Making them sick
Forgotten People seeks state of emergency over contaminated water

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

BLACK FALLS, Ariz. — Some residents in the Black Falls/Box Springs area have been drinking uranium- and arsenic-contaminated water for nearly 40 years. Another month or two, while they wait on the Navajo Nation to declare a state of emergency, probably won’t kill them. Then again, maybe it will.

During a July 11 meeting at the Box Springs home of Rolanda and Larry Tohannie, more than 80 people — many of them cancer victims — traveled miles of washboard roads in the summer heat to meet with representatives of the Navajo Nation and voice concerns about their illnesses, their need for safe drinking water, and what they view as a lack of assistance by Window Rock.

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