Roy Etcitty, who grew up on the San Juan River, is one of the many farmers that has been affected by the contamination of the San Juan River, causing the water to the Navajo Nation to shut off to farmers and residents who depend on that as their main water source. (Brent Lewis, The Denver Post)
Re: “Animas River spill: Navajo Nation angry at EPA,” Aug. 17 news story.
How ironic and tragic that the Dineh, whom we call Navajo, inhabited their semi-arid homelands for hundreds of generations, learning to live within the constraints of the region. The Dineh culture centers around a reverence for sacred water and mountains, and their relatives — the four-footed, the winged, the crawling, the sage and cactus. When Europeans arrived, the waters were unpolluted, the skies clear, the landscape unsullied by coal-burning power plants and the poisonous remnants of uranium mines.
We settlers have embraced the concept of “externalities,” pushing a large share of the costs of extractive activities, from gold and uranium to fossil fuel extraction and refining, onto the public, enabling corporations to profit hugely, then cut and run, leaving behind poisonous tailings ponds and dying oceans and atmospheres that have been treated as no-pay dumpsters for their emissions.
And now the innocent Dineh, because of corporations’ refusal to shoulder the costs of polluting, are paying.
Claire Hanley, Littleton
This letter was published in the Aug. 20 edition.
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