In 1968, a 54,000 acre coal mine commenced operations on Black Mesa, Arizona, an arid and semi-arid region inhabited by the Hopi Tribe and Dine Nation. The coal mine fuels the power plant that generates electricity for the Central Arizona Project, which pumps renewable Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson. Water for mine-operations is pumped from a non-renewable groundwater aquifer upon which the Hopi and Dine depend. After forty years of development, conflict characterizes industrial groundwater exploitation on Black Mesa; there continues to be little understanding of the relationship between industrial withdrawals and its impacts upon hydrological and social-ecological systems of the region.Large-scale natural resource development is predicated upon deterministic studies required to disclose all potentially adverse impacts. This study performs a postaudit of groundwater model predictions used to determine the significance of these impacts. It demonstrates that drawdown caused by the mine was underestimated; drawdown caused by communities was overestimated; the models failed to capture the linear relationship between water level decline and spring discharge; and water levels predicted to recover by 2007 continue to decline in 2010.The Regulatory Authority developed four criteria for determining if damage to the aquifer had occurred in response to mining; over time, two damage thresholds were crossed and two had never been evaluated. A new model was implemented for regulatory purposes; simulations showed that a distant spring 60 miles from the mine is unaffected by the mine's withdrawals. The postaudit demonstrates how declining discharge from this spring has a strong relationship with industrial withdrawals (r = -0.84; R2 = 0.71; p < 0.0001); local pumping and precipitation have no statistically significant relationship with discharge from this spring.In 2008, the Regulatory Authority revised the four threshold criteria; all negative trends were removed from regulatory purview (including spring discharge) and remaining criteria assumed insurmountable damage thresholds; their condition will be determined by model simulations rather than actual observations.The Black Mesa case study reinforces the argument that the legislatively required process for predetermining environmental impacts is an elaborate ritual in which a manifestly political decision is disguised as unbiased scientific fact.

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Thesis (M.S.- Hydrology and Water Resources)--University of Arizona. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-249).

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From the Proceedings of the 1977 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 15-16, 1977, Las Vegas, Nevada / Extensive disturbances are expected during the remainder of this century due to strip mining in the semi-arid West. Reclamation and revegetation of these disturbed areas is a slow process, primarily due to dry and harsh climatic conditions. Erosion and sediment losses are high. Monitoring of the soil erosion process is a crucial step in planning for a long lasting and stable rehabilitation of these disturbed areas. Erosion plots have been laid out to collect data for the Universal Soil Loss Equation for estimating soil loss from recontoured coal mine spoils. Effectiveness of different cultural and mechanical treatments for erosion control is also being evaluated. Since large-scale coal mining operation has just begun on the Black Mesa, preliminary data could be very effective and useful in Watershed Management planning.

This dissertation examines the contestations over the politics of knowledge, risk, and environmental justice in three fenceline sites. Mobilizing the fenceline standpoint to study risk strengthens our objective understanding of the social situatedness of risk. To illustrate how a fenceline standpoint contributes to stronger objectivity of risk contestations, I survey public discourse of coal slurry extraction in Black Mesa, Arizona using an environmental justice framework. Discursive justifications for the construction of the slurry pipeline reveal how environmental injustice in the fenceline community emerged through urban controversies over water and power generation that excluded a fenceline standpoint. Insights from Black Mesa frame the next two cases: open burning hazardous waste at Radford Army Ammunition Plant, and M6 Disposal at Camp Minden, Louisiana. At Radford, scholar-activist research examines the contestations of risk at one of the most hazardous waste facilities in the nation. I analyze the construction of risk from open burning of hazardous waste from a fenceline standpoint. I discursively situate the controversy over fenceline community risk from open burning, by showing the inadequacies of official risk assessments. Critical discourse analysis of risk shows the extant contestations over the practice of open burning. In juxtaposition to Radford, the Camp Minden open burn controversy demonstrates how a fenceline movement successfully constructed alternatives to open burning. Fenceline success in Minden is forcing scrutiny over the risks produced by the practice of open burning explosives across the United States. The activation of fenceline knowledge and expertise, through grassroots organizing, is propelling inquiry from scientific and technical experts of the American Chemical Society who are questioning why the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency have approved the use of open burning at other sites despite safer alternative technology. Synthetically, each case illustrates the importance of fenceline knowledge as a crucial site of expertise. I present an argument for how a fenceline standpoint can challenge regulatory and producer constructions of fenceline risk. The creation of a program of research: Critical Risk Analysis, offers a model for scholar-activist intervention on the fenceline. The Camp Minden Dialogue demonstrates a successful example of how fenceline expert-activists can influence the construction of risk. Normatively, I build the argument that environmental justice research within Science and Technology Studies ought to situate the fenceline standpoint as equal to the competing epistemological claims of production and regulatory experts in order to strengthen the objectivity of our research in contested fenceline sites. / Ph. D.