The profiteers will sell anything for a buck. They only see money. They are broken people and they break everything they touch. And the rest of us let them have their way every time.

Chaco: A World Heritage site faces fracking | Albuquerque Journal News By Andy Gulliford / Writers On The Range PUBLISHED: Friday, March 20, 2015 at 12:05 am

We are preparing to ravage a place before we know all its archaeological secrets. Every decade, more is revealed about Chaco’s complex culture. In the 1970s, for example, low-flying reconnaissance flights gave us the first hints of a vast Chaco road system, with well-made roads about 30 feet wide and laid out in straight lines for miles. And yet the Chacoans had no draft animals or wheeled carts. In the 1980s, scientists proved that one of the world’s only lunar calendars set to the 18.6-year cycle of the moon had been etched on boulders near the top of Chaco’s Fajada Butte.

In the 1990s, Anna Sofaer and the Solstice Project verified that Chaco’s buildings had been constructed to align with solstices and equinoxes of the sun, as well as to lunar cycles. In the past decade, using electron microscopes to analyze smashed pottery sherds from drinking vessels, scientists determined that, during ceremonies, Chacoans drank chocolate from cacao beans traded on foot north from Meso-America.

Who knows what else we might learn about one of the world’s great cultures? Unfortunately, our modern addiction to oil is damaging the landscape faster than it can be studied. Sofaer is creating a new film about these ecological threats. She says, “We filmed on the ground the ravages of many newly constructed roads, pipelines and well pads transforming the landscape east and north of Chaco Canyon. Some sites were within 15 miles of the canyon, where we found archaeological artifacts. On overcast nights, the skies above this area are invaded by an eerie reddish glow from the fracking rigs.”

With oil and gas revenues falling, this is a good time for Congress to draw a protective boundary around Chaco, and agree to full mineral withdrawal of adjacent oil and gas leases on BLM and Navajo allotment lands.

Chaco: A World Heritage site faces fracking | Albuquerque Journal News