‘I cry out here’

Udall visits farms affected by spill

SHIPROCK

Fifty-seven years ago, Earl Yazzie first turned earth on his family’s Shiprock farm.

Then a toddler, Yazzie remembers working with his father and grandfather in the fertile fields. Yazzie hefted rocks as his father used a horse-drawn plow.

“I picked up rocks on this land when I was 3,” he said Friday during an informal meeting on his farm with Navajo President Russell Begaye, Vice President Jonathan Nez and U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M.

“I’m 60 now and I’m still picking up rocks,” Yazzie said. “That’s how I grew up and that’s why I love this farm.”

Yazzie and his wife, Cheryle, have become the faces of the Gold King Mine spill, one of the worst environmental disasters in recent history. The August 2015 spill at an abandoned mine in Colorado sent 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater downstream, turning the San Juan River mustard yellow and forcing farmers like the Yazzies to stop using the water.

The spill also prompted the Navajo Nation and the state of New Mexico to file lawsuits against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which admitted responsibility for the spill but has yet to compensate farmers or provide water-monitoring equipment.

One month after the spill, environmental activist Erin Brockovich visited the Navajo Nation and stopped at the Yazzie’s farm.

In a conversation with the Yazzies, Brockovich warned that the real casualties of environmental spills come years afterward. She also urged Navajo residents to doubt the EPA — especially when the federal agency declares the water clean. Her visit made international news.

Yet 13 months after the spill, the Yazzies still have yet to receive compensation and they do not trust the river to water their crops.

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