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A group of Tuscaroras discuss water |
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NYPA reservoir taken from Tuscaroras |
Last week, the Niagara Falls Reporter interviewed Doug Anderson of the Tuscarora Nation to examine an issue facing every Tuscarora living on the reservation today: drinking water.
After interviewing Mr. Anderson, who is streets commissioner for the reservation, an unpaid position, the Reporter interviewed numerous residents.
We learned that most, if not all of the approximately 1,000 residents living in about 370 homes do not drink water from their wells because they believe the water table is polluted. There is no publicly-treated water running to the reservation.
In the backyards of many of these rural homes and mobile homes are 1,000 - 1,500 water tanks with pipes and pumps that bring water to homes. Many residents buy water from one of two Tuscarora men who buy water from Niagara County, fill their small water trucks from a fire hydrant, and then deliver it.
Fifteen-hundred gallons of water costs approximately $30, according to Jeannie Crogan of Mount Hope Rd., and may last about a month, depending on usage.
Some like Ms. Crogan do not trust the well water at all. Others, including Chief Leo Henry, buy water for drinking, but use their wells for washing clothes or showering.
Only one man we interviewed said he drank well water but also bought water for drinking. When asked how a Tuscarora could have safe water, he said, “move into the city.”
Mr. Anderson, the brother of businessman Joseph ‘Smokin’ Joe’ Anderson, believes the water supply was polluted in the 1960’s when the New York Power Authority (NYPA) built the hydro power plant and reservoir, using contaminated material that leeched into the water, and by the U.S. government building a fallout shelter under the Tuscarora School which had gas storage tanks that leaked into school wells. Mr. Anderson said students drank well water from 1977 to 1984 with benzene in it.
Mr. Anderson filed complaints with various government agencies. According to Niagara County Dept. of Health records, Mr. Anderson prompted them to make tests. One was made by the Sear- Brown Group of Lewiston on Nov. 10, 1993, that showed “inorganic analyte lead (PB)… exceed(s) NY State Dept of Health drinking water standards at (every) sample site.” Benzene and methylene chloride were found.
After gasoline was proven to be in school wells, the chiefs, Anderson claims, drained them into Fish Creek “and that is why everyone has gasoline in their water,” he said.
The chiefs, while acknowledging gasoline in the water, say it may have come from other sources.
On top of leeching hazardous waste and gasoline in the water, there is believed to be radioactive contaminants buried under True Road, Mount Hope and other roads.
One Tuscarora woman near the reservoir said, “When the government wants to get rid of hazardous waste they put it on the reservation. After all we’re just Indians. We don’t matter.”
Sitting with a group of Tuscaroras across from the Baptist Church, they tell you about incidents of cancer.
They have no studies. But they name names.
There was Ellis P---, and Louis P---, a family of four and three of them died, one said. The K--- family and Edna P----and her daughter who died at 14. The L--- family, the mother died.
Across the street is the H-- family.
Jimmy B--, he died when he was in his 50’s. Then you cut across the road and there is Elvis J--- mother, daughter and the boy died of cancer. The whole family gone.
Then you go to the P---’s. Out of a family of seven daughters, six of them died of cancer. Across the road, she had cancer, says another.
Then catty-corner you had Alfred W---, several of them died of heart and cancer. Then you cut across the road to the B---’s. The daughter and granddaughter, the father and the mother, they all got cancer.
Then you got the P-- family and they have cancer. Then the J---s. All the boys, Sonny, Ruben and Roger, dead.
How old?
They were in their 30’s. Nobody died of old age.
Mr. Anderson estimates installing water lines would begin at a million dollars per mile and he estimates 25 miles of road. But that does not take into consideration radioactive contamination clean-up which could cost more.
Mr. Anderson insists the U.S. government and New York State “bought off” the chiefs who, when they had the chance, did not demand the government investigate what NYPA did.
Circumstantial evidence suggests Anderson may have something.
In 2003, Chief Leo Henry signed a memorandum of understanding with NYPA Chairmen Louis Ciminelli. The agreement set forth that payments would be made to the Nation in return for the nation agreeing to re-license NYPA. The state condemned (or stole, depending on your view) 497 acres of reservation land in the 1960’s to build their reservoir for the power plant.
One sentence in the 2003 memorandum reads: “Environmental data is required for re-licensing.”
Two years later, Chief Henry, on behalf of the nation, decided to waive the required environmental study.
The “Final Environmental Impact Statement,” issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in December, 2006, states, “The Tuscarora Nation has not raised environmental justice concerns, and we assume, by (Henry) signing their agreement with the Power Authority, their concerns about the project have been addressed."
In the agreement it says, “payments to the nation (were made) for unspecified purposes.”
Interestingly, on Dec. 31, 2005, Chief Henry received a check on behalf of the nation from NYPA in the amount of $5 million. According to information received from a freedom of information request filed with NYPA, the “Tuscarora Nation of Indians," received more than $12,484,752 since 2005 and the money was and is under Chief Henry’s control.
According to sources from the tribal council, the nation currently has more than $9.5 million in accounts. Also, the nation receives more than $700,000 per year from NYPA.
The Reporter visited Chief Henry at his modest home but he declined to speak on the record.
The Tuscarora Environment Program (TEP) is headed by Neil Patterson Jr., who is named as the representative of the Haudenosaunee Environmental task force. Had the chiefs and their environmental head, Patterson, demanded environmental studies before re-licensing the NYPA, it might have shown what, if any, environmental injustices were caused by NYPA and required NYPA to clean it up.
When we contacted Patterson, he said, “I have nothing to say to you. You want to print lies about me and my family.” He hung up.
Mr. Anderson said he has been invited by the United Nations to draft a resolution to address issues of environmental injustices allegedly perpetrated by New York State and the U.S. government and, of course, the lack of safe drinking water and the long list of premature deaths on the reservation.
“What the government has done to the Tuscarora people is nothing less than genocide,” he said.
(Next in series: living with cancer) |