Beverly Maxwell was traveling out of state when she received a phone call Dec. 11 from a neighbor about oil overflowing onto her grazing land on the Navajo Nation.

A worker from the Shiprock Chapter was out grading the roadway, Navajo Route 5071 northwest of the city, as a part of maintenance and hit the Running Horse Pipeline, which transports crude oil from Utah to New Mexico.

Because there was no emergency shutoff valve near the site, the leaking oil would continue to flow for about a half-mile, Maxwell said.

“I don’t have information as to when that flow stopped, but the flow was enough to travel at least a half a mile down from the pipeline that was breached here,” she said.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs typically had maintained the road but had not been doing so in the past years, Maxwell said. She said her efforts to contact the local chapter house and Navajo Nation met little to no response.

On Dec. 19, more than than a week after the pipeline was damaged, Maxwell received a phone call from Navajo Nation EPA and a public affairs representative from Navajo Nation Oil and Gas. She said she received information but no resolution to the leak.

Navajo Nation Oil and Gas Co., which owns Running Horse Pipeline, was not responsive to calls from Tri-City Record.

The grazing land at the site of the leak is used as a summer sheep camp in Maxwell’s family. The mesa near the Colorado state line is their winter sheep camp.

“That’s how life was generations before us, before me,” she said.

The land is home to Maxwell and her family, including her sister, nephews and nieces. It is central to their lives.

“We as impacted families here in the area, over time we’re the ones that are going to be here having to worry about whether our livestock are going to be safe, whether our health is going to be safe, our grand kids,” she said.

There is a major irrigation canal that eventually connects back to the San Juan River, Maxwell said, and a pond at the other side of the irrigation canal waters livestock and wildlife.

Maxwell said the livestock that normally graze freely have been contained in pens to ensure they do not feed on contaminated plants.

Kangaroo rats, rattlesnakes, hawks, cottontail rabbits, lizards and wild horses are just a few of the wildlife that inhabit the land.

“That irrigation canal runs and services farmers, it services the farmers across the river at Gadii’ah Chapter,” she said.

Janene Yazzie, a human rights activist and co-founder and CEO of Sixth World Solutions, helped run the news conference Wednesday. According to her Sixth World bio, she works to “advance economic, environmental and social justice” through community programs and projects.

At the news conference Wednesday, she introduced Broderick Mark, who lives close to the site.

“I live two football fields in that direction and when I woke up in the morning, I smelled it,” he said.

He added that the site of the pipeline construction is a bus stop for children in the area, and his nieces and nephews from the area said they could not go outside to play because of the odor.

An elder driving past after the news conference at the site spoke with Yazzie about the oil leak. He said that he had visited the hospital because of the odor.

A news conference was held Wednesday at the site, giving speakers the chance to voice their frustrations surrounding the oil leak and with getting answers from leaders.

Joseph Hernandez, community organizer for NAEVA (formerly known as Native American Voters Alliance Education Project), recalled an oil spill that occurred in Red Valley that flowed for 3 miles. At the time of that spill, there was also a lack of communication from elected leaders, he said.

“We’re going to see a lot more of this stuff, of human error, because of these pipelines,” he said, “If we’re not educating ourselves about the harm of these pipelines, then we’re not going to know who to contact.”

Hernandez said most of the community members were not aware of the Running Horse Pipeline, which transports crude oil from the Greater Aneth Field in southeast Utah to a terminus in southeast New Mexico. The system consists of three 80,000 barrel tanks, 87 miles of 16 mainline and 38 miles of gathering lines, and a capacity of 25,000 barrels a days, according to the Navajo Nation Oil and Gas Co.

“The best way to get involved is to go to your chapter meetings and ask questions, that’s what we need, we need people to go to the chapter meetings and ask elected officials if they know what’s happening,” he said.

Hazel James, member of Diné Centered Research and Evaluation, began with taking notice of the land, she described as beautiful.

James asked those in attendance how as a people, they are supposed to take care of their land when they have oil leaking in their backyards. She also took notice of the absence of elected officials.

“We're not taking care of Mother Earth, Father Sky, the air, the water, and all of the all the beauty that we have, that creator had made for us, we have to do a better job,” she said, “We have to learn to live on the land as much as possible without as much energy as we're all using.”

Wendy Atcitty of NAEVA and DCRE, said it was astonishing to see the beautiful hills and rain but to also see the construction.

“How many times are we going to have to see that and how many times are we going to have to explain that, ” she said.

Atcitty said leadership needs to be held accountable for the livelihood of generational relatives to come from family members to the plants and animals.

Kyle Jim, of the nonprofit Navajo social justice organization Diné Introspective, spoke to the unknown factors of the oil leakage.

Jim said if leadership continues to choose pipelines, contamination will continue to spread.

Yazzie said the region is a breadbasket for the community providing local food.

“When these energy projects get pushed through our communities, we are told time and time again, that it's for the benefit of our people, that there are little to no risk,” Yazzie said. “And yet, when something like this happens, we have to work as community members as community organizers to bring awareness to this to get people to respond and take this seriously.”