Pioneertown residents now have clean tap water — for the first time in decades

Kenneth Gentry, of Yucca Valley, who also owns property in Pioneertown, smiles as he feels water moving through pipes at a well site in Yucca Valley on Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019. (Photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

By SANDRA EMERSON
San Bernardino Sun

Gay Smith started getting clean tap water to her home in Pioneertown nearly three months ago. Still, the retired teacher said she walks over to a jug of water from the county to fill a pot for boiling potatoes.

“You don’t realize the habits you get into until you don’t have to do those habits anymore,” Smith said.

For three years, residents of the unincorporated San Bernardino County desert town have used twice-a-month shipments of bottled water because local wells were no longer meeting state standards for drinking water. The water was too high in naturally occurring arsenic, uranium and fluoride, which can cause health problems over time.

The shipments were a temporary solution to decades of water quality problems. That changed in September, when work finished on a new pipeline that pulls clean water from a well 4 miles away in Yucca Valley. The new pipeline also boosted water supply, addressing a longtime water shortage in the town that was built in 1946 as an Old West film set.

“Even back in the film days, a lot of people bought (property) thinking they were going to go out there and retire,” David Miller, a Pioneertown resident and Friends of Pioneertown board member. “By the time these people retired there was no water.”

Pioneertown was founded by Hollywood investors, including Dick Curtis, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, in 1946. It became home to film and TV productions, such as “The Cisco Kid,” and “The Gene Autry Show” and is still used for music videos, print and commercial work.

No water, no growth

Like any old western town, it’s all about water, Miller said.

The town hasn’t had enough water to support large development or much home building, which has limited growth in the 1-square-mile town.

When Smith and her husband, John, bought the Desert Willow Ranch in 1969 there wasn’t water, Smith said. They connected to a water system controlled by Benton Lefton, an Ohio developer who bought Pioneertown with plans to turn it into a master-planned community called The California Golden Empire. There wasn’t enough water to support Lefton’s dream, so ultimately, the water system fell into residents’ hands.

In 1980, residents voted to give that responsibility to the county.

In November 1999, the county placed a moratorium on new construction because of the small water supply and quality concerns, said Steve Samaras, division manager with the county’s special district’s department, water and sanitation division.

Around that time, county officials began notifying residents that their water violated drinking water standards, particularly for arsenic. The state lowered the maximum amount of arsenic allowed in the water, which put some of Pioneertown’s wells out of commission, Samaras said.

The violation didn’t trigger an outright ban on drinking the water, but county officials still had to let residents know of the potential health risk. Elevated fluoride levels, however, made the water unsafe for children under 9 years old, so they were told not to drink it.

“It’s not something you’re going to drink today and you’re going to have a problem tomorrow,” Samaras said. “It’s over the course of your life time and the certain amount you consume, the risk is greater.”

Residents continued to drink from the troubled water system while county officials worked to tap into a new well. In September 2016, the county started delivering bottled water to residents so they didn’t have to use their taps.

Smith’s situation was eased by having a reverse osmosis filter, but she still worried about using tap water for cooking and feeding her dogs. Out of concern from her doctor that the water was causing skin issues, she emptied a jacuzzi on her property and sold it.

“I”m laying out there one night enjoying the stars in 104-degree water,” she said, “and I’m thinking to myself, ‘What the heck are you doing? Are you out of your mind?’”

Reverse osmosis wasn’t an option for the town’s system because it requires the loss of water to produce clean water. There just wasn’t water to spare.

County officials reached an agreement with the Hi-Desert Water District to connect to a well the district was no longer using in Yucca Valley.

“For them that well, as high output as it is, would have just been just a piece of what would have helped their town,” Miller said. “For us, it’s everything and then some.”

A system from ‘Star Wars’

In contrast to the town’s Old West style, its new water system is pretty high tech.

Miller called it “Star Wars.”

The $5.4 million project, funded mostly by state grant money, included rehabilitation of the well and construction of a new system with pumps, tanks, and more pipeline than existed inside the town.

A station halfway between the well and the town, was built mostly underground to avoid harming the hillside views. County water officials can control the system remotely and numerous safety features ensure it’s not tampered with.

At 180 gallons per minute, the new well pumps two and a half times more water than all the wells in Pioneertown, Samaras said.

The water now exceeds all standards and is only treated with a small amount of chlorine as a precaution, he said.

Crews with Sukut Construction worked through spring and summer to get the project done. They excavated rock to install the pipeline, causing some traffic delays, but nothing serious, Miller said.

“It all went so smoothly that people now have just all good things to say about this,” Miller said. “That was healing up 35 years of scarring. It was an amazing thing to watch.”

More water, more growth

The new pipeline will open up the town to some new construction, but not too much.

Today, there are 120 water meters in Pioneertown, serving a little more than 400 people.

While the county works to determine the maximum number of connections that can be safely served by the new system, nine property owners with meters were told they can build and another 42 may soon get permission to connect to the water source, Samaras said.

Still, residents want their Old West town to stay small.

“People have been fighting to keep it exactly the way it is now,” said Kenneth Gentry, who wrote a book about Pioneertown’s history.

ABOUT PIONEERTOWN

Founded: 1946

Founders: Hollywood investors, including Dick Curtis, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry

Location: About 4 miles northwest of Yucca Valley, in San Bernardino County

Notable filming: “The Cisco Kid,” “The Gene Autry Show,” “Annie Oakley,” “Seven Psychopaths,” “Ingrid Goes West,” Cyndi Lauper’s “Funnel of Love” music video

Attractions: Mane Street, where many original Old West buildings stand; film museum; Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, which serves barbecue and hosts concerts, including a surprise show from Sir Paul McCartney in 2016; Pioneertown Motel, built in 1946 as lodging for western film stars; nearby Joshua Tree National Park

New pipeline replaces contaminated wells in Pioneertown

Morongo Basin Conservation Association president and Pipes Canyon resident Steve Bardwell tastes the new drinking water from the Pioneertown Pipeline during Friday morning’s ceremony. (Jené Estrada. Hi-Desert Star)

By Jené Estrada
Hi-Desert Star

PIONEERTOWN — After over 30 years of community effort, Pioneertown now has clean, potable drinking water straight from the tap and on Friday morning, Sept. 13, people from across the Morongo Basin gathered outside of Pappy & Harriett’s to celebrate the achievement.

The Pioneertown Pipeline will pump water into this small community to replace the source water in Pioneertown, which has several quality issues.

Most of the county-run wells in Pioneertown were taken out of service due to high concentrations of uranium and arsenic. The new pipeline connects the existing Pioneertown water distribution system to a Hi-Desert Water District well through the installation of approximately 4 miles of transmission pipeline and two booster stations.

This project was funded through a State Proposition 84 grant that was approved by the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund on Nov. 14, 2018, for $5.4 million.

The new pipeline was completed on July 27 but the county asked residents not to drink the water until after the ribbon-cutting ceremony to allow the lines to run the clean water and purge all old contaminates.

Dawn Rowe, the 3rd District supervisor for San Bernardino County, opened up the ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday morning by thanking local agencies including the Hi-Desert Water District and the Mojave Water Agency for their contributions. She also gave a special thanks to the San Bernardino County Special Districts Department for pushing the project forward.

Jack Dugan, a longtime Pioneertown resident and the former Pioneertown representative on the Morongo Basin Municipal Advisory Council, spoke about the history of the project and thanked everyone for pushing through the roadblocks that halted the project’s progress; these included the incline into Pioneertown from Yucca Valley and the rocky terrain.

“Between 1947 and 1948, Dick Curtis was talking to San Bernardino County about piping water into Pioneertown,” Dugan said. “Well, it’s here. It took a while, but it’s here.”

Dugan went on to thank the county for securing grant money to pay for the pipeline, which was installed in Pioneertown at no cost to the local residents.

Division Manager Steve Samaras with the Special Districts Water and Sanitation Department said he was excited to see the project reach its completion. Up on the podium, he took a drink of water from the pipeline brought in for the ceremony.

“This water exceeds all federal and state quality regulation,” he said. “This is a new chapter in the history of Pioneertown.”

After he spoke, Rowe and longtime resident David Miller then turned the key, opening the Pioneertown Pipeline.

Court upholds Obama-era ban on uranium mining near Grand Canyon

The Kanab North uranium mine near the Grand Canyon above Kanab Creek. (Mark Henle/The Republic)

Joshua Bowling
WKYC.com

PHOENIX — The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a 20-year ban on new uranium mining on public land near the Grand Canyon, while also striking down a challenge to an existing uranium mine south of Grand Canyon National Park.

In its opinion, the court ruled that the ban, imposed in 2012 under former president Obama, lines up with the Constitution and federal environmental laws. However, it ruled that a mine 6 miles south of the national park had a right to operate.

"We upheld the decision of the secretary of the Interior to withdraw, for 20 years, more than 1 million acres of public lands around Grand Canyon National Park from new mining claims," the opinion states. "That withdrawal did not extinguish 'valid existing rights.' "

The ban was put in place by the U.S. Department of the Interior under former secretary Ken Salazar. It came as mining operations were renewing their interest in uranium deposits near the canyon.

A spokeswoman for the Department of the Interior declined to comment Tuesday and said the Department of Justice handles questions on litigation.

A DOJ spokesman declined to comment and did not respond to further questions.

The suit — led by the Havasupai Tribe, Grand Canyon Trust, Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club — sought continued protections under the standing mining ban.

"The Havasupai people have been here since time immemorial. This place is who we are,” Havasupai Tribal Chairman Don Watahomigie said in a statement. "This place, these waters and our people deserve protection. The lives of our children and the purity of our waters are not to be gambled with and are not for sale."

In addition to the canyon's symbolic value, supporters of the suit argued it has significant economic value.

Grand Canyon National Park in 2016 contributed about $904 million to local economies and supported nearly 9,800 jobs, according to the National Park Service.

"The Department of the Interior’s decision to protect one of the world’s most enduring landscapes and the sustained health of indigenous communities that live within the watershed of the Grand Canyon was a strong and appropriate one,” said Kevin Dahl, Arizona senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.

About 1 million acres adjacent to the Grand Canyon are protected under the ban, though the continued exception for existing mines came as a disappointment to the plaintiffs in the suit.

"We are disappointed that the court did not uphold the challenge to Canyon Mine, however, and we will continue to do all we can to ensure permanent protection of these lands," Sierra Club Grand Canyon chapter director Sandy Bahr said in a statement Tuesday.

The appeals court's decision comes on the heels of President Trump's decision to drastically shrink two national monuments in Utah — a decision a Navajo Nation attorney called a "slap in the face."

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, has drawn conservationists' ire for his review of national monuments, in particular those established under former presidents Obama and Bill Clinton.

He initially ordered a review of the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, north of the Canyon, an area that sits atop uranium deposits. Ultimately, he left the monument unchanged.

In a statement Tuesday, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., criticized Zinke for "ongoing actions to hand over public lands to extractive industries instead of ensuring taxpayers get a fair deal."

A history of litigation

The suit is far from the first for the uranium mining ban.

In 2012, the year it was put in place, The Arizona Republic reported that the National Mining Association and the Nuclear Energy Institute challenged the ban's constitutional merits.

Hal Quinn, president and CEO of the mining group, said at the time that the Interior Department "offered no evidence ... that a million-acre land grab is necessary to avoid environmental harm."

Taylor McKinnon, of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement Tuesday that opening exposing the land to uranium mining could do harm to its aquifers.

“Any effort to lift this crucial ban will meet fierce opposition,” his statement read. “There’s every reason to believe uranium mining could permanently damage Grand Canyon’s precious aquifers and springs. That’s an unacceptable risk, and it’s immoral of Congress and Trump to even consider it.”

What's next?

Although the mining ban has worked its way through the legal system, some believe this could be the end of the line.

Roger Clark, Grand Canyon program director for the Grand Canyon Trust, said he doesn't believe the case will end up before the Supreme Court.

"In both cases, the appellate court upheld the district court and there was no discrepancy in their rulings and there’s very little, I’m told by our attorneys, angle for appeal in either case," he said. "I’m not an attorney, so I’ll put that caveat in there."

Federal Court: One Million Acres Near Grand Canyon Protected From Mining

The Grand Canyon (Shutterstock)

by Ari Phillips
Climate Progress

In early October, an Arizona federal judge upheld the Obama Administration’s 2012 withdrawal of over one million acres of federal lands surrounding Grand Canyon National Park from uranium mining. Originally imposed by then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, the mining industry challenged the ban arguing that the 700-page Environmental Impact Statement was inadequate, failed to address “scientific controversies”, and was unconstitutional.

With the court’s decision to uphold the Department of Interior’s (DIO) decision, the lands around the Grand Canyon will be closed to the exploration and development of uranium mining claims for 20 years, thus protecting the Colorado River watershed and several sacred Native American sites. According to the government’s study, removing the ban would mean that 26 new uranium mines and 700 uranium exploration projects could be developed.

According Roger Clark, air quality and clean energy director at the Grand Canyon Trust, the ruling affirms conclusions by five federal agencies, including scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey — that uranium mining poses unacceptable risks to Grand Canyon’s water, wildlife, and people.

“Uranium mines threaten hundreds of the Grand Canyon seeps and springs that provide precious water to thousands of desert-dwelling species,” wrote Clark. “Every new mine sacrifices cultural sites and fragments wildlife habitat, polluting the park with dirt roads, dust, heavy machinery, noise, off-road drilling rigs, power lines, and relentless truck traffic.”

Due to the sheer size and remoteness of the landscape, the EIS authors adopted a “cautious and careful approach” to assessing the potential impacts of uranium mining. They ultimately found that “the risk of groundwater contamination from uranium mining was low, but that the possible consequences of such contamination were severe.”

Arizona federal district court judge David G. Campbell found this approach warranted, writing that “the Court can find no legal principle that prevents the DIO from acting in the face of uncertainty,” and that the Secretary of the Interior had the authority to “err on the side of caution in protecting a national treasure — Grand Canyon national park.”

When President Theodore Roosevelt created the Grand Canyon Preserve in 1906 he didn’t allow mining on much of the land, but mines were opened on land surrounding the canyon. Often on Native American lands, including the Havasupai and Navajo, these mines have become dangerous radioactive sites. There are over 500 abandoned uranium mines on Navajo territory and the federal government is still working with the Navajo to determine the best way to address the issue. According to the EPA, potential health effects include lung cancer from inhalation of radioactive particles, as well as bone cancer and impaired kidney function from exposure to radionuclides in drinking water.

“In sum, this decision supports a precautionary approach to mineral withdrawals,” wrote Hillary M. Hoffmann, an environmental law professor at Vermont Law School. “It affirms the agency’s choice, ‘when faced with uncertainty due to a lack of definitive information, and a low risk of significant environmental harm,’ to temporarily withdraw land from mineral entry before conducting a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review.”

Hoffman writes that while this may run counter to general policy underlying NEPA, in this instance the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) actions prevented the development of thousands of uranium claims until the agency could fully study the impacts of those claims and determine whether to make a full withdrawal.

“As the district court noted, if the BLM waited to act until after the NEPA review process was complete, the claims may have become vested and at that point, it would have been too late to protect the Colorado River watershed and the Havasupai sacred sites,” she writes.

When Salazar first banned this block of 633,547 acres of public lands and 360,002 acres of National Forest land from mining in 2012, a number of politicians objected, including U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), John McCain (R-AZ), John Barrasso (R-WY), and Mike Lee (R-UT). Sen. Hatch said mining the land “poses no environmental threat” and that the announcement was another sign that the Obama Administration “is one of the most anti-American energy presidencies in history.”

Fast-forward two years later and there are currently 13 candidates up for election in November who want to sell or seize public lands for drilling, mining, or logging and seven senators not up for reelection, including four Arizonans: Sen. McCain, Sen. Jeff Flake, U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, and State Rep. Andy Tobin.

The uranium mining companies have 60 days to appeal Judge Campbell’s decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and are likely to do so, according to the Center For Biological Diversity.

Groups file lawsuit to stop mining near Grand Canyon

Suzanne Adams
Kingman Daily Miner


KINGMAN - New mining jobs in the Arizona Strip area may be put on hold. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Grand Canyon Trust and the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit Nov. 16 challenging a Bureau of Land Management permit for the Arizona 1 Mine.

"I'm very disappointed," said Mohave County Supervisor Gary Watson when he heard of the lawsuit. "It's absolutely absurd to me to lock up one of the richest deposits of uranium in the continental United States."

"As far as we're concerned we have all the necessary permits," said Denison Mines Corp. President and CEO Ron Hochstein, which owns the uranium mine. The company is not named in the lawsuit.

The mine is located 45 miles south of Fredonia and north of the Grand Canyon National Park. It is one of three mines owned by Denison within the boundary of a 1 million-acre area south and north of the Grand Canyon that the federal government is considering withdrawing from all mining for the next 20 years.

The company is still working on air quality permits for the other mining claims it has in the area. At this time, the federal government is not allowing any new mining claims in the area.

In their lawsuit, the conservation groups are claiming that the BLM failed to update a 1988 environmental assessment before issuing a permit to Denison in September.

"The mine has been down for more than a decade," said Roger Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust. It would be prudent to re-evaluate the area, he said. New information has been collected about the area's groundwater and endangered species, and changes to BLM management policies have happened since the mine was closed in 1992, he said.

The conservation groups are also claiming that the BLM did not examine the validity of mine's claim and did not request a new plan of operation for the mine.

The conservation groups state in a news release that the mine's old operation plan expired when it was closed, and the company never established that there was a viable uranium deposit in the area, which is required in order to file a mining claim.

All claims pertaining to the mine have been kept in good standing since the mine was staked in the 1980s, Hochstein said.

The conservation groups have not requested a halt to any mining activity in the area, but they may in the future, Clark said.

Watson said he agrees that mining should not be allowed in the Grand Canyon National Park, but the Arizona 1 Mine is outside of park limits and Denison has met all of the permit qualifications.

According to company's Web site, the mine would employ 32 people and cost $2.3 million to get started. It would mine begin mining in the first quarter of 2010. The company plans to get about 857,000 pounds of uranium ore over the next three years and is expecting to sell it for between $53 and $65 per pound.

Trying to rebuild after 40 frozen years

A 1966 ban on development in a disputed tribal area left many Navajo living in third-world conditions -- or forced them out entirely. When the freeze ended, many residents didn't know where to begin.

Dispute over the 1.6 million acre tract of tribal land in northern Arizona became known as the "Bennett freeze." (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)

By Kate Linthicum
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Cameron, Ariz. - This is the land where Larry Gordy was destined to live, until it was made unlivable.

The Navajo believe that a person will always be tied to the place where his or her umbilical cord is buried. When Gordy was born in 1968, his father put his in this rust-colored dirt. It was here on the family's ranch on the edge of the Painted Desert that his father dreamed of one day building homes for his children, and of tilling a field where watermelon and corn could grow.

But the Gordys were forced to put their dreams on hold. In 1966, the commissioner of Indian Affairs, Robert Bennett, halted development on 1.6 million acres of tribal land in northeastern Arizona that was claimed by both the Navajo nation and the Hopi tribe. Bennett imposed the ban to stop either tribe from taking advantage of the other while they negotiated ownership.

The ban became known as the Bennett Freeze. It meant the Gordys and the 8,000 or so other Navajos living on the land couldn't erect homes, open businesses or even repair their roofs. No roads or schools were built, no electric, gas or water lines were permitted.

The land dispute dragged on for 40 years, paralyzing residents in a state of poverty rarely seen in America. Because few Hopis lived on the disputed territory, the ban affected mostly Navajos like the Gordys, who deserted their ranch after it fell into disrepair.

The tribes settled their differences in 2006 -- most of the land went to the Navajo -- and in May, President Obama cleared the way for federal funding to help rehabilitate the area, but no money has been earmarked yet.

Navajo officials hope some money may come their way. But as politicians grapple with how to spend any funds, the people face a question of their own: Is it possible to make up for 40 years of nothing?

Gordy is now 41, with a wife and four children. They live in a drafty trailer in the town of Cameron, a 30-minute drive from the old ranch. Cameron was also under the Freeze, but in town, at least, the family could string an extension cord from a neighbor's house to get electricity, and draw water from a working well a few miles down the highway. Though it is now free to do so, the family has not made improvements to the trailer. The cash Gordy makes selling firewood, and the money his wife earns selling jewelry to tourists at the Grand Canyon, an hour away, isn't enough.

As often as he can, Gordy brings his children to the ranch, which is scattered with rotting buildings, dirt-caked appliances and rusty car parts, to teach them about their heritage and about the land they were forced to leave.

But he isn't sure where to begin.

"If it wasn't for the Bennett Freeze, we would have a place to live," said Gordy, a large man with a patchy black beard and an amiable manner. "But now we just have a junk pile out here. Now that the freeze is lifted, we're expected to come out here and build something out of all this junk. Well, with what? It'd be like if a rancher penned up a bunch of sheep for 40 years and then all of a sudden one day he opened the fence and let them loose. They wouldn't know what to do. And neither do we."

The Navajo nation, whose territory sprawls 27,000 square miles across three states, is America's largest tribe, and one of its poorest and most isolated. The tribe only recently opened its first casino, and unemployment hovers about 50%. Many people still live without electricity and plumbing. But even by Navajo standards, the conditions in the former Bennett Freeze region are astonishing.

A study commissioned by the Navajo found that only 24% of the houses in the area are habitable. Most homes lack plumbing, and while a third of the residents haul in potable water, others resort to drinking from the same wells as their livestock -- water that in some cases is contaminated with bacteria or uranium.

Nearly 60% of houses lack electricity, even as steel power lines strung across the land buzz with the energy they carry from the Navajo Generating Station in Page, Ariz., south to Phoenix and west to Los Angeles.

But on a recent afternoon, on a high, dust-blown plain known as Black Falls, the sounds of promise rang out from a rooftop. Two men, sweating in the sun, had spent all day on top of Mary and John Knight's 47-year-old cinder-block home, hammering down a tarp to protect the roof from the elements. It was a simple act that had been illegal for nearly half a century.

When the freeze was lifted, a local community organizing group informed the Knights that they were now eligible for money from federal programs. They secured roofing materials from a weatherization program and called over some friends to help install it. As a gesture of thanks to the workers, they planned to slaughter a sheep to make mutton stew.

The Knights had tried to fix the roof twice before. Rangers from the Hopi tribe came by each time and told them to stop.

The tribes have been rivals since the 1500s, when the nomadic Navajo arrived on the Hopi-occupied Colorado Plateau, a stretch of high-altitude desert where Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico now meet. The conflict over land rights began in 1934, when Congress set aside a large tract in Arizona for "the Navajo and such other Indians as may already be located thereon." The land was populated mostly by Navajos, but the Hopis laid claim to the area because a Hopi village, Moenkopi, was located in its midst.

In 1966, while the tribes negotiated ownership, Bennett imposed the development ban. Moenkopi and the Navajo town of Tuba City were exempt. But residents of Bennett Freeze lands lived under continuous monitoring.

"Our parents felt like they had to hide and sneak around," Gordy said. "If you tried to do an addition, the Hopi would pay you a visit and say, 'Hey, there's no agreement yet.' "

Some people found ways to evade the freeze by building horse corals slowly, post by post, to avoid attracting attention from Hopi rangers who circled overhead in helicopters. Others camouflaged improvements by remodeling only the inside of their homes. Gordy's family stored the hay for their horses in a junked bus and built their corral on the side of a sandstone rock, where it was somewhat hidden. But they couldn't hook up to water or electricity. Eventually the hardship drove them out.

Many, including Katherine Peshlakai and her daughter, Eleanor, stayed.

The Peshlakais live about an hour's drive from Gordy's ranch in a neatly kept house atop a wind-swept hill beneath the vast Arizona sky. From their home they can see hundreds of miles in all directions, from the burnt-orange mesas in the east to the San Francisco Peaks -- one of the Navajo's four sacred mountain ranges -- in the west.

Both tie their silver hair back in buns and walk with the help of canes.

"Our children and our grandchildren is why we stay," said Katherine Peshlakai, who is in her 80s.

Since the freeze was lifted, the Peshlakais' home has been outfitted with a solar panel and a small wind-power generator, which they rent for $25 a month from their tribal chapter.

They say they are also in line to receive a water sanitation system that would include bathroom fixtures from the Indian Health Service. But they complain that the aid extended so far from the Navajo nation and the federal government has only come from the top down. "They don't want to hear our suggestions," Peshlakai said. "They don't want to work with us."

Many people who lived through the Bennett Freeze say they have little faith in the federal government and complain that the tribal government should have done more to get the freeze lifted.

"What really makes me sad is when the tribe gives up on its own people," said Vera Redell Bennett, 52, who was told that she could not move onto a plot of land near her mother's home on the outskirts of Tuba City because it was on the freeze.

Paralyzed from the waist down since age 18, when she was shot by her ex-boyfriend, Bennett has lived inside her van for the last six years. She parks it in an empty lot in Tuba City.

It's cold in the winter, she said, and she often doesn't have enough gas to keep the heater running. But at least she has a bed, piles of blankets and her little dog, Missy. Every day a caretaker provided by the state brings her food and empties the jugs that she relieves herself in.

Bennett has resigned herself to her disability, but not her third-world living conditions.

"People who don't live on the reservation don't live like this," she said. "I shouldn't be living like this."

The development freeze was hardest on the sick, said Nina Tohannie, 50, who works for the Indian Health Service. She said substandard living conditions had led to a number of health problems, including an epidemic of upper respiratory problems linked to badly ventilated stoves. And life without electricity meant that sick people were unable to refrigerate their medicines. That was one of the reasons Gordy's father, who, like many Navajo, suffered from diabetes, left his ranch. He died in 1995 from complications of the disease.

Roman Bitsuie, a Navajo official who is working with Arizona Sen. John McCain's office to craft legislation to infuse money into the Bennett Freeze area, said it might be impossible to repay people for damage done to their physical and psychological health.

"How do you compensate for someone's spiritual scars?" he asked. "I don't think there's a price on that."

Bitsuie said he did not know how much money might be included in the bill, which could be introduced later this year, or how it would be distributed.

Don Yellowman, the president of Forgotten People, a Navajo community organizing group that is one of the only groups doing work in the former Bennett Freeze region, said that redevelopment money should not go through the Navajo government but through federal agencies such as the Department of Transportation or the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The people don't trust the tribal government to handle rehabilitation, he said, because of a history of corruption -- the Navajo president was recently put on leave while he and other top officials are investigated for fraud -- and because they feel let down.

"There was no real public education about what people were enduring," he said.

Some people, like Denise Almeida, who lives not far from central Tuba City, don't even know whether they were living under the freeze.

All Almeida knows is that she was unable to get aid when her trailer burned down last year. She and six of her children now live in a sagging travel trailer without water or electricity.

People carry on; if there was one thing Larry Gordy learned while living through the Bennett Freeze, it was that.

Even though he no longer lives on the ranch, he still keeps a few horses there. When his children were born, he buried their umbilical cords in the corral.

Now that the freeze is lifted, Gordy hopes to rebuild and move his family back onto the land.

Next March, he said, he will start by tilling a field. The kids want to grow pumpkins. And he'd like to try his hand at watermelon and corn.

Ariz. governor opposes halt on new mining claims

Associated Press



PHOENIX — Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer objects to a ban on filing new mining claims on nearly 1 million acres of federal land in northern Arizona for two years while a permanent prohibition is under study.

Most of the Bureau of Land Management and National Forest land covered by a July order is in the Arizona Strip located north of Grand Canyon National Park. The rest is located south of the canyon.

There's been a flurry of new mining claims, including for uranium.

Brewer sent Salazar a letter Friday saying adequate environmental protections are in place and that modern-day mining exploration creates "minimal impact to the land."

She also says economic impacts, energy independence and national security considerations support continued exploration.