechan site specifically had fewer opponents because of the relative small scope of this specific project. Coupling this fact is that Glamis Gold, who had proposed the project, is not based in California making the economic impact fairly negligible.

Tougher questions abound in other areas considered sacred to other California tribes. For example last year somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 salmon died on the Klamath River, considered sacred to, among others, the Yurok and Hoopa Valley tribes. Later studies concluded that business interests ranging from logging to farming to urban public utilities were among the culprits that contributed to higher water temperatures and thus lower oxygen levels that resulted in the massive die-off.

When questioned by Indian Country Today as to whether he would be willing to take on the larger corporate interests to protect sacred sites such as the salmon on the Klamath River, the governor responded that he would. When asked what he is specifically doing in this regard, Gov. Davis replied that he was working with tribal representatives from across the state to craft new, more comprehensive sacred site protection and expected to have results in the coming months.

This article can be found at http://IndianCountry.com/?1050332327

Coal bed methane project worries ranchers, irrigators

Some South Dakota and Wyoming ranchers and irrigators are worried about an oil company's proposal to dump millions of gallons of water from Wyoming coal bed methane wells into the Cheyenne River drainage.

They say the water will be high in sodium bicarbonate and other salts, which could ruin irrigated land and harm aquatic life, streamside vegetation and wildlife. They also say the higher water levels would disrupt river crossings for landowners.

ConocoPhillips, the company proposing the coal bed methane project, disputes the allegations, saying the water it will discharge has lower salt levels than the water already in the Cheyenne.

ConocoPhillips wants to drill 200-300 new coal bed methane wells in the southern part of the Powder River Basin southwest of Gillette, Wyo.

To get to the methane, drillers must first pump out water from on top of the coal seam. That water must be disposed of.

If the state of Wyoming approves a permit, the company will develop the wells and pipe the water from the Pumpkin Buttes area near Wright, about 20 miles south to Antelope Creek, which feeds into the Cheyenne River, Conoco-Phillips project manager David Jones of Houston said. Water would be held in two reservoirs before being dumped into Antelope Creek. Construction wouldn't begin for at least a year, Jones said.

About 100 wells are operating in the Cheyenne River basin.

Federal energy officials estimate the entire basin between Gillette and Buffalo has the potential for 39,000 new wells.

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality is now sifting through public comments on the ConocoPhillips proposal. Department director John Corra will decide on the permit, in April at the earliest. His decision can be appealed to the Wyoming Environmental Quality Council.

Argument over impact

Assessments vary widely on the impact of coal bed methane water on the Cheyenne River, the plants and animals in and around it and on irrigation land.

Tom Cook, a former chemistry professor from Black Hills State University who lives on the Cheyenne River near Hot Springs, says the discharge's high sodium content would devastate irrigated land, the river and surrounding land.

"I believe this is going to kill this place off," Cook said.

Keith Andersen, who ranches on the Cheyenne River on both sides of the Wyoming-South Dakota border, is also concerned about the quality of discharge water that would be dumped into the Cheyenne. Most of his irrigated land is on the Wyoming side.

Normally, irrigators would welcome more water, Andersen, who is also chairman of the Fall River Conservation District board, said.

However, the high level of sodium bicarbonate relative to calcium and magnesium in coal bed methane water can make clay soil impervious to water, ruining it for irrigation, Andersen said. "It turns it into hardpan."

ConocoPhillips' Jones said sodium bicarbonate and other salts would be diluted during irrigation periods, keeping the sodium absorption rate (SAR) within permitted levels.

Jones says the discharge water will contain lower salt content than the water in the river as it enters South Dakota now. "Effectively, we'll be reducing the salt content on an average basis," Jones said.

All of the discharged water will meet state standards for downstream uses, company officials say.

Angostura Irrigation District Manager Mick Jenniges said he is counting on the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which owns Angostura Reservoir and the water in it, and the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources, to make sure the coal bed methane water isn't harmful. "I am trusting that they are making sure the water is going to be suitable for crops."

The Bureau of Reclamation isn't aware of any negative effects from the current coal bed methane discharge, either in the Cheyenne River drainage or the Belle Fourche River drainage, according to BOR civil engineer Curt Anderson in Rapid City.

Anderson said the bureau hasn't heard from many people worried about the discharge into either drainage.

In fact, Pat Trask, chairman of the Cheyenne River Water Users Association, favors the project. Trask ranches on the Cheyenne River near Elm Springs and uses river water for irrigation. He agrees with the company's assessment that the coal bed methane discharge water will be of higher quality than the water currently in the river. "It will be a net benefit to the Lower Cheyenne," he said.

Trask also said he appreciates the willingness of ConocoPhillips to work with landowners to try to arbitrate problems.

Belle Fourche Irrigation District members are concerned about the discharge, but tests in the inlet have found water to be within limits so far, according to district manager Renel Hall-Beck. Wyoming coal bed methane wells have been discharging water into the Belle Fourche for several years.

DENR satisfied

The South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources voiced its concerns to Wyoming officials about an earlier ConocoPhillips proposal to discharge up to 57 cfs of coal bed methane into the Cheyenne drainage. As a result of that and other comments, Phillips withdrew its permit request and submitted its latest proposal â?" to release 35.7 cfs.

The department's main concerns were damage to irrigation land, increased stream flows and increased sediment in the water, according to Jeanne Goodman, DENR water-quality program administrator

DENR is satisfied with the changes in Phillips' revised permit request, Goodman said. "We are happy with the changes they made, but we are going to do our own monitoring," she said.

Any discharge will have to meet South Dakota standards, Kelli Buscher, engineering director for the water-quality progra, said.

The department has received many queries from South Dakota residents on the latest Phillips proposal, Buscher said.

Cook said the department's acceptance of the new permit is a big mistake. He said coal bed methane water already has damaged the Tongue River in Montana.

Coal bed methane water discharged into the Tongue River from Fidelity Exploration and Production at Decker, Mont., has doubled the SAR levels in the Tongue, according to rancher Art Hayes of Birney, Mont., head of the Tongue River Water Users Association. The 75-member association has sued the state of Montana to stop the discharge.

Hayes said not much irrigation land has been damaged yet, except for a few spots on the lower end of the Tongue. But he said the company's high-sodium discharge water has killed cottonwood trees around the Tongue River Reservoir.

He fears the impact of the discharge on the Tongue is just beginning. Like Cook, Hayes says sodium from high SAR discharge water accumulates in soils. "It would be criminal for South Dakota to allow the company to discharge water," he said.

Wyoming opposition

The Niobrara County (Wyoming) Conservation District, based in Lusk, also opposes Phillips' proposal. Discharge of high salinity coal bed methane water would hurt eight or 10 irrigators plus 30 to 40 ranchers and other landowners along the Cheyenne River in Niobrara County alone, Heidi Sturman, water-quality technician for the district, said.

One of the district's objections is that Phillips plans to drill into the deeper Big George coal seam between Gillette and Buffalo. "The deeper you go, the worse the water is," Sturman said.

She said the reduction of flow in the new proposal to 35.7 cfs would not be enough to mitigate the damage.

She said the Cheyenne River at low flow already has a high sodium absorption ratio, so irrigators wait for storms or other runoff to dilute the sodium befo re using water for irrigation. But if the new water coming in also has high SAR, it could damage irrigated land, Sturman said.

"This water is extremely high in sodium and higher in SAR than the irrigation water they use now," Sturman said. "Also, you can end up with a buildup of salts down at the root zone, so plants can't function properly."

Rancher Andersen said the SAR would be 15 at the discharge point, above the level of 10 that South Dakota allows.

ConocoPhillips' Jones said, however, that the Wyoming permit would require the company to further dilute the water during irrigation periods, bringing the SAR down to 10.

Sturman said the increased water would also damage aquatic life in Antelope Creek and the Cheyenne River, and damage plants along the streams as well as wildlife.

The higher flows also could ruin river crossings for cattle and for landowners.

She said ice jams could cause spillovers of the high-salinity water, which could damage surrounding soil and plants.

Jones said ConocoPhillips would try to work with landowners to compensate them for access problems caused by higher water.

But Sturman said she knew of no positive comments on the Phillips proposal from within Wyoming. "There is no economic benefit here, from any of this. If we have to start dealing with problems with the discharge, that will be long term," she said.

Deciding the permit

The comment period ended Feb. 17 on the proposed permit. Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality staffers are sifting through those comments now, Gary Beach, administrator of DEQ's water-quality division, said.

Beach said the department would look at existing uses of the water downstream, including irrigation, before a decision on the permit is made. "We cannot authorize releases of water from the industry that would adversely affect current uses of water in the natural system," Beach said.

Both the sodium absorption ratio and the total salinity will be taken into account before deciding on the permit, he said.

"In my mind, they're both a concern," Beach said, although the SAR could have longer-term impact on irrigated land. "If you break down soil structure, you'll never reclaim them," Beach said.

High total salinity doesn't affect the soil as much but it hurts plant growth, he said. However, that could be treated with better quality water.

Beach said DEQ told Phillips more than a year ago that it would have trouble approving its original request to release 57 cfs into Antelope Creek. He said 35.7 cfs would reduce the concentration of salinity downstream.

"The question that still exists is, when you get down to the base flow and levels they use to irrigate, are you still going to have concentrations too high?" Beach said.

But he said not all of the water released would reach far downstream. He said about .1 cfs is lost per mile of stream.

Water discharged into Antelope Creek would have to travel more than 100 stream miles before reaching South Dakota, Beach said.

Higher flows

Beach said he doubted whether any of the current discharge from the coal bed methane wells into the Cheyenne River drainage is reaching South Dakota.

However, some irrigators and ranchers say parts of the river are running now that didn't before, despite drought, Sturman said.

Keith Andersen, who grew up on his ranch on the South Dakota-Wyoming border, says the river has continued to flow there during the past three winters, something that it does not normally do. He said the company told him the peak flows under the new permit would raise the river 10 inches through his ranch.

And he worries that, because of evaporation, the water will have a higher salt content the closer it gets to South Dakota.

Andersen and Sturman would like more study of the river flows and water quality before a permit is approved.

They say they don't oppose energy development. "The challenge is to find a better way to handle the water," Andersen said.

ConocoPhillips' Jones, however, says reasonable predictions can be made with U.S. Geological Service data on the river going back 70 years.

And he said the permit would require the company to gather baseline data before beginning construction on the pipeline. He also said ConocoPhillips is willing to look at alternative uses for the water if it is economically feasible for the company.

Cook, who holds a doctorate in chemistry, says his calculations show that the additional permitted discharge, along with the existing permits, would allow dumping of up to 40 million gallons of water a day into the Cheyenne River. He says the water would bring at least 600,000 pounds per day of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). Sodium bicarbonate interferes with fish reproduction, and coal bed methane water dramatically reduces aquatic bug counts, Cook says.

The new permit would allow ConocoPhillips to dump about 23 million gallons a day at peak flows.

"And guess where it's coming?" Cook said. "It's going to come down the Cheyenne since Montana is trying to close it off."

Cook says Montana has limited the amount of coal bed methane water it will accept, so Conoco-Phillips is looking to dump its water into the Cheyenne heading east to South Dakota.

Beach said Wyoming's DEQ is cautiously approving permits to dump into the Powder River because Wyoming has an interim agreement with the state of Montana not to degrade the Powder River or the Tongue River, both of which flow into Montana. He said after Montana settles on specific numeric standards, another agreement will be worked out.

Beach said the DEQ is more concerned about concentrations of salts rather than the total amounts.

Cook says he doesn't trust Wyoming officials to protect the river drainages, either by rejecting the permit or by monitoring the allowed discharges. "I h

ave a very bad feeling about this. I think this may be the biggest environmental economic war that we're going to see in the western states."

Contact Steve Miller at 394-8417 or
steve.miller@rapidcityjournal.com

March 4, 2003

Bill seeks re-vote on cyanide leach mining

HELENA - Opposing camps traded barbs Monday night at a lively and long-winded hearing on a bill that would send a 1998 voter-passed ban on cyanide leach gold and silver mining back to the people.

Sen. Dan McGee, R-Laurel, said that if the voters don't reverse the ban, Montana might as well change its slogan from "oro y plato" to "MEIC rex," in reference to the Montana Environmental Information Center, a Helena environmental group. "Oro y plato," translates into "gold and silver" in Spanish, while "MEIC rex," translates into "MEIC rules" in Latin.

For more of this story, click on or type the URL below:
http://www.helenair.com/articles/2003/03/03/legislature/a01022503_06.txt

January 20, 2003

A breath of fresh air

Surrounded by a massive industrial buildup,
the Northern Cheyenne tribe defends its homeland

BADGER PEAK, Mont. — Stand on a rocky outcrop on this modest, pine-clad mountain, the highest point on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, and gaze northward, and you can see the four smokestacks of Montana’s largest power plant, Colstrip, clustered on the horizon, 16 miles away. The stacks puff like giant cigarettes. And today, from near the stacks, a separate black plume of smoke rises.

The plume drifts southwest on the prevailing winds, toward Badger Peak and tribal air space.

Jay Littlewolf, an air-quality technician for the Northern Cheyenne, says the smoke comes from the huge strip mine that feeds coal to the furnaces of the power plant. “Must be blasting to loosen the coal beds,” he says.

Other than the smokestacks and the black plume, there is no trace of industry in sight. Red rocky ridges roll out to brown-grass plains under high wispy clouds and blue sky.

Littlewolf steps into the tribe’s air-quality monitoring station on the peak. It’s little more than a stuffy shack, with a dozen mousetraps on the floor. But the sensitive equipment housed here measures traces of air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide, and weather conditions, such as wind speed and direction. A new digital camera takes twice-a-day photos of the skies over the Colstrip stacks and mine.

“A few years ago, we would have heard rumors about a plume like that,” Littlewolf says. “But with (the camera), we’ll have visuals to go along with the rest of our data.”

This is one of three mountaintop air-monitoring stations the tribe has deployed along the reservation border closest to Colstrip, making sure the drifting smoke doesn’t violate the tribe’s air-quality standards, which are some of the toughest in the U.S. It’s a line of defense held by one of the most determined environmental programs anywhere.

In southeast Montana, the Northern Cheyenne Reservation is an island. The tribe has been nearly surrounded by no less than five huge strip mines, as well as the Colstrip power plant, haulage railroads and transmission lines. Montana’s only active coalbed methane field sucks gas and groundwater from several hundred wells near the reservation’s southern border, and there are proposals for thousands more methane wells. And a few miles east of the reservation, in the only direction still undeveloped, the Montana state government has allied with industry seeking to create a new strip mine, and possibly build another power plant and railroad.

Yet for 30 years, the Northern Cheyenne — a relatively small and isolated tribe — have fought powerful corporations that want to develop the coalbeds that underlie almost every inch of the reservation. They have done what many other tribes have been unable to do: protected their land and culture, and repeatedly reached beyond their borders to battle development off the reservation.

But economic paralysis is testing the tribe’s resolve. Some Northern Cheyenne are starting to see coal and gas royalties as a solution to the reservation’s crushing poverty, crime, alcoholism and drug abuse.

“People are hungry here, they’re dying, they suffer day by day. They fight over a $15 food voucher,” says Danny Sioux, who just finished a term on the tribal council. “I went to 47 funerals (last) year, mostly young people. We have tremendous social problems.”

He is among those who want to take up mining and drilling to generate jobs and an economy. “That’s the only option we have. We have spent the last 30 years in litigation (against coal companies), we’ve blackmailed the socks off these corporations, and how has it helped our situation?”

Will the Northern Cheyenne hold out, or give in to industrial development? Is there a third way — to avoid invasion by corporations, but still gain from small-scale development? These questions hold implications for Indians and non-Indians alike, as a new wave of energy development sweeps into the West.

A hard-won homeland

The Northern Cheyenne environmental stand continues a long tribal tradition. The tribe’s resistance to white settlers, prospectors and the U.S. Cavalry is legendary: They helped the Sioux tribe wipe out Gen. George Armstrong Custer’s men in the Battle of the Little Bighorn (just west of the reservation’s present boundary) in 1876.

The Northern Cheyenne endured broken treaties and massacres, but even when the tribe was eventually relocated to Oklahoma with the Southern Cheyenne (who lived on the Central Plains), the resistance continued. In 1878, led by chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf, some 300 Northern Cheyenne men, women and children tried to walk from Oklahoma back to Montana, trudging through snowstorms and dodging an estimated 13,000 soldiers and vigilantes.

More than 60 Northern Cheyenne were killed on that walk, memorialized in the semi-accurate Hollywood movie, Cheyenne Autumn. But some made it to Montana, and the tribe was granted a reservation here in the Tongue River country in 1884.

The Northern Cheyenne Indian reservation is not large. Over the years, its boundaries have been adjusted, and now it encompasses about 707 square miles of rugged, semi-arid country, rising up to Badger Peak’s 4,422-foot elevation. Ponderosa pines dot the long red ridges, and sagebrush, skunkweed and prairie grasses fill the narrow valleys. The Tongue River meanders along the eastern border.

“We had to fight for it, with our spirit (and) our determination to continue and survive as a people on our land,” says Joe Little Coyote, the tribe’s economic development planner.

During community meetings, old men still rise to expound on the lessons learned at Little Bighorn and lesser-known confrontations, such as the Battle of the Rosebud on June 17, 1876, in which a woman warrior, whose name has been translated as Buffalo Calf Road Woman, fought bravely and saved her brother’s life.

The struggles didn’t end once the Northern Cheyenne won their reservation. Generations since have faced tough times, trying to survive on small-scale ranching, logging and federal assistance, far from any city, airport or interstate highway.

Yet under the reservation’s surface lie arguably the biggest coal reserves held by any tribe — an estimated 20 to 50 billion tons, part of a coal belt that stretches from southeast Montana into Wyoming. The coal tends to be low-sulfur, relatively clean-burning and desirable as a fuel for power plants. Large-scale strip mining began on land near the reservation in 1968, and when the Arab oil embargo sparked an energy crisis in the early 1970s, the coal companies ramped up production.

At first, the tribe saw this as an opportunity. From 1966 to 1971, the tribal council signed coal leases with a half-dozen corporations and speculators, including Peabody Coal, Consolidated Coal, and Amax Coal.

The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs acted as trustee for the tribe, theoretically watching out for the tribe’s interests. But the BIA didn’t even complete an environmental impact statement, and the leases covered more than half the reservation. The agency sold the exploration rights for about $9 per acre, and the tribe would have received royalties of no more than 17.5 cents a ton for any coal mined.

“The BIA had sold our coal for less than gravel,” says Gail Small, the outspoken leader of Native Action, a Northern Cheyenne activist group.

“The federal and tribal representatives were clearly overmatched” in those lease negotiations, says Jason Whiteman Jr., a Northern Cheyenne who has worked in the tribe’s environmental program since the 1970s. “We had no idea what the impacts would be,” he says, and the terms of the deal were “unconscionable.”

The Northern Cheyenne began to understand the implications as the corporations drilled thousands of exploration holes and announced plans to build power plants on the reservation. Such development would threaten more than the tribe’s cattle ranches and crops. It would strike at the underlying tribal culture. “I remember seeing blueprints for boomtowns of 30,000 people on the reservation — we would’ve been a minority here,” says Whiteman.

So the tribe set out to regain control of the reservation. Charismatic tribal chairman Allen Rowland — a former truck driver and janitor who carried Japanese shrapnel in his flesh, a souvenir of his service in World War II — led the fight in the 1970s. The tribe hired a series of lawyers, including an Osage Indian named George Crossland, and a white lawyer from Seattle, Steve Chestnut. Some of the pioneering white environmentalists in Montana also came to the reservation to help organize.

“The first leaflet had (a headline summing up the threat of development): ‘The termination of the Northern Cheyenne,’ ” recalls Bill Bryan, who ran the Northern Rockies Action Group back then.

Claiming the BIA had violated laws and neglected its role as trustee, the Northern Cheyenne presented a 600-page petition to then-Secretary of Interior Rogers C.B. Morton. It was a bold move. Working the highest levels of federal government, within a few years the tribe got all those coal leases canceled, forced the corporations to pay about $10 million in damages, and gained control of another 7,000 acres one corporation had bought for mining.

Victory upon victory

Throughout the 1970s, Tribal Chairman Rowland helped foster a younger generation of budding activists and leaders, who were so inspired and empowered by early victories that they have retained a sense of mission and optimism ever since. This core has made all the difference.

Among the innovative steps taken by Rowland in those days was a youth program in which local kids traveled by bus to visit coal mines in Wyoming and on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. Gail Small recalls sitting for a photograph with about 20 fellow students in a huge mechanical shovel near Gillette, Wyo., and feeling awed by the immense power of the mining operation.

“We were sent out as scouts, and on the way home we talked about it. We got fired up. We knew that, given the chance, we would be exploited,” says Small, who earned a law degree at the University of Oregon and worked with California tribes, then came home to work with her people.

Rowland also began the Northern Cheyenne Research Project, which tapped federal money to attract scientists from across the nation to the reservation to brainstorm ways to tackle environmental issues. Tribal members like Jason Whiteman apprenticed in the Research Project and began running the tribe’s environmental program.

With that momentum, the Northern Cheyenne took the offensive. When a consortium of utilities sought to expand the Colstrip power plant, the tribe found leverage through the federal Clean Air Act. It became the first government of any kind to voluntarily raise its air-quality standard to the highest level, a Class I Airshed — the same as national parks and wilderness areas.

“We got our Class I designation on August 5, 1977,” says Jay Littlewolf, who knows the date by heart, “two days before the first parks and wilderness areas got it.”

The Northern Cheyenne forced the utilities to spend $500 million to equip the Colstrip stacks with the best air-pollution scrubbers, Littlewolf says. Those corporations also agreed to fund the tribe’s air-monitoring program, as well as provide college scholarships and job preferences for tribal members.

As industry pressures increased, the Northern Cheyenne continued to stand tough in courts and gain concessions from corporations in savvy negotiations. The tribe voided industry-friendly coal leases made on three sides of the reservation by the Reagan administration’s secretary of Interior, James Watt, in 1982, and canceled the permit for the Montco mine just east of the reservation in 1997. The Northern Cheyenne also cancelled the allotment of much of the reservation’s subsurface mineral rights to individual tribal members and heirs — something coal speculators had hoped to take advantage of. Now the tribe effectively retains ownership of all the subsurface rights on the reservation.

Northern Cheyenne leaders have also worked with Native Action and the Northern Plains Resource Council, a Billings-based environmental group whose members include white ranchers, to block the development of a new railroad along the Tongue River, which has been pushed by coal speculators for several decades.

Now the tribe is working on a tough water-quality program, building its enforcement power on the federal Clean Water Act. “We’re developing our own water-quality standards,” says Joe Walksalong Jr., a tribal water-quality technician, “equal to or better than the federal and state standards.”

Reservation economy languishes

The Northern Cheyenne have done a remarkable job of looking out for their land and air, but they have had a more difficult time caring for their people.

These days, 4,200 Northern Cheyenne live on the reservation, and at least 65 percent are unemployed, with fully 87 percent living in poverty, according to the tribe’s own economic analysis in 2001. Average annual income that year was $4,479.

In many places on the reservation, basic services like drinking water are not reliable. Housing is shoddy and hard to find. Up to eight families crowd into a single dwelling, while 700 families sit on a waiting list for housing. Infant mortality ranks among the worst in the U.S., and average life expectancy is only 60 years, compared to 77 for the nation as a whole. There are high rates of substance abuse, diabetes, violence and crime.

A few families run B&Bs and other small businesses that cater to the scarce tourists who come here. But the tribal sawmill has shut down. Most grazing land is in the hands of a few extended families. Eighty-five percent of the cultivatable farmland is not being farmed, and most of that is infested with weeds.

The reservation’s land, fought for by some, is neglected by others. Roads are lined with dirty diapers, aluminum cans and other litter, and right on the main highway, there’s an open dump.

Things are so difficult, about 3,200 Northern Cheyenne live off the reservation. “Almost 50 percent of the population has moved away, because there is no opportunity here,” says Danny Sioux, who served on the tribal council from 1986 to 1988 and from 1998 through last November, when he lost a bid for re-election.

If the tribe developed its own coal, he says, it would go a long way toward solving economic problems. Even at the low royalties of the leases that were canceled in the 1970s, the tribe’s coal is worth at least $3 billion.

In fact, despite the tribe’s reputation for environmental protection at all costs, many Northern Cheyenne have pushed for some kind of natural-resource development.

A proposal for conventional oil and gas drilling on the reservation was put to a vote in 1980, and won overwhelming approval. The tribe struck a $6 million deal with ARCO for exploration rights, but ARCO drilled a few holes and decided the project wasn’t feasible. Tribal chairman Edwin Dahle, who generally took an environmental stance while in office, supported a proposal to open a mine just east of the reservation in 1990. But that proposal stalled out.

Steve Chestnut, the Seattle lawyer who has represented the Northern Cheyenne in many environmental battles, says he’s advised the tribe to do limited commercial coal mining on the reservation. “The Cheyenne have a fabulous coal reserve, and they can’t bring themselves to develop even a small piece of it,” Chestnut says, adding that while he respects that position, “they are paying a price for preservation.”

Danny Sioux has worked in the mines and trained other miners; he has also worked for the power plant, at times in the control room, running a turbine. He’s had tribal jobs as well, and now ekes out a living by repairing fences, leasing out his small piece of grazing land and doing odd jobs. He points out that industrial jobs pay far better than other local jobs, and that some Northern Cheyenne have had careers in the industry. “It would be a blessing for this tribe,” he says, if the latest possibility of starting a mine just east of the reservation pans out.

The tribe should become “a shareholder” in that project, he says, and also develop the reservation’s coal. He also believes that the tribe should try limited methane development, with small, 20-megawatt modular power plants linked to a few wells.

“The tribe could be in control of development. We could try to do it right,” Sioux says. “Economically, that would generate a tremendous income to the tribe. We could set up a training program” and a facility where tribal members could be employed in a range of enterprises.

But when he lost the election last fall, Danny Sioux was cast as “Coalbed-methane Danny” by some opponents. Collective opinion is hard to measure now, but most Northern Cheyenne still apparently don’t like the idea of strip mining and coalbed-methane development on the reservation.

Development comes with a price

That kind of development, on the reservation or nearby, would add to the environmental impacts already being felt from the current mining, power-plant furnaces and methane drilling.

The mammoth Colstrip plant, with 2,000-megawatt capacity, burns about 10 million tons of coal each year. Even with the scrubbers on the smokestacks, the plant emitted about 19,000 tons of sulfur dioxide in 2001, and 35,000 tons of nitrogen oxide, 3,700 tons of particulates, 2,400 tons of carbon monoxide, and 343 tons of volatile organic compounds. The five strip mines altogether throw about 4,000 tons of pollution into the air each year, mostly dust from blasting and trucks on haul roads.

As the air pollution spreads over the vast open spaces, it has caused no noteworthy air-quality violations on the reservation in recent years. The power-plant operators, originally Montana Power Co. and now PPL Montana, report good relations with the tribe. But the emissions likely contribute to an occasional haze on the horizon, a haze also fed by more distant power plants, cars in Billings, Mont., and other sources of smoke.

The mines take bites out of the landscape, digging as much as 200 feet deep and a mile long. Jim Mockler, director of the Montana Coal Council, cites the success of some mine reclamation in the area. “We have shown we can mine the coal and do it right, return the (surface of the) land to good condition.” But even good reclamation doesn’t entirely restore native vegetation. The mines also consume sandstone cliffs that hold petroglyphs and pictographs, and affect groundwater, seeps and springs.

Coalbed-methane development, which requires moving huge volumes of often salty groundwater, takes over entire landscapes and impacts water below and on the surface (HCN, 9/2/02: Backlash). The Tongue River is already receiving salty runoff from methane wells upriver, Joe Walksalong says, and the runoff in the river and in Rosebud Creek will likely increase with expanded methane development. There are plans for up to 16,000 new methane wells near the reservation.

The threats to water are particularly troubling to the Northern Cheyenne. Surface water is used for irrigating crops and pasture, but the meaning of water reaches deeper than its uses. Many springs and the river figure in Cheyenne sacred ceremonies that date back generations. “Cheyenne live all along the river,” says Gail Small. “They bathe in the river, a ceremonial for healing, when the roots of a certain plant in the headwaters are at highest strength.”

As much as he wants economic development, Joe Little Coyote agrees: “We don’t want to do anything that might impact our water, no matter how good it looks.” So he doesn’t want mining on the reservation, and has instead put together 111 pages of analysis, calling for the tribe to establish a commerce department, seed local businesses, and develop energy projects tapping renewable resources such as wind and solar. Gail Small’s group, Native Action, is pressuring a regional bank to open a branch in Lame Deer, so that loans will be easier to acquire. And other efforts to jump-start an economy are afoot.

Tribal President Geri Small — Gail Small’s sister, who was elected in 2000 — says, “I’ve been told that if we mined our coal, we’d be millionaires.” But she is against mining and methane: “We want to keep our homeland, keep it intact.”

Resurgence of the culture

In many tales of Indian sovereignty, tribes have given up control of their land and resources. Just to the west, on the neighboring Crow Reservation, for example, that tribe leased some of its coal for a mine that has been digging for 30 years. And the Crow recently struck a deal with a Denver corporation to develop coalbed methane on their reservation.

But there are no good examples of tribes developing their natural resources so far, says A. David Lester, director of the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, based in Denver. Tribes that have tried coal mining, like the Crow and Navajo, don’t have appreciably better living conditions and economies on their reservations, he says, because they let outsiders — corporations and the federal government — set low royalties and dictate the other terms.

“It’s hard to say that natural-resource economic development, with the model that’s been used, produces any real benefits for any tribe, or any sustainable economic activity,” Lester says. A tribe is wiser not to make any deals until it can retain control of how development is done, so “it fits in your values and culture.”

That’s what the Northern Cheyenne are doing: Preserving the tribe’s land and culture from an onslaught of outsiders, as well as defending the reservation against environmental threats.

The dismal statistics on economic and social problems don’t show the strengths of the Northern Cheyenne culture. “It’s a communal way of life,” says Gail Small. “A lot of people who have never been part of a tribe have a hard time understanding it.”

She and other Northern Cheyenne leaders cite a resurgence in the Northern Cheyenne language, and the revival of the sweat lodge and other sacred ceremonies, especially the Sun Dance — three days of fasting and dancing that purify individuals and the tribe.

“More young people are getting into the role of spiritual leader,” says Zane Spang, who works at the tribe’s Dull Knife College, where about 100 students pursue two-year degrees in fields such as business and computers. “I think it’s a sense of pride. It identifies the individual as a member of the culture.”

“Families pool their resources and give away (piles of) gifts at powwows and funerals,” reports Duane Champagne of the University of California-Los Angeles, a sociologist who has studied the tribe. “Cheyenne values emphasize cooperation, sharing, generosity, religious spirituality and tribal welfare, all of which conflict with Western notions of competition, materialism, self-interest and individual achievement.”

“The cultural infrastructure here has no room for individualists,” agrees Joe Little Coyote. So far, that makes capitalism the odd man out. But if the tribal culture is going to endure, the Northern Cheyenne must address their economic and social problems somehow. If they continue to stand firm on protecting the environment, they will have to find new ways to meet those challenges.

Jay Littlewolf drives his pickup truck from Badger Peak on teeth-clacking dirt roads, past holy springs marked by cloth tied to bushes and trees. At the tribe’s Natural Resources office, the rear half of a Quonset hut at the edge of Lame Deer, he meets Jason Whiteman and several more coworkers, who wear gloves and carry shovels and rakes. Everyone’s talking about a cleanup that’s under way today, of an unofficial dump near Lame Deer Creek.

Shortly, Whiteman and a technician head off toward the reservation’s southern boundary, scouting for a site where one of six water-monitoring wells will be established to check for impacts from current and future coal and methane development.

“The companies will never leave us alone,” says Whiteman. “They will always be knocking at the door.”

You can contact ...

• Northern Cheyenne tribal office, in Lame Deer, Mont., 406/477-6284 or www.ncheyenne.net
• Gail Small, Native Action, in Lame Deer, 406/477-6390;
• Council of Energy Resource Tribes, director A. David Lester, in Denver, Colo., 303/282-7576 or www.certredearth.com .