{"id":47503,"date":"2025-07-21T16:13:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T23:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/?p=47503"},"modified":"2025-07-21T16:13:26","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T23:13:26","slug":"on-the-navajo-nation-the-list-of-mystery-wells-continues-to-grow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/on-the-navajo-nation-the-list-of-mystery-wells-continues-to-grow\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Navajo Nation, the List of Mystery Wells Continues to Grow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Old oil wells on the reservation spew chemical-laden water. The feds have done little to honor treaty obligations to clean them up.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

By Jerry Redfern, Capital & Main<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story<\/a> was originally published at Capital & Main<\/a>, a NMPBS partner.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Loretta Johnson stands by a water well on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. According to an EPA report, the well produces water tainted with arsenic. All photos by Jerry Redfern.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

On a warm evening<\/strong> in early June, Loretta Johnson pointed her white Chevy Silverado with a Navajo blanket-patterned steering wheel cover south on the main road leading out of Shiprock, New Mexico, and hit the accelerator \u2014 lightly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retired nurse drove herself and a friend on the plumb-straight road and weaved stories as mile-wide dust storms tumbled across a landscape that inspired the Road Runner cartoons. And as the stories picked up in her rolling cadence, the speedometer ticked down. She was on a mission and she tackled it at her own pace, so the occasional driver on the road pulled around and passed her with no honking or lights flashing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson and her friend (who did not want to be identified over concerns for his job) are Din\u00e9, as the Navajo people call themselves. She grew up in a small house in a small valley near a small town several miles from where she\u2019s driving on the nation\u2019s biggest Native American reservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the treeless horizon to the west stands the iconic stone peak Shiprock, and ahead is a water well that played a pivotal role in her life. Not so many years ago, before poor health kept her husband at home, Johnson and he would come to this well to fill a pair of 55-gallon barrels with water they would haul to their cattle in Red Valley, 30 miles away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSomeone told me it was saltwater. But the cows, they drank it,\u201d she said as she pulled up to the site. What she didn\u2019t know then has since become clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An unmarked fence surrounds the spot, and truck traffic has turned the entry into a muddy bog. The well\u2019s history is murky; it was drilled decades ago, and has few existing records. The wellhead itself is a six-inch pipe a little over four feet tall and crusted in rust and white deposits. A takeoff line runs along the ground to a nearby elevated tank where people still drive in to fill up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Loretta Johnson walks to the tainted well on the Navajo Nation where she used to collect water for her cattle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not the only well like this. Dozens of old, unplugged wells speckle the rangeland in this corner of the Navajo Nation. And it\u2019s not always clear what their original purpose was. Today, some are just rusty pipes in the ground. But some smell like gasoline. Some occasionally burp oil. And several produce copious amounts of water in a parched region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oil and gas drilling here goes back more than a century, and the further back you go, the fewer records exist of what was drilled where or for what purpose. An unknown number of today\u2019s flowing water wells come from that industrial legacy. \u201cIf somebody\u2019s drilling for oil, they\u2019re going to hit water bodies along the way,\u201d said Steve Austin, a senior hydrologist with the Water Quality Program in the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s Shiprock office. And that can lead to contaminated water wells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson never drank the water from this particular well herself, and she wouldn\u2019t let her dogs drink it, either \u2014 which was probably for the best. A water quality test seven years earlier determined it is laced with sulfates and benzene \u2014 a common component of crude oil and a known carcinogen \u2014 at rates that exceed federal and tribal standards for human consumption and could make livestock sick as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When her friend tells her that this well where she used to water her cattle \u2014 like many on the Navajo Nation did \u2014 is an old, contaminated well, possibly from the oil industry, Johnson pauses before saying, \u201cI didn\u2019t know what was in those waters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The federal<\/strong> Environmental Protection Agency knew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, scientists from the agency tested 46 old wells on the Navajo Nation that run in an arc from Shiprock northwest into Utah. The agency published a report<\/a> in 2019 documenting what they found: a lot of polluted water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study looked for dozens of chemicals including lead, arsenic, sulfate, benzene, uranium and chloride, as well as total dissolved solids \u2014 a measure of minerals in suspension. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the good things about this study,\u201d said Austin, the hydrologist with the Navajo Nation EPA. \u201cIt showed us whether or not they were a problem.\u201d Many were. Of the wells they tested, 18 had some sort of pollution that exceeded drinking water standards, sometimes dramatically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, in the well where Johnson drew water for her cattle, labeled NM-013 in the study, the EPA recorded benzene levels at 7.9 parts per billion, 58% higher than the 5 parts per billion maximum<\/a> allowed for human consumption under the EPA\u2019s own standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Steve Austin of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Many find even those standards too lax. The European Union\u2018s drinking water limit for benzene of one part per billion<\/a> is one-fifth the EPA level, meaning the levels in NM-013 exceed European standards by 690%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Environmental Working Group, an environmental research and advocacy organization, tracks benzene<\/a> levels and other pollutants in water systems across the country and recommends even stricter standards than those used by the EPA or the European Union: 0.15 parts per billion, or 1\/33rd the EPA level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re thinking about this in terms of human consumption \u2026 In drinking water, you want the level to be zero,\u201d said Tasha Stoiber, senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of other, more polluted wells on the EPA list, she said, \u201cYou don\u2019t even want to touch that water.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking through the tables of contaminants in the list, she said, \u201cObviously, there\u2019s arsenic issues, there\u2019s hydrocarbon issues \u2014 benzene, oil and gas contaminants.\u201d And most of the water on the list: \u201cIt\u2019s not fit for human consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But NM-013 is still open for business. Stoiber said that beyond the benzene pollution, the level of total dissolved solids in the well was enough to make people and livestock acutely sick. \u201cIt\u2019s also going to taste really, really bad,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the Navajo Nation, many rely on open wells \u2014 flowing or pumped \u2014 to raise small livestock herds, as Johnson did. Water has always been precious in this arid corner of the country, and it has grown even more scarce. The past winter\u2019s woeful snowpack and negligible spring runoff led tribal President Buu Nygren to declare a drought emergency<\/a> at the beginning of June. According to the announcement, more than 7,500 stock ponds and 900 wind-powered wells had lost \u201ccapacity and functionality\u201d across the Nation. That leaves people with fewer choices among the remaining water wells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Navajo Nation EPA, Austin monitors and regulates everything from septic systems to mine sites to wastewater spills \u2014 anything that affects the Navajo Nation\u2019s water quality. (The Navajo Nation EPA operates independently of the federal body with the same name, but uses the same water standards.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As soon as any water flows on the surface, \u201cIt is a water of the Navajo Nation,\u201d Austin said, and it falls under his office\u2019s jurisdiction. Same for anything that pollutes those waters. Oil and gas production aren\u2019t directly in his wheelhouse, but, \u201cI come into play if there is a spill or some kind of mess,\u201d he said. Over the past 15 years, he has added finding and mapping mystery wells to his duties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All together, the Navajo Nation Water Quality Program has a staff of six to cover an area a little bigger than West Virginia. \u201cWe have a lot less water than West Virginia,\u201d Austin said. \u201cSo there\u2019s a tradeoff there.\u201d He is the lead water watcher for most of the eastern half of the reservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Shiprock, known to the Navajo as \u201cTs\u00e9 Bit\u2019 a\u2019\u00ed\u201d, is a volcanic rock formation in northwestern New Mexico.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He began working with the tribe in 1998, and, from the beginning, the small staff and modest funding have kept him bouncing from project to project. But he said the flowing wells have been on his mind since he started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back then, the Bureau of Land Management plugged extremely salty flowing wells that drained into the San Juan River, harming its quality. That program eventually ran out of money and ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2010, Austin started tallying the small water wells as they popped up in his work across the eastern reaches of the Nation. The area overlapped with a large portion of the neighboring San Juan Basin and Paradox Basin oil and gas fields. It\u2019s not a coincidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If an oil company drills a well that doesn\u2019t produce oil (or not enough to make a profit), it often plugs the well, filling the steel-lined hole with cement and sticking a metal pole in the spot to warn of the underground risks. But, sometimes, companies only partially plug a well, leaving it open to a shallow, water-bearing layer so that water can be accessed. That\u2019s what happened repeatedly on the Navajo Nation in years past. Most had some kind of valve to control the flow, \u201cBut over time the equipment that was there either got broken or rusted out, and so now they\u2019re just free flowing,\u201d Austin said. Some trickle and some gush, creating everything from small bogs to small creeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That places the water in Austin\u2019s jurisdiction, in part because \u201cWe assume everything is going to be drunk by a cow or a sheep,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what\u2019s good enough for cattle or sheep often isn\u2019t good enough for people. Sometimes it\u2019s not good enough for cattle or sheep, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s untreated water. At the minimum, you\u2019ve got to be concerned about bacteria,\u201d Austin said. Some wells have high levels of arsenic, benzene and sulfates. And some flowing wells are also a nuisance, with undrinkable water washing out roads and hampering travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several years ago, New Mexico asked the Navajo Nation to clean up a nuisance well that flowed from tribal lands onto state and private lands, turning the access road for a remote tourist spot to briny mud. Austin said he told the state, \u201cWe\u2019ve tried. We don\u2019t have the money.\u201d Then the state asked the federal EPA to do it, but the feds called Austin instead, and he told them the same thing. He also told them the problem was not unique \u2014 he\u2019d found many such wells over the years. \u201cAnd they\u2019re like, \u2018What are you talking about?\u2019 I was like, \u2018Yeah, we have flowing wells all over the place.\u2019 They\u2019re like, \u2018What?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Austin shared his list of 49 flowing wells he\u2019d found across the Navajo Nation over the years in New Mexico and Utah. And in 2018, the federal EPA tested 46 of them, leading to the 2019 report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe do what we can,\u201d Austin said of his office and the Navajo Nation EPA. \u201cBut ultimately the federal government still has that trust obligation to take care of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the Department of Interior, that obligation<\/a> is a \u201cfiduciary obligation on the part of the United States to protect tribal treaty rights, lands, assets, and resources, as well as a duty to carry out the mandates of federal law with respect to American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and villages.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Feds certainly haven\u2019t taken care of it quickly. In the seven years since the initial testing, no wells have been plugged \u2014 but that may soon change. The Navajo Nation cobbled together settlement money from the Gold King Mine spill<\/a> of 2015 and from the Water Infrastructure Improvement for the Nation Act<\/a> to plug three wells: two in Utah that spill arsenic-laden water into the San Juan River, and the original nuisance well that still washes out the road near a tourist spot. As for the other 40-some wells, they\u2019re still flowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
An unplugged orphan well in the Rattlesnake Oil Field in northwestern New Mexico.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing, Austin says that in 2020 the BLM and EPA asked his office if it had any oil wells that needed to be plugged. \u201cWe gave those lists to BLM and U.S. EPA and didn\u2019t hear anything back from them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And since the original 2018 survey by the federal EPA, Austin has found another 12 mystery wells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked about the federal government\u2019s trust responsibility to the Navajo Nation regarding these wells, Mikayla Rumph, an EPA spokesperson, said the agency \u201cconsulted with multiple tribal, federal and state agencies to gather historical information and develop a sampling plan for all of the wells. After the results came in, EPA conducted extensive local outreach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eleanor Smith, Din\u00e9, said, \u201cThis [EPA] report specifically, this is the first time I\u2019m seeing it, first time I\u2019m hearing of it.\u201d She has lived much of her life in chapters (the most local form of Navajo government) with some of these wells. She works with T\u00f3 Nizh\u00f3n\u00ed \u00c1n\u00ed<\/a>, or Sacred Water Speaks, a Navajo environmental group active in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt should be posted next to these wells. It should have been posted in the chapter houses. It should have been put on the agenda at the chapter meeting to educate the public,\u201d she said. \u201cOur leaders, they should have been at the forefront to say, \u2018Hey, there\u2019s this study and it\u2019s saying that the wells \u2026 are contaminated.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Austin said that signs were posted in chapter houses near the most polluted wells.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nicole Horseherder, the executive director and a founding member of T\u00f3 Nizh\u00f3n\u00ed \u00c1n\u00ed, said the Navajo Nation government \u201chas to go after the [federal] EPA and say, \u2018Look, you allowed this. You need to fork over some money so we can hire consultants and get this cleaned up properly.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Bureau of Land Management spokesperson said that questions directed to BLM were answered in the EPA response. The Bureau of Indian Affairs did not respond to Capital & Main\u2019s questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s early June<\/strong>, and Austin takes a 30-minute drive from his office to the Rattlesnake Oil Field, making a tour of wells he has found over the years. The sky arcs overhead, deep blue as vast thunderheads rim the horizon. Stopping to open and close a cattle gate, he says he\u2019s stayed with the Navajo Nation\u2019s EPA for all these years because they treat him well. \u201cThis is another reason,\u201d he said, nodding toward the great volcanic crag of Shiprock. \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful out here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After cautiously navigating his pickup over notional dirt roads, he arrives at Rattlesnake 17: four tapered concrete and steel pillars surrounding a pipe splashing sulfur-scented water. The water looks clear, but the ground is stained orange. Another hint that the water is not fit for drinking: The well sits on cattle range, and there are no hoofprints around. But the well does have a postcard view of Shiprock in the distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Austin calls Rattlesnake 17 a nuisance well. The nearest homeowners, about a mile away, told him they don\u2019t mind if it\u2019s plugged. A century ago, Rattlesnake 17 was an oil well in the middle of the Rattlesnake community, a company town built for those working on the 200-some oil wells in the surrounding oilfield, one of New Mexico\u2019s first<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bricks and bolts and other rusted bits and bobs lie scattered in all directions. The ground is white rock scraped clean of topsoil a hundred years ago for some kind of building. When the oil stopped and the people left, the land was not cleaned up. Austin said, \u201cIt\u2019s like an archaeology site.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Steve Austin stands next to Rattlesnake 17, an abandoned oil well that now spews water in the Rattlesnake Oil Field.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Austin first found Rattlesnake 17 in early 2018. When looking for old wells, he follows a simple process: Scan Google Earth images for one of two things \u2014 either unexpected green oases in the broad tan landscape, or the white rock of barren ground like that near Rattlesnake 17. Then check it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has tried comparing what he finds with various New Mexico well databases, old maps and court records, but wells often aren\u2019t where they\u2019re recorded being, if there\u2019s any record at all. \u201cIt\u2019s really confusing,\u201d he said. And there\u2019s no telling what\u2019s in the wells he finds, if anything. His first test of any new find is simple. \u201cThere\u2019s a hole. Drop a rock. There\u2019s a splash!\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 100 yards away from Rattlesnake 17, the next well clearly wasn\u2019t plugged. He looks around for a rock, bends over and drops it in the open pipe. Four seconds later it booms in some kind of tank at the bottom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another 50 yards: a dirt hole, maybe a foot across. He drops a rock and, after a second, it hits something with a \u201cplop.\u201d Maybe water? Maybe something else? He doesn\u2019t have the money to sample every well. \u201cNobody has enough funding to sample every water body that\u2019s out there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another 50 yards: a rusty pipe with a closed valve on top, surrounded several feet in all directions by the remnants of an oil spill that\u2019s turned into an inches-thick scab of black-brown tar. There is no marker, and Austin says there are no records for a well in this spot \u2014 it\u2019s a true orphan well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a big leak, but clearly it\u2019s got issues,\u201d Austin said. \u201cAnd who knows what it\u2019s doing in the water formations?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Austin stands next to a leaking oil well in the Rattlesnake Oil Field.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Most of the wells in the Rattlesnake field were plugged at some point. Five-foot rust-brown poles pierce the surrounding landscape marking plugged wells below \u2014 those are known factors. But what of the old, unplugged wells: Who drilled them? What were they for? Are they leaking underground? What are they leaking?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not known exactly how many wells were drilled over the years. It\u2019s not known exactly how many were properly plugged when they finally played out. It\u2019s not known how many of those plugs may have failed over the decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to know how bad the problem is,\u201d Austin said. \u201cIs it an emergency situation? No. Should someone deal with it? Yes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* * *<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loretta Johnson still thinks of her cattle. She and her husband had 16 when they had to sell them a few years ago. When he got sick, she couldn\u2019t tend them alone. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of sad when you drop them off\u201d at the auction yard, she said. \u201cSome of them had cute names like Looney Tunes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGood thing we didn\u2019t eat any of those cows,\u201d Johnson said, thinking of hidden dangers in their flesh. Contaminated water isn\u2019t the first hidden health threat that colors how many of the Navajo Nation view the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just like the uranium,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the 1940s to the 1980s<\/a>, working on federal contracts, companies dug up nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore from more than 500 mines on the reservation. Families often lived close to the mines where they worked and were generally poorly notified or uninformed of the danger. The health effects continue today<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson\u2019s life has spanned most of the Nation\u2019s decades-long history with uranium mining and its aftermath \u2014 sick people and contaminated land. She says when she was a young girl, her father built the foundation of their rural house and an outbuilding with yellow rock \u2014 uranium ore from a nearby mine where he worked. She says that one day men wearing protective clothing came and tore the house down and buried the rock, and her family moved to Shiprock town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An
Johnson stands by the tainted well where she used to draw water for her cattle.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was not good for our health and our people didn\u2019t know,\u201d she said. She knows a couple of women her age who lived near the mines and died of cancer \u2014 a common local story, and one that gets her thinking about what she recently learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said, \u201cThey say [the water\u2019s] not safe, it\u2019s contaminated,\u201d but people watered their animals at the wells and \u201cyou don\u2019t know which persons butchered their cows or sheep or goats to eat.\u201d She remembers a family that owned a trading post and traded for sheep and goats; they all got stomach cancer in their 30s, she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was weird,\u201d Johnson added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the nature of traditional ranching combined with the ongoing drought puts more pressure on the remaining wells \u2014 including polluted wells. \u201cIf they\u2019re contaminated, they really should be shut down,\u201d Smith, with T\u00f3 Nizh\u00f3n\u00ed \u00c1n\u00ed, said. \u201cBut I know a lot of times, even in uranium areas, people are so desperate for water that they\u2019ll even drink the contaminated uranium water. So it\u2019s not a good situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the big problems with the Navajo Nation is that they do not understand that no one is looking out for them,\u201d said Horseherder of T\u00f3 Nizh\u00f3n\u00ed \u00c1n\u00ed. \u201cNot the government, not the Department of Interior, not the State of Arizona [where the majority of the Navajo Nation sits] and not the company\u201d that drilled the well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years, her group has fought to protect tribal water rights while fighting against coal mining and other fossil fuel developments on the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t get a handle on this, we\u2019re going to be living in a toxic dump site,\u201d Horseherder said. \u201cI truly think that it\u2019s intentional. It\u2019s intentional towards Indigenous people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story was originally published at Capital & Main<\/a>, a NMPBS partner.<\/em> Copyright 2025 Capital & Main.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Old oil wells on the reservation spew chemical-laden water. The feds have done little to honor treaty obligations to clean them up. By Jerry Redfern, Capital & Main This story was originally published at Capital & Main, a NMPBS partner. On a warm evening in early June, Loretta Johnson pointed her white Chevy Silverado with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":47506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10906],"tags":[10907],"class_list":["post-47503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-partner-stories","tag-partner-stories"],"yoast_head":"\nOn the Navajo Nation, the List of Mystery Wells Continues to Grow - New Mexico In Focus<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newmexicopbs.org\/productions\/newmexicoinfocus\/on-the-navajo-nation-the-list-of-mystery-wells-continues-to-grow\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On the Navajo Nation, the List of Mystery Wells Continues to Grow - New Mexico In Focus\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Old oil wells on the reservation spew chemical-laden water. 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