The revolution will not be silenced

The first public comment meeting on Chaco Canyon took place on Zoom. The issue at hand: a plan to allow oil and gas drilling in the Gran Chaco region of northwestern New Mexico—ancestral and sacred lands for Native tribes, including the Pueblo and Navajo. This was on May 14. In the US, many were still under stay-at-home orders and businesses remained closed as families mourned the loss of dozens of loved ones to COVID-19. The price of oil, meanwhile, had plummeted. On April 20, a barrel of traded oil was worth less than nothing. Under these circumstances, one would have thought that plans to expand oil and gas drilling could wait. On the contrary, the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) under the Trump administration seemed more eager than ever to accelerate oil and gas projects.

To organize the virtual meeting, the BLM turned to EMPSI, a private contractor that describes itself as “a trusted partner helping agencies and industry navigate challenging regulatory and market conditions to build a better tomorrow.” People joined the meeting either by calling a phone number (if you had cell service) or via Zoom (if you had internet access). You couldn’t see other participants, but if you were on Zoom, you could leave a question in the Q&A chat and look at the presentation slides as a hover head read aloud what was on them. Then came the public comment portion of the meeting, where people had to perform acrobatics to circumvent technical hurdles and request that their microphones be unmuted to allow them to share their comments. When people had a chance to speak, a three-minute timer appeared on a screen above their names. When the timer ran out, they were muted again.

During the question-and-answer session, people asked reasonable questions, such as whether the recent Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) considered the drop in oil and gas prices. Would this Zoom meeting be the only one the BLM would hold to fulfill its public engagement obligation under federal law? Would the EIS—a three-volume document, including four appendices, and totaling 259 pages of dense language—be translated into Ute? A BLM representative used a repetitive list of topics to avoid giving clear answers. Frustrations boiled over during the testimony.

“Why are these comment meetings taking place now, and virtually, when the Navajo Nation and many Pueblos are in crisis and do not have internet access to participate?” asked one participant.

“Postpone so people can grieve the loss of others. We have limited internet and they know it. We are being silenced. Why now? Because we are all distracted,” said another.

The tribes living in the Chaco region had previously requested a postponement but had not received a response from the BLM. One commentator testified that communities in the Chaco area had already suffered from poor air quality due to existing oil and gas extraction, and that the EIS failed to consider socioeconomic factors or the fact that oil and gas prices have plummeted. “This area is devastated, and it’s time to think about the post-oil and gas world,” another participant said. Another added, “We don’t need these wells on our ancestral lands. I want you to please consider stopping.”

Chaco isn't the only place in the United States where oil and gas projects are being fast-tracked on public lands right now. Far away, in the northernmost part of Alaska, within the Arctic Circle, a ConocoPhillips plan is moving forward to build five oil drilling sites, 350 miles of pipeline, two airstrips, two aggregate mines, and hundreds of miles of new roads. Known as Project Willow, this massive operation would be located right next to Teshekpuk Lake, home to polar bear dens, migratory birds, and the Teshekpuk caribou herd. The Alaska Bureau of Land Management held a series of virtual public comment meetings to gather feedback on Project Willow during April and May, amid the pandemic.

“Before COVID-19 hit, the [tribal] leadership had demanded that BLM hold face-to-face consultations to get more public input, but they canceled three times. Then COVID-19 hit, and they went ahead anyway,” says Martha Itta, tribal administrator of Nuiqsut Native Village, one of six villages that rely directly on Teshekpuk’s caribou for food. Itta told me she did her best to be heard during the virtual public comment meeting, but she was silenced before it ended.

“Our community has dealt with oil and gas for more than 40 years,” he says. “My community likes face-to-face consultation; it makes us stronger and more powerful to look people in the face, in person, rather than not being able to see who is responsible and meet those who make decisions on our behalf.”

Itta said only four community members testified during the virtual public hearing for Project Willow, compared to 30 to 50 people who would participate in in-person meetings before the pandemic. “Having these meetings during a global crisis is causing me more fear and stress,” Itta said. “We are now 110% focused on the health and safety of our community. This whole process of virtual hearings during a global crisis is an injustice to my community.”

Siqiniq Maupin was born in Utqiaġvik but grew up in Fairbanks and Anchorage. Her grandparents are from Nuiqsut and Utqiaġvik. Today, she is an Iñupiaq mother living in Fairbanks, Alaska's second-largest city. She has attended several public hearings to protect the North Slope from further oil and gas development, and during the BLM's virtual public hearing for the Willow Project, she asked repeated questions that went unanswered. She lamented how inhumane the entire meeting was.

“In person, you could come in, and if you wanted to comment, you could register, and if you didn’t, you could just sit and watch. There wasn’t a timer; if enough people commented and there was enough time left, they’d open it up for questions. During these virtual meetings, I was completely alone after having to expose myself emotionally for three weeks. Normally, I could go out to dinner with my friends and get support. Instead, now I’m going through this on my own, crying in front of my kids, trying to do this work while also dealing with everything else going on, with no community solidarity. At public meetings, there would be three of us single mothers, our kids running around together; it felt like a community, and we had strength. Now it feels very lonely and depressing.”

“This land was stolen and now we are asking people to fight to protect it again, on our own,” Maupin says.

Similar frustrations are unfolding in Bristol Bay, where the Pebble mine, an open-pit copper mining project, threatens some of the world's best salmon runs. The mine had been blocked under the Obama administration, but is now back in play under Trump.

In the last five years, there have been more than 2.5 million comments in support of protecting Bristol Bay and halting the Pebble mine. Sometimes, when enough people make enough noise directed at the right politician or institution, change happens. In 2001, the U.S. Forest Service adopted the Roadless Area Conservation Rule after widespread support: 1.7 million public comments gathered at more than 600 public meetings. And the millions in support of protecting Bristol Bay also helped—at least until President Trump and Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy met on June 26 of last year, and Trump’s new EPA released a document the next day saying that Clean Water Act protections would be eliminated for Bristol Bay, with no scientific justification to support the decision. Since then, the Trump administration has encouraged the Pebble project to apply for mining permits and an environmental impact statement will be released in mid-June, the fastest EIA in Alaskan history.

“The EIS is corrupt to the core,” says Shoren Brown of the Alaska Heritage Campaign. “They ignored tribal consultation requirements. They completely ignored the possibility of a catastrophic dam failure. They ignored all the problems and magically concluded that 10 billion tons of toxic waste won’t harm the salmon.”

These virtual public hearings not only make it difficult for people to participate, but they are also used to check boxes and brush aside concerns. “The federal government can put barriers in place regarding how this project is developed on the ground, add stipulations that protect Alaska Natives and salmon, and ensure that the world’s most valuable salmon fishery doesn’t become a toxic waste dump,” says Brown. “They’re listening to industry lobbyists instead of millions of Americans.” These projects are being rushed through under this administration because big industry players can circumvent legal requirements and get a stamp of approval that allows them to do whatever they want, without meaningful regulation to minimize and offset the impacts. In the case of Bristol Bay, the Pebble project has spent more than $11 million over time on lobbying—$2.9 million this year alone—to ensure its mining projects make it through the state and federal permitting processes. When it comes to monetary interests, the representative process is highly distorted.

It's not that activists and participants in virtual meetings are giving up easily. With digital town halls proving to be little more than an item on the BLM's checklist, they are distancing themselves from these official processes with tactics such as monitoring and exposing various decision-makers or companies that may be sensitive to public pressure. This appears to have worked in Utah, where earlier this year, reacting to a surge of public concern (nearly 2,000 messages in 24 hours), the governor of Utah asked the BLM to remove two parcels of land encompassing Moab's iconic Slickrock Trail from an oil and gas exploration bid. In this case, the change came about by applying pressure directly to the governor.

In Bristol Bay, organizers are awaiting the final environmental impact statement. There won't be another period for public comment after that, so Brown and other local activists are pressuring the EPA to halt the Pebble mine using Clean Water Act protections. They don't have high hopes that Trump's EPA will veto what has come out of Trump's Army Corps of Engineers, but they believe their best bet is to make some noise and get people's attention before the election. “I don't think anyone in Bristol Bay has any faith in the Army Corps of Engineers and the Trump White House anymore,” Brown says. “They've broken the law, ignored the public, and done favors for every dirty lobbyist in Washington, D.C. It's time for new leadership in the White House.”

As for Chaco, relentless pressure from the tribes led to a 120-day extension of the public comment period.

However, conservationists and community organizers admit they're tired of the comments. “We've already commented,” says Brown. “We're a 12-year-old campaign, we've generated millions of comments, and the results are there. We're trying to be careful and ask for people's help when it really matters; the Trump administration has thrown millions of comments in the trash.” And now they have to adapt to a world of Zoom protests.

“We’re a very social species, and there are many different ways people can feel marginalized and many constructs we’ve created that push some people up and others down,” says Dorsa Amir, an evolutionary anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at Boston College. Humans have the cultural apparatus of governments and social structures that other animals don’t, which means we have the power to change laws and people’s behavior. “If we wanted to, we could regulate agencies differently and promote the kinds of decisions that might generate long-term gains for future generations,” she adds. “The car is there, but they won’t let the right people drive it.”