SAVING POLLINATORS FROM AN IMAGINARY BEE-POCALYPSE

 Saving pollinators from an imaginary bee-pocalypse

 
Honeybees are doing OK, despite varroa mites, the Covid-driven economy and other problems
 
Paul Driessen
 
A torrent of media stories from 2013-2014 presented frightening tales of “unprecedented” colony collapse disorder (CCD) among honeybees, conjuring up visions of a “bee-pocalypse” and “a world without bees,” a world in which flowers and agriculture would be decimated.
 
Many articles blamed neonicotinoid pesticides, while others added climate change and biotech (GMO) crops as likely culprits. Some mentioned Varroa destructor mites and various viruses and diseases as possible causes. Virtually none suggested that organic food industry chemicals could also be implicated in bee deaths. The overall tone was “deep concern,” bordering on hysteria. But it sold papers and air time.
 
Over the next few years, the number of US honey-producing bee colonies (hives) generally and gradually increased, though with bumps in the road. There were 100,000 more hives in 2014 than in 2013, and numbers went on a slight roller coaster in subsequent years, up and down in the same range as 1993-2012.  
 
A recent US Department of Agriculture honey report could ignite new concerns, especially in conjunction with recent data that show a 4% decline in US bee colony numbers: 2,812,000 in 2019 versus 2,706,000 in 2020. This time, though, the more likely cause is the Covid-driven 2020 economy
 
Indeed, honey production dropped 6% but honey prices rose slightly to offset some of the lower production and sales. Almond grove and other pollination revenue went down 18% and other revenues fell even more sharply. But it’s also interesting that that there were 1,000 fewer apiary workers in 2020 than the year before – and spending on Varroa and other bee disease control declined almost 30% (the same drop as expenditures on syrup and other bee food). That largely explains the lower hive numbers.
 
(Also interesting, four states – Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota – accounted for 38% of all US honeybee colonies in 2020, many of them reliant on canola flowers. Their honey averaged $1.60 per pound in 2020, versus $6.30 per pound for boutique honey from four states – Illinois, Kentucky, New Jersey and Vermont – that collectively had just over 1% of all US hives.)
 
Even more fascinating and instructive is the trajectory of US honeybee colony numbers over the past five decades, showing no connection to neonics, other pesticides or much of anything else.
 
The all-time-high for US honeybee hives was in 1977 (4,323,000 colonies), and it was 6% higher than in 1972. The total then plummeted 25% by 1986 – and hasn’t been above 3,000,000 since 1992. The all-time-low for US honeybee colonies was 2,342,000 in 2008 – five years before the bee-pocalypse!
 
It gets even harder to decipher recent bee problems when you realize that Varroa mites didn’t arrive in the United States until 1987, and neonic use didn’t begin until the mid-1990s. But US honeybee colony numbers have been consistently in the 2.5-2.9 million range, with just a few dips to 2.4 million.
 
Varroa mites are nasty threats largely because the American-European honeybee (unlike its Asian cousin) had no natural defenses against them. The mites bite into bees and bee larvae, feed on bee “blood,” and create pathways into bees for at least 19 viruses and diseases. Tracheal mites, Nosema intestinal fungi, parasitic phorid flies, the tobacco ringspot virus and other pests can also cause significant colony losses.
 
Beekeepers can accidentally kill entire hives, trying to address such problems, but professionals have become much better at getting treatments and doses right than have most hobbyist beekeepers.
 
As their name suggests, neonicotinoid pesticides are derived from synthetic nicotine. Some 90% are applied as seed coatings that dissolve and get absorbed into plant tissues as crops grow; they target and kill only pests that feed on the crops. Neonics also largely eliminate the need to spray with other insecticides that can easily harm bees and other beneficial insects. These innovative chemicals have nevertheless been targeted by anti-pesticide groups, and by organic food producers that themselves use various crop-protecting pesticides that are harmful or lethal to honeybees and wild bees.
 
Among those organic farm chemicals, pyrethrin neurotoxin pesticides are highly toxic to bees, possible human carcinogens – and no longer derived from flowers, but synthetically manufactured. Nicotine sulfate can partially paralyze bee wings and legs, and can be poisonous to humans. Copper sulfate is highly toxic to bees, deadly to fish, bio-accumulative in soil and water, and all-around nasty.
 
Changing agricultural and land-use practices, also play a role, including more houses, factories and highways replacing flowering trees and open fields of plants that provide pollen and nectar for bees. 
 
However, when they see lurid photos of dead bees, people should understand that bees have very short lives. Exactly how long depends on their species and sex, the climate where they live, food availability, overall bee health in the hive – and what time of year bees emerge from their cell.
 
Queen bees can live 2-3 years, even 4 years or more; they lay up to 2,000 eggs per day. Male drone bees live several months during warm weather, but die after mating with a queen, because their reproductive organs are ripped from their bodies in the process! Female worker bees live only 4-6 weeks, because foraging for food takes them miles every day and wears their bodies out quickly; they live up to 20 weeks in the winter, when their job is keeping the hive warm.
 
Average honeybee colonies hit peak population counts of 50,000-60,000 in June – but those numbers plummet rapidly in autumn, as flowers disappear and cold weather sets in. So dead bees in and around hives is normal (but excellent fodder for fear-mongering).
 
As to “colony collapse disorder” (sometimes called “disappearing disorder”), major bee die-offs were reported in Ireland as far back as 950 AD! The first recorded US case of worker bees suddenly abandoning hives full of honey occurred in 1869; researchers reported 25 significant bee die-offs between that one and 2003. The causes are unknown, but die-offs are not unprecedented.
 
Of course studies have purported to demonstrate the toxicity of neonics. But many were conducted in laboratories, using doses and application methods that bear no relation to what farmers do or what bees experience in the real world, where they might encounter neonic levels in pollen and nectar measured in parts per billion or trillion: the equivalent of a few seconds in 32 or 32,000 years, respectively.
 
Multiple field studies – in actual farmers’ fields – have consistently shown no adverse effects on honeybees at the colony level from realistic exposures to neonics. In fact, bees thrive in and around neonic-treated corn and canola crops in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.
 
So it was highly surprising that a 2017 article in the respected journal Science claimed that two years of field studies in three countries showed exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides reduced the ability of honeybees and wild bees to survive winters and establish new populations and hives the following year. The article generated a fury of I-told-you-so declarations from the likes of Greenpeace and Pesticide Action Network. But it’s no longer available online. 
 
Perhaps that’s because, as I explained in my own detailed assessment, the authors violated multiple guidelines for scientific integrity. Not only did their own data contradict their primary claim; they kept extensive data out of their analysis and incorporated only what supported their conclusions. That’s fraud.
 
When all the missing and doctored data were examined, of the 258 separate honeybee statistical data analyses involved in the study, 238 found no effects on bees from neonics and 7 found beneficial effects from the pesticide! Only 9 (a mere 3%) found harmful impacts, while 4 had insufficient data.
 
It’s vital that we protect our honeybees, bumblebees and wild bees. But that means understanding history, science, modern agriculture and bee life expectancy – so that we are not so easily snookered by lurid tales of bee Armageddon, and we don’t do more harm than good, for the best of intentions.
 
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate and environmental issues.

THE GASLIGHT ELECTION

The Gaslight Election

Dominated by a fraudulent reality created by a Leftist media and academia echo chamber

Scot Faulkner

2020 is the single most important election since 1860.

This is not hyperbole. The future of America’s representative democracy is at stake.

The Left plans to change fundamental policies that will cripple earnings and economic vitality. More ominous, the Left is planning to change the rules that have governed America since 1789.  Their sole purpose is to achieve permanent all-pervasive power.

More frightening is that these threats are being successfully hidden from the electorate – thanks in large part to “legacy” media, social media, academia, and the Deep State. They have collaborated nonstop for years to advance liberal-progressive-socialist agendas, protect their favored candidates, and censor, cancel, shame and intimidate moderates and conservatives into silence, meekness and irrelevance.

America’s news media took a sharp left turn in the 1960s. During the 21st Century, what is now considered the “Mainstream Media” (MSM) dropped all pretense of being professional journalism. They are now overtly the Left’s propaganda arm.

“News anchors” and talk show “moderators” are no longer selected from working reporters, but from career political operatives. The result is an echo chamber of anti-Americanism, and now anti-Trumpism.

This Leftist echo chamber dominates over 95% of television, radio, print and digital “news.” Except for a handful of conservative radio personalities, Fox Cable News shows, and conservative blogs, the Left’s echo chamber shapes an alternate reality that almost totally controls political, historical, cultural and scientific discourse – and permits virtually no deviation or dissent from their reality and agenda.

Their worldview, talking points and intolerance have even taken over our sports, entertainment, religious institutions and K-12 education. There is virtually no relief, no sanctuary anymore from their anger, political ideologies, or quest to rule every aspect of our country and lives.

This dominant echo chamber may well propel the Democrats into the White House and a Senate majority, while retaining their House majority.

The classic 1944 movie “Gaslight” is about a diabolical villain who creates an alternative reality to drive his victim insane, to steal her riches. The term “gaslighting” is based on this process of creating a fraudulent reality so that the victims make wrong decisions, to their detriment.

That is what 2020 is about. It is the Gaslight Election.

Since the Summer of 2016, the Left’s echo chamber has created a narrative, fueled by the bogus Steele Dossier, that Russian leaders are puppeteers controlling Trump and his inner circle. Wild assertions went (and still go) unchallenged. A fake whistle blower, coached by Congressional Democrats and shaped by secretly backdated regulations, launched a reckless impeachment. 

While the entire scheme of lashing Trump to Russia, and then Ukraine, was exposed as a fraud, the Left’s echo chamber barely reports this fraud or how it was accomplished. In fact, most of the echo chamber reprises Russia, unchallenged, whenever it can.

Tragically, Judicial Watch has had to sue even Trump agencies to force their release of exculpatory information. Career bureaucrats have successfully delayed these facts from entering the public domain.

At the same time, former Vice President Biden is on video bragging about doing exactly what was the basis of Trump’s impeachment, to laughter and applause by the Washington, DC elite. Efforts to hold Biden accountable have been thwarted by FBI and intelligence officials for years.

The Left’s echo chamber remains silent – just as it is about the shocking revelations of Biden Family questionable to even criminal collusion with Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian other foreign organizations, as exposed in great detail in emails from Hunter Biden’s and his associates’ computers.   

It is just as important to not report something.

The Lefts’ echo chamber also set the ultimate trap for Trump’s re-election. COVID-19 remains Trump’s Achilles’ heel because scary and highly inaccurate models generated by the Imperial College on March 16, 2020 forced America’s economic near-suicide. The Left’s echo chamber demanded that Trump shut down his booming economy, supposedly to prevent millions of deaths.

The model turned out to be fundamentally flawed. Now the Left’s echo chamber blames Trump for this year’s economic downturn, while ignoring the devastating medical, psychological and other effects of the lockdowns. Leftist Governors use their independence under Federalism to enforce draconian measures that are not based on current science. This slows the economic recovery through Election Day.

Biden, Harris and their media allies wear masks every time they are on camera. They wear masks when they are outdoors and over thirty feet from others. No science or health organization recommends this. But it serves as a symbol for COVID-19 remaining a “dire threat,” with Trump to blame. The Left’s echo chamber makes no effort to question this shameless propaganda ploy. Instead, it promotes it and will continue to do so until just after the election (if Biden wins).

The Left creates visual equivalency by providing only tight shots of Biden and Harris at their podiums, ignoring the fact that fewer than ten people are in the audience. Trump’s 20,000+ rallies are either not covered at all or show only tight podium shots, making his huge crowds appear as small as Biden’s.

Biden’s countless lies about his attending Black churches and colleges, his groundless assertions, and his fiction about awarding medals, remain unchallenged. His radical agenda for the Green New Deal, tax increases, medical and medical insurance takeovers, and aggressive gun control goes unreported.  Meanwhile, debunked accusations, like Trump hating the armed forces, dominate news cycles.

The Left over-samples registered Democrats, sometimes over 50% to only 38% or less for Republicans, to generate polls showing Biden trouncing Trump.

The Left’s Gaslight Election may succeed because over 60 million have early-voted, just as facts about the Biden family’s foreign influence peddling slowly seep out. Some early voters have already voiced “buyer’s remorse” of having voted before they knew about the Biden family’s corruption. Congressional Republicans’ glacial investigative pace enables the Left’s reality.

A Democrat sweep in November will be tragic for everyone except liberal elites. Trump’s tax cuts will be erased, and new taxes added. Four years of regulatory relief will evaporate. All of Trump’s government reform Executive Orders will be voided within hours of Biden’s inauguration. 

Gun control will rapidly expand. The 1619 anti-American indoctrination curriculum will be forced into every classroom. Illegal aliens will be granted wholesale amnesty and added to the voter rolls. American energy independence will vanish, and Americans will suffer from the absurd policies that have made California the land of pricey energy and rolling blackouts. Hollywood and sports celebrities will roar back into prominence, virtue signaling Americans about race relations and carbon footprints. 

Even worse, all investigations of Biden, Obama, Clinton and the Deep State will end within hours of a Biden/Democrat victory, extinguishing any hope that truth and justice will prevail. America and the world must hope and pray that this Leftist echo chamber fails despite its size and power.

Scot Faulkner is the best-selling author of: "Naked Emperors: The Failure of the Republican Revolution." He also served as the first chief administrative officer of the US House of Representatives and director of personnel for the Reagan campaign and went on to serve in the presidential transition team and on the White House staff. During the Reagan administration, he held executive positions at the FAA, GSA and Peace Corps. Read his reports here.

 

CLIMATE ARSON

‘Climate arson’ and other wildfire nonsense

Real goal is to avoid responsibility for policies, and increase control over energy, lives, property

Paul Driessen

In what has become an annual summer tragedy, wildfires are again destroying western US forests. Millions of acres and millions of animals have been incinerated, hundreds of homes reduced to ash and rubble, dozens of parents and children killed, and many more people left missing, injured or burned.

Air quality across wide regions and entire states is so bad people are told to stay indoors, where many have hibernated for months because of the coronavirus, but indoor air is also contaminated. Acrid smoke and soot have been carried to Chicago and beyond. Firefighters are profiles in courage, as they battle the blazes for days on end, while all too many politicians are displaying profiles in opportunism.

“If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if more of America is ablaze?” Joe Biden thundered. “Mother Earth is angry,” Nancy Pelosi pontificated. “She’s telling us with hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, fires in the West, that the climate crisis is real.”

Despite finally starting to thin out overgrown forests, California Governor Gavin Newsome resorted to the longstanding party line about his state’s wildfires: Manmade “climate change is real. If you don't believe in science, come to California and observe it with your own eyes.” Washington Governor Jay Inslee agreed. “These are climate fires,” he said. “And we cannot, and we will not, surrender our state and expose people to have their homes burned down and their lives lost because of climate fires,"

It’s ideological nonsense, intended to deflect blame and avoid responsibility for decades of public policy errors and forest mismanagement – and to justify new laws that would multiply government control over energy, industries, jobs, living standards, lives, property, and freedom to choose where and how we live.

One could argue that people shouldn’t have built homes in and near these forests. That they should have been persuaded or compelled to live in crowded urban areas, where crime, riots and Covid run rampant. But they do live in rural areas – and our politicians, land managers and judges have a duty to implement policies and practices that protect their homes, communities and lives, as well indigenous wildlife.

Perhaps slightly warmer or drier summers have made the wildfires slightly more likely or frequent. But decades of laws, lawsuits, fire suppression policies and forest mismanagement practices have guaranteed the buildup of massive amounts of dead and diseased trees, dry brush and grass, and decaying leaves, needles and debris. With every wet spring spurring plant growth that dries up every dry summer, just one lightning strike, careless camper, gender-revealing pyrotechnic or angry arsonist can ignite an inferno.

Because timber harvesting and thinning have been banned for decades, thousands of scrawny trees grow on acreage that should have just a few hundred full-sized mature trees. As of 2017, tens of billions of scrawny trees mix with 6.3 billion dead trees in 11 Western states; state and federal forests in California alone had over 129 million dead trees. Those numbers have most assuredly skyrocketed since 2017, while steadily increasing dry brush and debris now provide even more tinder for super-heated conflagrations.

Flames in average fires along the ground in managed forests might reach several feet in height and temperatures of 1,472° F (800° C), says Wildfire Today. But under conditions now found in western tinderboxes, flame heights can reach 165 feet (50 meters) or more, and crown fires can generate critter-roasting, soil-baking temperatures that exceed 2192 degrees F (1200 C). Wood bursts into flame at 572 F. Aluminum melts at 1220, silver at 1762, and gold at 1943 degrees F (1064 C)! 2192 degrees is hellish.

Most of this heat goes upward, but super-high temperatures incinerate endangered wildlife – as well as organisms and organic matter in thin western soils that for decades afterward can support only weeds, grass and stunted, spindly trees. Western conflagrations jump fire breaks because these ferocious fires are fueled by the unprecedented increase in combustibles that radical environmentalist policies have created. These monstrous fires generate their own high winds and even mini tornados that carry burning branches high into the air, to be deposited hundreds of feet away, igniting new fires. None of this has a thing to do with climate change. To say a 0.1, 0.5 or even 1.0 degree change in average global temperatures would alter these forest fire dynamics defies credibility. To say the monumental fuel buildups in our forests are irrelevant is like claiming a minimally furnished home will burn as easily and ferociously as one filled to the brim with furniture, books, old newspapers and cans of gasoline. The solution is simple, though expensive and time-consuming at this point. Cut the red tape. Remove some of that fuel, so that fires don’t get so big, hot, powerful, and destructive. Clear wider areas around buildings, homes and communities. Create more, wider fire breaks. Build more roads that let people escape the flames. Send the timber to sawmills, to create jobs and tax revenues, and American lumber for affordable homes. Clear out brush and grass under transmission lines – and upgrade the transmission lines. Bolster rapid-response airborne and ground-based firefighting capabilities.

Up to now, all this has been prohibited, litigated and shut down in states that now have horrific fires. Radical Greens have even blocked cattle grazing that would control grass and brush in national forests.

Still not convinced? Look at recent major fires that petered out when they reached managed forests. For years, San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation foresters chain-sawed overgrown trees, harvested better timber, improved timber stands, and used controlled, prescribed burns, weed killer and other measures to keep their forests healthy, protect sacred sites, and preserve jobs and wildlife. They even turn scrubby trash trees into particle board and sell it for furniture, as part the tribe’s timber business.

In 2017, the Wallow Fire, the most destructive wildfire in Arizona history, burned 538,000 acres – but fizzled out when it reached the reservation’s well-managed forest. A year later, the Rattlesnake Fire torched more than 20,000 acres in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest – but likewise faded out when it reached the neighboring White Mountain Apache timberlands, which had also been managed responsibly and proactively, using the same management practices that guide San Carlos Apache foresters.

Similar success stories can be found in the most unlikely place: California. For decades, the Southern California Edison electric utility employed selective logging, prescribed burns and other management strategies in its Shaver Lake Forest. This year’s Creek Fire raged through treetops and several hundred thousand acres in the Sierra National Forest. But when it reached the SoCalEd timberlands, it dwindled into a low-intensity surface or ground fire – which doesn’t incinerate big trees and wildlife.

Back in August 2013, the monstrous high-intensity Rim Fire immolated 180,000 acres in the Stanislaus National Forest. Thankfully the National Park Service (NPS) had been employing prescribed burning and other proactive management practices for years in Yosemite National Park next door. When the wildfire reached the park, it turned into a far less destructive surface fire.

The ferocious Rough Fire of 2015 roared through California’s Sequoia and Sierra National Forests, totally torching 150,000 acres. But it too became a ground fire when it reached Sequoia National Park, where the NPS had also used prescribed burns and other good management practices for decades.

A final point. The raging fires in our long mismanaged forests are not natural. They are not what used to burn with regularity through America’s forests. A century of fire suppression and fuel accumulation means they turn into superheated infernos. Manage them properly first. Then let nature work again.

The lesson? Regardless of what Earth’s climate may do – regardless of who or what may be responsible for any fluctuations – we must take responsible, appropriate, effective measures now. Doing so will save habitats, wildlife, homes and human lives today, and tomorrow.

We cannot and must let more megafires incinerate forests and people for decades to come, under an hubristic, misguided, ideological belief that we can eventually end global fossil fuel use and control planetary climate and weather conditions, thereby somehow making monster wildfires a dim memory. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.

WATER CRIMINOLOGY OUT RUNS HYDROLOGY

Water Criminology Out Runs Hydrology

by Roni Bell 9/17/2020

Years ago I developed Baseline Acre Production (BAP): Ag producer add
s up their past 15 years of production and amount of Water used, then divides by 15 to get an average % as to how much Water is needed to sustain the acre production.

County Commissioners could have used these averages to determine whether or not there was Water available for change of use; then relay the information - "yes we have water available without harming Ag," or "no, we don't have Water."

Water's been moved around so much since then, it's unlikely BAP would work.

Because Colorado's a semi-arid desert, wholly dependent on snow-pack/precip, Governor's Owens, Ritter and Hickenlooper have never been convincing in their argument, "Colorado HAS to meet the population demand!"

The counter to that is "Why?" Why is Colorado, a semi-arid desert, expected to "meet a population demand?"

Colorado does NOT have the water! Period!

And now Governor Polis is looking around for Water.

Of course one area 10,000 acre feet annual can be retrieved, runs in a statutes violating agreement called the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program (PRRIP)).

Solution: Get a Water availability average by adding the past 20 years of State's Water administration records and divide by 20. Pass legislation that lays out something along the line of: Developer may not acquire any new Water. Developer is required to re-cycle Water historically shown to be available in that particular area.

In other words, pretty much an update on the old BAP.

Another solution? Developers would be mandated to full disclosure, by informing those in want of moving to Colorado, "You'll have to choose:" 1) We can build your house here, but we can't get you any Water. 2) We can build your house there, where you'll receive limited amounts of safe, re-cycled Water.

When the criminology is fixed, the hydrology will fix itself.

GOLD KING MINE BLOWOUT

 Revisiting EPA’s Gold King Mine blowout – Part 2  

The Navajo Nation and New Mexico vs. incompetence and bad faith in the USEPA

By Duggan Flanakin

On August 5, five years to the day after suffering from a 3-million-gallon spill of heavy-metal-laden toxic wastewater from Colorado’s Gold King Mine, the State of Utah announced a settlement of its claims against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and several EPA contractors (who thus far have not been held responsible, accountable or liable) for their alleged negligence in allowing the spill.

The notorious, devastating accident turned Cement Creek and the Animas, San Juan and Colorado Rivers yellow all the way from Colorado through New Mexico and Utah and into Lake Powell. The settlement is good news. Yet those whose memories of are faulty at best may not realize that the EPA is still in the throes of a consolidated lawsuit filed by the State of New Mexico, the Navajo Nation, and a group of 295 Navajo farmers and ranchers (and 16 other individuals) who were harmed by the spill.

Indeed, the Obama Administration made it very clear early on that neither the EPA nor the Federal Emergency Management Agency would provide just compensation for the damages caused by the incident, in which an EPA contractor using a backhoe to dig away rock and debris from the adit (mine portal or entrance) opened the floodgates. The spill happened because no one had done any testing to determine the height, volume or quality of water inside the mine.

While the Navajo Nation hired the California law firm Hueston Hennigan almost immediately after the incident to represent its interests, the State of New Mexico on May 23, 2016, was the first to formally file a lawsuit seeking to recover damages from the EPA and its contractors. 

New Mexico Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn explained, “We tried over seven months to pursue a diplomatic path forward,” but the EPA refused to accept any responsibility for the spill and its aftermath. Flynn estimated that New Mexico would lose $130 million in income, taxes, fees and revenues because of lost tourism, fishing and land use.

The New Mexico lawsuit also named Obama era EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, Environmental Restoration, Kinross Gold Corp., Kinross Gold USA Inc. and Sunnyside Gold Corp as defendants and responsible parties. Another major reason for the lawsuit was that New Mexico and the EPA had been unable to “mutually agree” on a monitoring plan that “appropriately protects” state and tribal lands.

At the time, EPA Region 6 spokesperson David Gray asserted that his agency did take responsibility for the cleanup and was working to reimburse response costs and provide funding for observing monitoring plans developed by the state and tribe. His words held no sway and were not backed up by action.

Meanwhile, the Navajo Nation had its own share of frustrations with the federal response to the incident. According to Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch, “The impact has been devastating to our culture and economy, as well as to the peace of mind of our people. With unknown amounts of fine sediment in our water we now face the risk of reliving this nightmare with every major increased water flow event affecting the river.”

The Nation filed its lawsuit on August 16, 2016 – noting that Navajo farmers had had to abandon large portions of their fields in the hopes of salvaging limited plots, and livestock had become dehydrated due to the lack of water that also dried up corn crops.

In filing the lawsuit, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye complained that the tribe had to fight for even the tiny $1.1 million in compensation provided from the EPA – which came only after the tribe threatened legal action. “EPA, we’re holding your feet to the fire. We will not let you get away with this. We will be here,” Begaye asserted.

Then in August 2017, the EPA reversed Region 6 Administrator Gray’s admission of responsibility. In February 2018, however, U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo opted to leave the now-consolidated lawsuit intact. Two years later, on July 26, 2018, the EPA again asked a federal judge to dismiss the case [and the Utah case], claiming that crews were already working on the cleanup.

In their filing, the EPA’s attorneys claimed that “Granting any relief in New Mexico, within the Navajo Nation, or in Utah would conflict and interfere with EPA's exclusive jurisdiction over its on-going response action activities and cleanup remedies." [emphasis added] How paying reparations or assisting private, state and tribal cleanup would “interfere with” agency jurisdiction was never explained.

A month later, EPA was hit with yet another lawsuit, this one filed on behalf of 295 Navajo farmers and ranchers from New Mexico. Attorney Kate Ferlic argued that these farmers and ranchers had lost crops and livestock and had to pay to haul clean water because they could no longer use water from rivers that were still polluted with heavy metals and other dangerous chemicals.

U.S. District Judge William P. Johnson immediately rolled the farmers and ranchers suit into the Navajo and New Mexico (and Utah) suits (there was also a suit involving a small number of New Mexico citizens). Once again the EPA sought to have the reconsolidated lawsuit thrown out. But on February 28, 2019, Judge Johnson denied the EPA’s latest ploy.

As of this writing, while Utah has settled with the EPA and withdrawn from the consolidated lawsuit, the other claimants – New Mexico, Navajo Nation and two groups of citizens – are still awaiting compensation for the damages caused by the EPA’s alleged negligence in 2015. 

Five years have passed, and the Navajo in particular are still hurting even as they also battle the health, economic and unemployment consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic and forced shutdown of the tribe’s coal mine and coal-fired power plant. Compounding these problems, restrictions on travel and in-person interviews have slowed the ongoing discovery process such that the projected trial date has been pushed back to fall 2021, further postponing any compensation.

While the Utah settlement may provide some hope for a pretrial resolution of the New Mexico and Navajo (and farmer and rancher) cases, hard-line positions taken over the past five years by the EPA – and the plaintiffs’ determination to finally win some meaningful relief – suggest that, barring some pre-election-day “miracle,” this consolidated case could easily drag on for years.

Duggan Flanakin is director of policy research for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)