The Navajos of southeastern Utah are worried and angry over the demolition of the old Aneth Gas Plant and cancer-causing asbestos it contained.
The trouble started last year, according to an article in last week's Navajo Times.
Sara Maryboy, who lives in nearby Montezuma Creek and owns an oil-field service company, brought in a 23-man crew last August to help a Chevron subcontractor demolish the shuttered gas plant. The workers saw sparkly asbestos fibers as soon as they stepped onto the work site, where demolition was already under way.
"The whole staff there said, 'This is wrong'," recalled Maryboy, who promptly called the tribe's worker-safety office. "If the place is not safe for me or my guys, we're out of there. So, we pulled out."
The Navajo Nation Occupational Health and Safety Office agreed that asbestos had been released at the site and shut it down from August to December while it was cleaned up.
And, although the worker-safety office proposed a fine of $15 million for 65 violations, a confidential agreement this spring between the Navajo Nation and the demolition subcontractor Envirocon Inc., cut the fine to $11,000, the Navajo Times article said.
Now the Utah Navajos are frustrated with their leadership, headquartered in Window Rock, N.M.
Neither Envirocon nor tribal officials would comment, but Navajos who live in Montezuma Creek fear their community and their workers were in danger.
"We are struggling because nobody cares," said Kenneth Maryboy, a San Juan County, Utah, commissioner and a member of the Navajo Tribal Council. "It's really sad that the Navajo Nation is not doing anything to help us out."
At Maryboy's urging last week, the Utah Navajo Commission called for special meetings where the Navajo Nation Occupational Health and Safety Administration, joined by the tribal Environmental Protection Agency and the federal EPA, can talk about the work done so far and what else might need to be done to ensure all concerns have been addressed.
Envirocon, a cleanup company represented in the penalty negotiations by former Navajo President Albert Hale, did not respond to calls seeking comment. The Missoula, Mont.-based company also did work on the Altas tailings pile cleanup near Moab, according to its Web page.
And the tribal OSHA, which fielded Sara Maryboy's report about the mishandled asbestos and which disputes some of the representations in the Navajo Times , also declined to discuss the case beyond saying tribal regulators have done as much as they can to protect the community.
"I will not further comment on this matter," said Paul Spruhan, an assistant attorney general at the Navajo Nation Department of Justice.
But Sara Maryboy, whose crews had been doing work at the former Chevron gas plant for years, said Envirocon should have known at the start that the plant would be riddled with asbestos and that special cleanup procedures were required. Instead, asbestos was allowed to get into the air and the soil and put the children and other Utah Navajos at risk, she said.
"We are the forgotten child of the Navajo Nation," she said, adding that she is still concerned for her workers and the community.
"Those people who don't know anything about asbestos, I feel bad for them down the road," said Kenneth Maryboy, adding that knowledgeable, Navajo contractors should have headed up the job from the outset. "I am outraged about this."
"The political leaders [in Window Rock] don't care," he added. "Utah Navajos are treated like outsiders, like nobody."
Long considered a miracle mineral prized for its versatility as insulation, asbestos lost its wide appeal when workers became ill -- often decades later -- from breathing it. It causes lung cancer, asbestosis and a variety of other lung diseases.
