MONTEZUMA WELL UNDER ATTACK AGAIN! PLEASE SIGN PETITION !
From Fred Shute
Montezuma Well National Monument is located in the Verde Valley in Northern Arizona. It is an ancient sacred and holy place and is a point of origination for the Hopi and Yavapai Indians . It is located between a large National Forest area of major archaeological significance and a small community always intent upon expansion, driven by the greed of the development industry. Montezuma Well is always under attack, as the development industry is constantly salivating over the prospect of expanding into the National Forest. Five years ago a group we formed called Friends of the Well defeated a massive shopping center development that was planned at the gates of the National Monument. No large real estate venture had ever been defeated by citizen innitiative in Yavapai County before.
Now, a commercial water company has drilled a deep well adjacent to Montezuma Well that draws from the same aquifer and has the capacity to pump over 1 million gallons a day. MW, a natural artesian formation, produces 1.1 million gallons each day. This new commercial well has a high probability of shifting the hydrologic system that feeds MW, endangering a sacred water sourse that has been important to humans for tens of thousands of years.
We are demanding, as the EPA and the National Park Service have asked, that an Environmental Impact Study be made on the potential impact of this commercial well . That does not seem like much to ask, does it? Yet development interests, including the Yavapai County Commissioners, the judiciary and the State of Arizona are bent on violating the laws that they themselves have established for any opportunity to increase tax revenues to increase their petty bureaucratic powers. In Arizona, development has always been essentially the only industry and they consider their right to exploit the land as sacrocanct.
This issue is important because these sacred places are essential connections to our source. The massive rape of Mother Gaia all over the world may well have already gone too far, but if we do not protect our most sacred places we might as well surrender.
You don't have to be a resident of Arizona to impact this issue. Montezuma Well in a National Monument. It belongs to all of us.
For more information about Montezuma Well www.friends-of-the-well.org
Thank you, Fred Shute
SIGN THE PETITION HERE:
http://www.change.org/petitions/protect-montezuma-well-national-monument-and-wet-beaver-creek