New Mexico’s senate delegation came out on Tuesday in support of a Navajo Nation lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency.
Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, both Democrats, backed the tribe’s litigation, which was filed earlier in the week. The pair said the EPA has failed to adequately compensate the Navajo for last year’s Gold King Mine catastrophe—the heart of the legal dispute.
“The spill was an accident, but the EPA made several serious mistakes, and the Navajo Nation has every right to pursue its claims for damages in court,” Udall said. “This was not a natural disaster, and the communities that were harmed by the toxic spill deserve compensation.”
Heinrich accused the agency of dragging its feet on delivering promised aid, denouncing it as “unacceptable.”
“The EPA must fully compensate victims of the spill for their losses and provide a better process for filing claims,” he said.
In August 2015, during an EPA inspection of the long-shuttered mine, contractors accidentally poisoned the Animas River, by releasing a mixture of heavy metals into the waterway.
The resulting damage spread to tributaries of the Animas, including the San Juan River, which Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye described as “sacred,” in an interview with The New York Times, published Wednesday
In court filings, the Navajo Nation described Gold King as “one of the most significant environmental catastrophes in history.”
“[T]he Nation and the Navajo people have yet to have their waterways cleaned, their losses compensated, their health protected or their way of life restored,” the tribe argued. Navajo leaders are asking for $2 million from the EPA and the two contractors involved in the catastrophe, Kinross Gold Corp and Sunnyside Gold Corp.
“Efforts to be made whole over the past year have been met with resistance, delays, and second-guessing,” the lawsuit claimed.
As Reuters noted, the EPA has assumed responsibility for relief, and says “it has made more than $29 million available in response, including more than $1 million to Navajo Nation.” The wire service also noted that the EPA has deemed the San Juan River “safe for agriculture and irrigation.”
Damage from the Gold King Mine spill spread throughout Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
In March, the State of New Mexico sued the EPA—and Kinross and Sunnyside—for damages resulting from the toxic dump.
In his press release, Sen. Heinrich noted that there are “hundreds of thousands of similarly contaminated mines across the West and Indian Country that are leaking toxins into our watersheds.” In his statement, Udall said there were as many as half a million.
