Environment

A historic water settlement could ensure more water for Native people in the Southwest

Nevada Public Radio | By Yvette Fernandez

Published October 15, 2024 at 12:34 PM PDT

A woman wearing a t-shirt and a face mask and gloves attaches a hose to a water tank. She is outside under a tree and there is a brilliant blue sky. — Raynelle Hoskie attaches a hose to a water pump to fill tanks in her truck outside a tribal office on the Navajo reservation, April 20, 2020, in Tuba City, Ariz. The Navajo Nation, a Native American tribe with one of the largest outstanding claims to water in the Colorado River basin, is closing in on a settlement with more than a dozen parties, putting it on a path to piping water to tens of thousands of tribal members in Arizona who still live without it. Negotiating terms include water rights not only for the Navajo Nation but the neighboring Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes in the northeastern corner of the state.

A third of the Navajo Nation population doesn’t have access to water on the reservation.Hauling bottled water is common.

So the Navajo Nation, along with the Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes, want the government to authorize the country’s largest Indian water rights settlement. It would provide water infrastructure to hundreds of thousands of indigenous people and also resolves water claims made by those tribes.

Navajo spokesperson Justin Ahasteen says settling this decades-long legal dispute will be a positive step forward for Native and non-native communities.

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“It provides that certainty as we continue to look at ways to conserve the existing water usage and it helps promote the Navajo Nation to be more self-reliant,” said Ahasteen.

Ahasteen said at least a third of their residents don't have access to running water and the pandemic disproportionately affected them.

“The lack of water really exacerbated the COVID pandemic for our people. And at one point the Navajo Nation had the highest rate of death on a per capita basis, because we simply could not wash our hands,” said Ahasteen.

The Water Rights Settlement must be approved by Congress. If passed, the $5 billion in federal funding would allow the infrastructure effort to begin, with a projected completion date of 2040. It also solidifies the Navajo Nation’s water rights to the Colorado River's Upper and Lower Basins.

Accessing water will not only improve health and sanitation, it will also improve their economic opportunities, said Ahasteen.

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This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.