...The Navajo Nation is largely rural with few developed towns and a population density of six people within a square mile, compared with the US average of 345 people. Approximately one-third of Navajo homes lack piped water and few are connected to a power grid. Bringing utilities to dozens of small communities connected by spiderwebs of unmaintained dirt roads has long been cost prohibitive for the Navajo government. And even though the Biden administration has approved millions of dollars in funding for water infrastructure on drought-stricken reservations, Tulley-Cordova says it is just a “drop in the bucket” toward the $4bn the nation’s department of water resources estimates it will take to bring “universal access to clean water” to the entire Navajo Nation.
“When the Colorado River compact was established a century ago, tribes were not signatories because we weren’t considered to be citizens of the United States,” said Tulley-Cordova. “We need to be part of that conversation now.”
...But solutions on how to address the Navajo Nation’s water problem are hard to come by, not only because the state of Arizona is already using its full share of the ever-shrinking Colorado River allotment, but also because many traditional Navajo members don’t want the nation participating in the reservoir-based western water system. For these members, stopping a free-flowing river is a spiritual violation that is contributing to the climate crisis.
“The US government dammed us up by putting us on the reservation, just like they dammed the Colorado,” says Mulford. “What the government is doing to water they are also doing to us.”...MORE
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