Interior Ignores the Navajo Nation’s Compromise

DENVER -- Western Energy Alliance today submitted comments to the U.S. Department of the Interior regarding the Biden Administration’s withdrawal of a 10-mile zone around the Chaco Culture National Historical Park from oil and natural gas leasing and development for a 20-year period. The Alliance urged the department to accept the compromise agreement from the Navajo Nation for a smaller 5-mile buffer zone in order to protect the park while allowing tribal members to benefit from their energy resources.
 
“The Biden Administration is moving forward with a policy that poses a significant risk to the local economy and the livelihoods of thousands of Navajo mineral owners while ignoring a compromise 5-mile buffer from the Navajo Nation,” said Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Alliance. “The administration should not ignore the will of the tribe, which proposed and voted overwhelmingly for the compromise solution. Depriving Navajo families of a major source of income is not only an environmental injustice, but also contrary to basic principles of tribal consultation.”

“Annually, oil and natural gas production delivers approximately $96 million to nearly 21,000 Navajo allottees, including from the area around Chaco Canyon. Although buffer restrictions supposedly would only apply to federally managed lands and not Navajo lands, the interlocking nature of the lands and minerals means that companies will avoid developing within the buffer area. With horizontal drilling, it is impossible to avoid the federal mineral estate when attempting to access pockets of allottee oil and natural gas surrounded by federal lands,” added Sgamma.
 
For more information, please see the Alliance’s letter to the Interior Department.
 
Background

• Congress has not passed legislation to implement a 10-mile buffer (map) around Chaco Canyon despite members of the New Mexico delegation and the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources introducing the Chaco Heritage Area Protection Act several times since 2019.

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• In January 2020, the Navajo Nation passed a resolution in opposition to the legislation and in support of a 5-mile buffer as a compromise.

• In September 2021, the 10-mile buffer was included in an early House version of the Build Back Better Act. Leaders of the Navajo Nation Council sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi requesting consultation with lawmakers before a vote could take place. The provision was stripped out a short time later.

• In November 2021 at a White House Tribal Nations Summit, President Joe Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced the Department of the Interior would initiate a 20-year withdrawal of federal lands for oil and natural gas leasing through the federal rulemaking process.

• A week later, Sec. Haaland visited Chaco Canyon. At that time, the Navajo Nation Council said, “The Biden Administration and Congress did not hear from our Navajo families and made a decision that will affect them with no formal consultation,” according to the Navajo-Hopi Observer.

• In a November 2021 letter to Sec. Haaland, Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer wrote, “By simply bypassing true and inclusive tribal consultation with the Navajo Nation and our Individual Indian Allottees, the Biden-Harris Administration is markedly undermining the trust responsibility they owe to the Navajo Nation and the 22,000 Individual Indian Allottees impacted by this decision.”
  
  
• A compromise is also supported by members of the surrounding community. In April 2022, the commissioners in San Juan County, New Mexico, passed a resolution opposing Interior’s 10-mile buffer and instead supported the compromise 5-mile buffer supported by the Navajos.

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