By In December 2008, RAN supported Black Mesa Water Coalition, a youth-led inter-tribal organization, with an emergency $5,000 grant through our role as an advisor to Global Greengrants Fund to support a mobilization to fight Peabody Coal Company’s Life of Mine permit for operations on Black Mesa, AZ.
As this report back from a previous Understory post shows, the mobilization was very powerful and got great media coverage, but the permit was still granted on December 22nd by the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM) in one of several fossil-fuel friendly 11th hour decisions by the Bush Administration.
Last week, after a year of further community-led efforts to challenge the OSM decision, a Department of Interior Administrative Law Judge withdrew Peabody Coal Company’s Life of Mine permit. Check out It’s Getting Hot In Here for this update from BMWC Co-Director Wahleah Johns for more details about this critical victory for Hopi and Navajo communities.