The Fight to Protect New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon Continues

It was just two years ago, in June 2023, when former U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the Biden administration’s decision to end new oil and gas leasing for 20 years within a 10-mile radius around Chaco Culture National Historical Park. The day marked a turning point for a coalition of Tribal leaders, elected officials, and community members who’d long sought to rein in the industrial pollution spoiling sacred lands and threatening public health. 

Now, those hard-earned gains are at risk of slipping away. Last week, the Trump administration announced its plans to fully revoke the buffer zone of protections for the lands surrounding this sacred site, which spans nearly 500 square miles in northwestern New Mexico. Thousands of Navajo and Pueblo families call this region home. The area is the birthplace of ancient traditions and ceremonies and a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

In response to the latest threats, advocates are regrouping. Mario Atencio, a Navajo Nation member and longtime leader on protecting Chaco Canyon, serves as executive director of the New Mexico–based Torreon Community Alliance. He’s been working to uplift the voices of those impacted by the oil and gas industry’s hold on the region, to tell the stories of Chaco’s frontline people and communities. “Those can’t be spun,” he says. “They mark how devastating the impact [of the drilling] has been for health and spiritual wellness.”

NRDC has stood alongside local and Tribal organizations to defend the Greater Chaco region. We partnered with Diné Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment (Diné CARE), a nonprofit organization that works with Navajo communities affected by environmental issues, and others on a case challenging the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) authorization of permits to drill in the Greater Chaco region. 

“If Chaco is not sacred and worth protecting, what is?” asks James Povijua, NRDC’s senior advocate for equity and community partnerships. Povijua is also a Tribal member of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, one of the Tribes historically connected to Chaco. This latest proposal, he adds, could roll out the welcome mat for drilling and mining in other public lands throughout the country, including near other national parks and monuments. And it adds to mounting threats to cherished places and cultural heritage across the West. 

Povijua and his colleagues on the public lands advocacy team are preparing to submit a response to the government’s proposal while examining all options to fight back against the threats to Chaco.

A long history of fossil fuel exploitation

Today, more than 90 percent of available lands in the Greater Chaco area have already been leased for industrialized fracking. As a result, the region hosts about 40,000 oil and gas wells. 

Little consideration has been given to how this industrial footprint affects local communities. Among other missteps, the BLM neglected to look at the potentially harmful effects of fracking when it first processed permits to drill the lands more than a decade ago. (Some of these permits were successfully challenged in court by NRDC and coalition partners.) 

Overall, the impacts have profoundly exacerbated injustice for communities already overburdened by a profusion of well pads, industrial wastewater ponds, pipelines, pump stations, and a web of access roads that are used by legions of trucks for daily industrial activities. 

There’s also been a devastating health impact on local Indigenous residents, who have suffered from various issues, according to numerous investigations. In 2018, for example, the Counselor Chapter Health Impact Assessment (HIA) committee conducted A Cultural, Spiritual, and Health Impact Assessment at the request of local communities. The 80 Diné residents who participated reported an array of chronic symptoms, including sinus irritation, sore throat, nosebleed, cough, headache, burning of eyes, joint pain, fatigue, and sleep disturbance. The majority of these residents lived​​ within a mile of one or more active wells, pipelines, or other gas and oil infrastructure.

Air quality monitoring also identified elevated particulate matter—which can harm respiratory and cardiovascular functions—and chemical exposure from well operations at four sites. This included the detection of formaldehyde, which can cause irritation of the nose, throat, and eyes; the EPA considers it a “probable human carcinogen.”

“People get headaches in the morning, we have cancer out here now, people are being diagnosed with cardio diseases, and asthma cases have gone up,” Kendra Pinto, formerly an organizer with Diné CARE and now an advocate with Earthworks, told NRDC in a 2021 interview. 

The industrial activities also strain precious water resources for local communities during a time of ongoing drought, exacerbating circumstances for the many Navajo families in the region who lack running water and must travel to public spigots. And the situation is poised to get worse: The BLM estimates that fracking in the area will require an average of four million gallons of water per well.

The demand for justice 

For years, the consistent approval of oil and gas drilling leases and permits in the face of such disproportionate impacts on local Tribal communities alarmed Indigenous leaders. In 2016, alarm turned into terror when an explosion and fire at an oil production site near the Navajo town of Nageezi, New Mexico, killed livestock and forced 55 residents to evacuate.

Around the same time, the Frack Off Greater Chaco Coalition continued efforts to stop further oil and gas drilling. Members of that coalition, which includes NRDC, filed lawsuits, lobbied elected officials, and attended rallies. In 2019, some in Congress started to listen. They proposed the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act of 2019, which made it through the House of Representatives but not the Senate. 

That legislation has since been reintroduced, in April of this year. It would build on the BLM’s 2023 decision—which came out of a lengthy and comprehensive review process—to withdraw federally owned oil and gas in the 10-mile radius around Chaco Culture National Historical Park from availability for new leasing or development.

“There is no justification for the current administration to reopen this decision, especially on an expedited basis,” says Povijua. And federal decision-makers certainly can’t count out resistance from the broad coalition of Tribes, local communities, environmental groups, and the millions of outdoors enthusiasts and allies who see this plan for what it is: yet another sacrifice of sacred lands and a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry. 

In accordance with federal law, the Trump administration must solicit public comments on the new plan for Chaco Canyon. The window for feedback will be short; agencies have begun curtailing public comment periods on their decisions. 

Despite the efforts to limit public feedback, community voices retain power. “All we can do is say our piece,” says Atencio. “People are an authority, and there has to be a clear, sober review of what is actually at stake.” 

This story was originally published on February 1, 2022, and has since been updated with new information and links.

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