FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment

Thursday, May 24, 2007
Contacts:
Anna M. Frazier (928) 309-8718 E-mail: frazierann1@hotmail.com
Sarah Jane White (505) 860-6166 E-mail: sjlapahie@hotmail.com
Lori Goodman (970) 259-0199 E-mail: kiyaani@frontier.net
BIA draft environmental study "a sham", Desert Rock opponents charge

Dilkon, AZ--The BIA's recommended approval of the proposed Desert Rock Energy Project is a step backward from even minimal environmental protection because the planned power plant will only worsen the air pollution problem in the already over polluted San Juan Basin air shed. Combined with deadly air contaminants from the nearby Four Corners and San Juan power plants, Desert Rock will literally create a triangle of death in the northern Navajo Nation where Navajo people have long suffered epidemic levels of asthma, black lung disease, and other respiratory diseases caused by the decades of chronic exposure to persistent and accumulative airborne pollutants emitted by the existing industrial death factories on and near the affected reservation.

The environmental impact statement process is also fatally flawed. The project proponents paid for the two-year study. So not surprisingly, the pre-biased or prejudiced environmental analysis (or draft EIS) supported the controversial project. Under the guise of impartial environmental review, the governmental and corporate agents of genocide produced a pre-decisional document designed to justify a bad project and one that is opposed by the very people who live in the shadow of its 580-acre "footprint." That document, written in the technical language of the alien invaders, is nothing less than a BIA-issued death certificate for those brave indigenous Diné who hold the sacred ground at Ram Springs.

The BIA is engaged in a campaign built on deceit and treachery. It completed its draft EIS making it accessible only on the Internet. How many of our people have internet access? How many of them even have electricity? Adding to its deliberate misinformation, the Bureau also announced that it will publish the draft’s "Notice of Availability" in the Federal Register in early June. How many of our people read the Federal Register? How many of them even read the legal notices section in the Navajo Times? The federal Indian agency then announced that it will hold public hearings on the "available" draft EIS beginning in mid-June. It took them over two years to produce the DEIS and it is atrocious that they expect the Navajo public to review and present oral comments on the voluminous technical document in less than a week or two.

"This BIA EIS is hogwash" said the founding Doodá Desert Rock Committee president, Sarah Jane White. "They already made their decision to approve the project and this DEIS is just going to justify their decision," the Sanostee native said. "But not if I can help it, our elders and our youth are ready to stand with us against the Sithe Lords and their puppet DPA."