Peabody Energy mined coal at the Black Mesa plateau in the southwestern United States from the 1960s until 2019.
In 1964, Peabody Energy (then Peabody Western Coal), a publicly traded energy company based in the Midwestern United States, signed a contract with the Navajo Tribe and two years later with the Hopi Tribe, allowing the company mineral rights and use of an aquifer.
The contract was negotiated by prominent natural resources attorney John Sterling Boyden, who claimed to be representing the Hopi Tribe while actually on the payroll of Peabody.
With the pipeline operating, Peabody pumped an average of 3 million gallons of water from the Navajo Aquifer every day.
[3] The aquifer is the main source of potable groundwater for the Navajo and Hopi tribes, who use the water for farming and livestock as well as drinking and other domestic uses.