You heard it here first. A Department of Interior Administrative Law Judge withdrew Peabody Coal Company’s Life of Mine permit for operations on Black Mesa, AZ, handing a major victory to tribal and environmental organizations who appealed the permit decision in January. The permit had been granted on December 22nd 2008 by the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM) in one of several fossil-fuel friendly 11th hour decisions by the Bush Administration.
According Judge Robert G. Holt, “OSM violated NEPA [National Environmental Protection Act] by not preparing a supplemental draft EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] when Peabody changed the proposed action. As a result, the Final EIS did not consider a reasonable range of alternatives to the new proposed action, described the wrong environmental baseline, and did not achieve the informed decision-making and meaningful public comment required by NEPA. Because of the defective Final EIS, OSM’s decision to issue a revised permit to Peabody must be vacated and remanded to OSM for further action.”
As a community member of Black Mesa I am grateful for Judge Holt’s decision. For 40 years our sacred homelands and people have borne the brunt of coal mining impacts, from relocation to depletion of our only drinking water source. This ruling is an important step towards restorative justice for Indigenous communities who have suffered at the hands of multinational companies like Peabody Energy. This decision is also precedent-setting for all other communities who struggle with the complexities of NEPA laws and OSM procedures in regards to environmental protection. However, we also cannot ignore the irreversible damage of coal mining industries continues on the land, water, air, people and all living things.
great news!
We hope that Peabody will do what it claimed in the Environmental Impact Statement it submitted and what it promised the Navajo and Hopi People … to return the land in the condition they found it.
Peabody claims to have seed banks and can restore the land, let’s make sure they do it.
Woot woot! Thanks for sharing the good news.
YEAH!
Excellent work. Congrats to all working on Black Mesa projects, and I hope this victory is felt across the national coal fights.
Hurray!!! What an important victory, thanks and congratulations to everyone fighting this fight!
wow! a little bit of good news in some dismal days. congrats to all who worked so hard and sacrificed so much for this madness to stop.
Thanks for the great news. Do you have a date on the legal decision?
This is great! I know many people fought hard for this – I’m so glad to hear it!
FINALLY!!!!!!!! after all these years of prayers going up, protesting, seminars, networking and sending good energy from so many people and the sacrifices that the Dine’ have gone through. Thanks to Creator for this part of the final victory. The fight is not over yet, but this is a good place to regroup and move forward.
Love and Blessings
Xielolixii
Congrats! Great news.
Everyone worked so long and hard for this moment. Thank you.
Great victory!
Finally, they will be stopped. Hope we can do the same for Glass Mountain. Congratulations, let us sing with victory for our brothers in AZ.
Ya’at’eeh,
I am from Rough Rock/Black Mesa, AZ. I live below and on top of the mountain. i feel the every day impact of the stripmining of my home where my sheep graze. Where we get our water, where we have our ceremonies, it is our alter, our mother. It is one of our sacred mountains which we call Tadidiin Dzil or “corn pollen mountain” and she has a mind, a heart, a spirit too, just like any other living being. The desecration under her liver, her lungs, her body is like destroying your mother’s body. This is the truth and testament we have lived by for thousands of years.
I grow my corn with the spring and rain water that runs off Black Mesa, I keep my family warm with the wood i harvest from her forests. Black Mesa is life to me. Ahee’hee’, Judge Robert G. Holt and all environmental groups and individuals in helping to fight and defend for all of us on the land.
Much respect,
Kris Barney
Rough Rock/Black Mesa, Dine’ Bikeyah
Wow, this is such exciting news, congratulations!!
Great news! There are other situations that are in the same situation as this issue.
Victory for Black Mesa now but its only a matter of time before the big companies pay some “grassroots” marketing company to go out and overturn the public opinion or at least that of the relevant politicians. Sad.
John R. Carlisle
I am elated to hear this news. Keep up the inspiring work. Solidarity from Appalachia!
Judge Holt has done his work well-listening to the voice of wisdom that can be found in the struggle against behemoth bureaucracy of long outmoded energy resource development.
Some time has been created for the truth to come out–large scale groundwater mining changes the way clouds form overhead. Coal mining costs more than it ever provides in profits–another truth that has more time to come out.
These coalitions have carried on for decades and have steered a course that brings many others into its road of Earth Care.
Beautiful.
Good work! This gives us new hope. We are currently in a struggle to stop copper-nickel sulfide mining near the east end of the Mesabi Iron Range in Northern Minnesota. The iron mines are depleted and depressed here and the old mining communities and politicians are eager to undertake the inevitably toxic acid pollution of our pristine water supply here at the top of the East-West Laurentian Divide, directly adjacent to the Vermillion Anishinabe reservation and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Lake Superior’s North Shore. please see my blog linked to the above website, or google friends of the boundary waters wilderness. We would so appreciate any tactical advice or contacts you might be able to offer. Thank you. Marco Good, Grand Marais, Mn.
Congratulations!
congratulations! This is great and the fight will never be over because yes it is big corporation but this is REALLY GOOD NEWS!!!
So happy to see this news!!
LIBERTAD PARA LOS INDIGENAS DONDE QUIERA QUE ESTEN, EN AMERICA O EN EL MUNDO!!!
peabody coal fucked up the whole terrain… I always hated seeing all that ugly mess, so many trees destroyed natural medicines and crystals unearthed into a artifical mess… I’m glad…
Great Job, Great Win !!, Great Earth!!!
As a white guy who grew up in rural northern Arizona, this gives me a lot of hope, not only for the ongoing impressiveness of Black Mesa’s organizing, but for effective radical rural organizing in general.
Court and administrative victories might feel like arbitrary, uncontrollable victories, but they rarely happen — or remain in place — without effective grassroots organizing putting on the pressure. Huge props and congratulations!
This is TERRIBLE news! All you tree huggers need to spend your time doing something else! The Peabody Coal mine and NGS are HUGE sources of revenue for our Navajo people. Thousands of families will be impacted IF this goes through. If you do not live near the black mesa area, then you have no say as to what goes on around here.
This great news, To anyone else that doesn’t agree, educate your self on the harful toxins. Never confuse wealth with money. Mother Earth is our wealth. Proud to be a “tree hugger”