Word: mined
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Challenging the stereotype of Indians as uncompromising conservationists, more than 200 individual Navajo landowners have quietly leased 1,440 acres to Hydro Resources Inc., an Albuquerque company that plans to mine uranium ore from a local aquifer (a layer of water-bearing rock). The company has promised a lucrative payoff: more than $40,000 for each property it leases, plus royalties as high as 25% on the sale of the uranium ore. For some Navajo landowners that could translate into more than $1 million a year--a nice paycheck anywhere, but especially in a region with double-digit unemployment...
...supplies water to an estimated 10,000 people in and around Crownpoint, a town in which dusty yards are decorated with stripped-down car frames and visiting neighbors honk their horn rather than ring the doorbell. Less than 10% of the local Navajo stand to benefit directly from the mining leases, and many of the rest, conditioned by a history of false promises from outsiders, aren't buying Hydro Resources' assurances that their water will remain unpolluted by the mine...
...town's primary well is situated only 2,000 ft. from the nearest proposed mining site. A similar uranium-mining effort in the 1980s failed to preserve the water's purity, says Mitchell Capitan, the soft-spoken leader of a grass-roots organization opposed to the mine. "We can't afford to risk our children and our future," says Capitan. Martin agrees, "It's a disruption to Mother Earth, and it's not the Indian...
...Hydro Resources contends that its extraction process poses no threat to the groundwater. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission concurs, and the company has been granted a license to mine. "If there's a resource there, why shouldn't our people be able to enjoy the proceeds of it?" argues Ruth Bridgeman, 79, who leased her property to Hydro Resources several years ago. Leonard Arviso, a Navajo who acts as the company's liaison to his tribe, talks not of land or money but of children who are forced to leave the community for lack of jobs. "We can respect Mother...
...discovered that remembering names is not a strong point of mine. I tend to lump vaguely familiar faces into broad mental categories which have titles like "people who seem as if they may be named James." This inadequacy in my memory was a persistent problem during the past school year when I taught a class of fifth graders non-violent conflict resolution skills with the organization Peace Games, Inc. Those ten-and eleven-year-olds in Dorchester were an energetic and cynical audience. They were able to answer leading questions about safety and respect with enough ease and assurance...