Shiprock Chapter President, Duane “Chilli” Yazzie said the decision will help keep the soil uncontaminated and he used the old adage of better safe than sorry in an interview with The Associated Press.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Navajo Nation EPA have both said the water is safe for irrigation based on tests of the water’s surface.
The spill happened on August 5th, 2015 at the Gold King Mine when workers accidentally destroyed a dam holding back a pond. Doing so resulted in about three million gallons of polluted water filled with heavy metals, arsenic and other waste into Cement Creek, a tributary of Colorado’s Animas River.
The Environmental Protection Agency did not disclose the spill to Colorado and New Mexico until the next day.
"I am furious that the U.S. EPA has placed the Navajo Nation into this position," Tribal President Russell Begaye said in a news release. "Our farms will not last much longer without water, and our resources are depleting."
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