Navajo Nation takes brunt of mine leak

Russell Begaye stared into a hole in the side of a Colorado mountain, watching yellow water contaminated with heavy metals gush out and race down a slope toward a creek that feeds rivers critical to survival on the largest Native American reservation in the United States and in other parts of the Southwest.

At the Gold King Mine, Begaye, president of the Navajo Nation, couldn't help but see the concerned faces of his people - farmers who no longer had water for corn crops and ranchers who had to scramble to get their cattle, sheep and goats away from the polluted San Juan River.

"We were told that the water was clearing up and getting back to normal," he said. "This is what (the US Environmental Protection Agency) was telling us. We wanted to go up there as close as we could to the source. We wanted our people to see the water is still yellow."