Why Navajos Oppose Desert Rock Power Plant and Everyone Should FightMercury Pollution

Sage Paisner by the Hogan, originally uploaded by artist_charleentouchette.

Elouise Brown and family in Four Corners block power plant from entering ancestral lands. Watch Dine Shima, grandmother, explain in Navajo how her family has used and cared for this land for generations.

See the power plants already operating in the Four Corners area spew poison including mercury, a known neuro-toxin linked to the autism epidemic into the once pristine skies above the northeast corner of the Navajo homeland that intersects four states, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

The Four Corners area was just named the biggest polluter in the nation. http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2007/2007-07-26-05.asp

"By total tons of nitrogen oxides emitted, the worst offender is New Mexico's Four Corners power plant, owned by Arizona Public Service."

20070726_fourcorners.jpg
Four Corners power plant (Photo courtesy SRP)

Absent aggressive national climate policy and the retirement of existing facilities, these new coal plants will contribute to a projected 34 percent increase in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions over the 2005-2030 period," according to the report.


Four Corners power plant (Photo courtesy SRP)
Already coping with the highest emissions of nitrogen oxides, Navajo communities in the Four Corners area have been at a standoff with Sithe Global Power and the Dine Power Authority over the construction of Desert Rock, a 1,500 megawatt coal fired power plant that would cost 2.2 billion dollars to build and sit on 580 acres about 30 miles southwest of Farmington.

At a time when tribes, cities, states and nations are working to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the Desert Rock plant would increase them.

"It is blatant environmental racism and injustice when you place a third power plant in an impoverished community with little or no access to healthcare," said Lori Goodman of Dine CARE. "For our elders and future generations, we vow to fight this intrusion upon our people's health and way of life."

In the video MAKING A STAND AT DESERT ROCK, Elouise Brown says she doesn't have electricity and has to haul water at her place near where the Desert Rock power plant threatens to be built.

Many Dine, Apache, Pueblo, Ute and other Indians and rural New Mexicans don't have electricity and have to haul water.

I'd like to see a Green Indigenous Initiative where people like the developer of the Stirling Engine that supplies energy pollution free and purifies water invest in providing this invaluable technological innovation to the people of the Four Corners area. The people could maintain their ancient self-sufficient lifestyle with the help of this and other green technologies. There is lots of need in Africa and abroad, but there are also crucial needs here in rural and Indian America.

Call to action to support Elouise and her relatives against the Desert Rock Power Plant.

www.desert-rock-blog.com

Conserve electricity. ONE EARTH. Every time we turn on a light, think about how it contributes to poisoning the air for people in the Four Corners and stealing their children's brains with mercury poisoning. This is an issue of economic justice.
Lobby your congress people for immediate conversion to green technology for energy production and immediate legislation to enforce scrubbers to diminish poisonous emissions at coal fired electricity plants.

Write these New Mexico Senators and tell them we're appalled that the Four Corners has more air pollution than most major metropolitan areas.
Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico Senator

Work: (202) 224-5521
Home: (505) 766-3636
Fax: (202) 224-2852
e-mail: senator_bingman@bingaman.senate.gov

Address: United States Senate
703 Hart Building
Washington, DC 20510

________________________________________________________________________


Pete Domenici, New Mexico Senator

Work: (202) 224-6621
Fax: (202) 228-0900
Email: senator_domenici@domenici.senate.gov
Address: United States Senate
328 Hart SOB
Washington, DC 20510


Then go to - http://www.desert-rock-blog.com/blog/WhatYoucandotoHelp
for a complete list of who to send your letter to oppose the Desert Rock Power Plant and help the Dine and everybody else who lives in the Four Corners area.

Clean air and water are human rights.

Visit www.nmglobalwarming.org and learn about major strides in mass production, economic incentives, and pending legislation to get Green Energy workable and stop global warming courtesy of Bill Brown who was one of the first 1,000 scientists and leaders trained by Al Gore on the Climate Crisis.

www.honortheearth.org has links to people, projects, initiatives, and art dedicated to honoring and healing our earth.

Citizens in San Juan County are educating themselves and others and getting active around air pollution and other global warming iissues in the Four Corners area - http://www.sanjuancitizens.org/air/desertrock.shtml

Mercury emissions from the proposed Desert Rock facility. Projections are that Desert Rock would contribute more mercury (117-161 pounds per year, at a minimum - coal core sample analyses gave not been completed!) to the atmosphere with mercury controls only “if necessary.” Data from the EPA’s Persistent Bioaccumulative and Toxic (PBT) Chemical Program website provides year 2000 total mercury emissions from the Four Corners Power Plant (1,174 pounds) and San Juan Generating Station (1,194 pounds).

This emitted mercury is showing up as mercury deposition in virtually all of the major water bodies in the Four Corners region. These regional waters include the San Juan, Animas, La Plata rivers; Navajo and Vallecito lakes; Narraguinnep and McPhee reservoirs, and numerous water bodies found on the Navajo Nation where fish consumption advisories due to mercury contamination have been issued.

The Draft EIS for Desert Rock claims that the existing power plants are not the source for mercury showing up in our region’s waterways as methylmercury.

Given the news that New Mexico Attorney General Gary King has joined more than a dozen states challenging the EPA's rules governing mercury emissions from power plants and the quote attributed to him, “Simply put, this brief alleges that the EPA's rules weaken the Clean Air Act. Especially in New Mexico, which has the highest atmospheric concentration of airborne mercury in the nation, we feel the EPA's rules are unacceptable,” SJCA believes that stringent mercury reduction measures are more important than ever. Cap and trade of mercury emissions, as proposed in the Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR) would be a disaster for the Four Corners region. On February 8, 2008, a Federal Court of Appeals vacated the Mercury Rule.



Cumulative Air Quality Impacts in the Four Corners region The proposed siting of the Desert Rock facility, as currently designed, would be detrimental to citizens of the Four Corners region through increased emission levels of CO2, mercury and pollutant contributions that result in the formation of ozone. There are literally thousands of sources (coal plants, refineries, natural gas compressors, natural gas compressors) that are contributing to the formation of ozone in the Four Corners.

San Juan County, the Cities of Aztec, Bloomfield, and Farmington, the NMED, and the EPA signed the San Juan County Early Action Compact (EAC) on December 20, 2002. The EAC entails milestones through 2007 that are designed to keep San Juan County in attainment of the federal standard for ground-level ozone. If San Juan County cannot remain in attainment for ozone, there would certainly be significant economic and environmental repercussions. The proposed Desert Rock facility represents serious implications that apply to climate change, mercury policies and ozone attainment for the State of New Mexico. Note that the EPA is tightening the rules for ground-level ozone to 75 ppb. EPA proposes to set the primary (health) standard to a level within the range of 0.070-0.075 ppm (70 -75 ppb)

It is essential that state of New Mexico, state of Colorado, and Federal legislators be involved in siting and design decisions for the Desert Rock facility, to understand potential alternatives (including renewables, demand-side management, energy efficiency) that preclude the need to build more coal-fired power plants in our state. "






Winona LaDuke in Shiprock on Global Warming, part I



Winona LaDuke in Shiprock on Global Warming, part 2

"We do not need another 2 billion dollar coal fired power plant." and "Stop corporate welfare. Don't give tax breaks to corporations to pollute our air, take our water and destroy our future." May 2007.

How mercury kills the brain.



Jenny McCarthy talks about the link between mercury exposure and autism.



Scientist explains connection between Mercury and Autism and Neurological Diseases



There has been a criminal disregard for public safety in the widespread exposure of the population to mercury from thimerasol in vaccines and emissions from coal-fired electric plants.

ENS-newswire.com reports that "Attorneys General from nine states have filed a lawsuit challenging a new federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that they allege fails to protect the public from harmful mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, which they say pose a grave threat to the health of children."

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2005/2005-03-31-03.asp

Hear Oren Lyons, Onondaga Faithkeeper and Chief speak about the mandates for life. "We are now placing in your hands all life. And it is your responsibility and your duty to care for all life."




The Earth is our Mother. We need to treat her and all mothers better.

This video shows a solution to recycling glass and plastic bottles to make warm earth friendly homes for mothers and families in Bolivia.



Charleen Touchette at TouchArt.net and Mixed Blood Radio Archives has a dream for every community to start collection centers for bottles, cans and tires and build homes for families below the poverty line in our urban cities, rural towns, and Indian reservations. You can also build homes with used tires. Check out Earthships in Taos, New Mexico too.



To power these homes for America's 38 million poor, let's call on genuis Dean Kamen, inventer of the Sedgeway, who has brought the 18th century Stirling Engine up with 21st century innovation to create an engine that can create electricity and purify water for our communities that still don't have potable water. Kamen is working to get these generators to those who need them in Africa. Ask him to get them to our rural, Spanish Land Grant, Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo Indians in the Four Corners.

http://www.geekologie.com/2008/04/segway_inventor_makes_water_re.php


In "Indian Trust" (PD 2010), young indigenous fictional characters face the consequences of mercury poisoning.

"In Leech Lake, Wayne has moved in with an elder couple who teach him Anishinaabe herbal medicine. He learns his sister's autism could be tied to something in the water in the lakes and rivers surrounding his people's ancestral homeland. Mercury dumped into the air and water by coal fired electric plants kills parts of the brains of developing babies and children. Each time Wayne bicycles to his janitor job at the high school, he logs onto the internet in the computer lab before beginning to mop the hallways. Each time the stats on autism are worse. First 1 in 100, then 1 in 150, 1 in 160 and now they claim 1 in 166 children have a form or autism. "If that isn't an epidemic, what do they think an epidemic is?" Wayne mumbles as he surfs the web for treatments and cures to help his sister Sage who was just about to have a birthday.
Wayne knows the state of Minnesota is covering up the extent of the autism epidemic and the dangers of mercury and other toxins in the air and water. The state stopped testing all the mutated frogs brought in by school children after pressure by multinational corporations based outside Minneapolis in sprawling suburbs like Edina and Lake Minnetonka.
Today, Wayne Petit internet search is urgent. He overheard his parents tell their pastor that they plan to take Sage for a born again
exorcism in the church basement after they bring her to town for a birthday ice cream cake at the DQ. Wayne decides to kidnap his little sister then and there..."

Story. Wayne Petit takes his autistic sister Sage on a journey to a newly uncovered Maya temple in the Yucatan to seek a medicine woman who does a ceremony to heal brains destroyed by neurotoxins like mercury. The siblings travel via Taos, Tuba City, Santa Fe, and Phoenix, and on the way, Petit hooks up with chemists who reveal the annabolistic and synergetic results of combining mercury with selenium, and he stumbles upon a multinational conspiracy to introduce these powerful neurotoxins into food and medicine worldwide to takeover the world economy. Wayne and his sister Sage journey deep into the jungle in the Yucatan and meet up with a Mayan medicine woman who gives them the neurotoxin in ceremony with the companion herb that anabolizes the negative effects of autism spectrum disorder, reactivates the dead parts of Sage's brain and opens up his sister's inner world." from "Indian Trust" a novel by Charleen Touchette and S. Barry Paisner

It won't happen that easily in the non-fiction world of real life. But it is possible to say no to mercury and other neuro-toxins that pollute our air, water and earth and destroy children's and adult's brains.

Do one thing each day to reduce your consumption of coal-powered electricity.
ONE EARTH - Think About It/Act Like It.

Another Earth Day message from your friends at TouchArt.net and OneEarthBlog.