Letters | Unanswered danger

Unanswered danger

Editor,

Kayenta has a problem, but our officials choose to ignore it and allow it to plague the community that we were only visiting.

So this Fourth of July weekend, is anyone really safe? Because I have not seen any safety concern procedures addressed since my grandson was killed.

Carmelita Apodaca
Mystery Valley, Ariz.

---

 

Toxic blame

Editor,

This is to the Public Service Company of New Mexico and New Mexico Environment Department:

I want to know who or what is giving you the authority to dump polluted water down the Shumway Arroyo because you are dumping this polluted water into international water. This is a federal offense.

Also, I want to see where you have the right to turn my family’s property into a waste dump, where you can dump your slurry into the pipeline that should be removed. And you need to reclaim my family’s property to what it was before the pipeline went in. I want to see where you get the authority to do what you have been doing.

And how do you justify your cause? After this unjustified authority is finished you will be running from your responsibilities and abandoning those of us left behind. This must be the political brotherhood. They have been dumping their toxic waste for 50-plus years down the Shumway Arroyo into the San Juan River.

When the New Mexico Environmental Department held the public comment meeting about the PNM Abatement Plan at the Lower Valley Senior Center in Fruitland, New Mexico, there was a Diné woman who said her family members died from cancer farming along the San Juan River, including family who farmed in Shiprock. They were supplied irrigation water from the San Juan River downstream of PNM San Juan Generating Station.

The amount of farmers who have died from cancer or even being diagnosed with cancer is extremely high when they get their irrigation water from the San Juan River downstream from PNM. We have lost family members, and we are only on the Shumway Arroyo.

All of these problems could be from the chemicals that they use or their toxic waste that were used to protect the San Juan Generating Station or their pipeline. There was never any warning for the casual and blatant disregard for their communities or the environment’s health. Now with their Abatement Plan, PNM is trying to escape responsibility.

You should pump the water if it is so healthy for the environment from the freshwater reservoir (aka Frank Chee Willetto Reservoir) through the pipeline that it came through back into the San Juan River.

Are you afraid that you will have to replace the pipeline? Or did the Bureau of Reclamation tell you that you cannot pump that clean water back into the San Juan River? Is something wrong with the water quality?

Another aspect is that PNM has already polluted the Shumway Arroyo, now the Bureau of Reclamation wants to push for the freshwater reservoir through the Shumway Arroyo contaminating it again. This is so that they can say that they never contaminated it and it was from the previous actions of PNM.

Playing the blame game.

R.G. Hunt III
Waterflow, N.M.

Get instant access to this story by purchasing one of our many e-edition subscriptions HERE at our Navajo Times Store.

---