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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 5, 2022)
Wednesday, January 5, 2022 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon 21 Tribes see hope for clean water in infrastructure bill By Gillian Flaccus, Felicia Fonseca, and Becky Bohrer Associated Press WARM SPRINGS (AP) — Erland Suppah Jr. doesn’t trust what comes out of his faucet. Each week, Suppah and his girlfriend haul a half- dozen large jugs of water from a distribution center run by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs to their apartment for every- thing from drinking to cook- ing to brushing their teeth for their family of five. It’s the only way they feel safe after countless boil-water notices and weeks-long shut- offs on a reservation strug- gling with bursting pipes, failing pressure valves, and a geriatric water treatment plant. “About the only thing this water is good for is cleaning my floor and flushing down the toilet,’’ Suppah said of the tap water in the commu- nity 100 miles (160 kilome- ters) southeast of Portland. “That’s it.’’ In other, more remote tribal communities across the country, running water and indoor plumbing have never been a reality. Now, there’s a glimmer of hope in the form of a mas- sive infrastructure bill signed last month that White House officials say represents the largest single infusion of money into Indian Country. It includes $3.5 billion for the federal Indian Health Service, which provides health care to more than two million Native Americans and Alaska Natives, plus pots of money through other federal agencies for water projects. Tribal leaders say the funding, while welcome, won’t make up for decades of neglect from the U.S. gov- ernment, which has a respon- sibility to tribes under trea- ties and other acts to ensure access to clean water. A list of sanitation deficiencies kept by the Indian Health Service has more than 1,500 projects, including wells, septic systems, water storage tanks, and pipelines. Some projects would address water contamination from uranium or arsenic. About 3,300 homes in more than 30 rural Alaska communities lack indoor plumbing, according to a 2020 report. On the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation, about one-third of the 175,000 res- idents are without running water. Residents in these places haul water for basic tasks such as washing and cook- ing, sometimes driving long distances to reach commu- nal water stations. Instead of indoor bathrooms, many use outhouses or lined pails called “honey buckets’’ that they drag outside to empty. Some shower or do laundry at community sites known as “washeterias,’’ but the equip- ment can be unreliable and the fees expensive. “You look at two billion- aires competing to fly into outer space, yet we’re try- ing to get basic necessities in villages of interior Alaska,’’ said PJ Simon, a former chairman of an Alaska Native nonprofit corpora- tion called the Tanana Chiefs Conference. Many more tribal com- munities have indoor plumb- ing but woefully inadequate facilities and delivery sys- tems riddled with aging pipes. The coronavirus pan- demic, which dispropor- tionately hit Indian Country, further underscored the stark disparities in access to running water and sewage systems. In Warm Springs, the water crisis has overlapped with COVID-19. “During a worldwide pandemic, we’ve had a boil- water notice. How are we supposed to wash our hands? How are we supposed to sanitize our homes to dis- infect, to keep our commu- nity members safe? How can we do that ... when our water isn’t even clean?’’ said Dorothea Thurby, who over- sees the distribution of free water to tribal members and food boxes to those who are quarantined. A 2019 report by a pair of nonprofit groups, U.S. Water Alliance and Dig Deep, found Native American homes are 19 times more likely than white households to lack full plumbing. And federal officials note tribal members without indoor toi- lets or running water are at increased risk of respiratory tract, skin, and gastrointesti- nal infections. In Oregon, tribal offi- cials have handed out about 3 million gallons of water — almost all of it donated — from a decommissioned elementary school on the res- ervation. A steady stream of residents pick up a combined 600 gallons of water a day from the building. Former classrooms overflow with five-gallon containers and cases of bottled water. “The infrastructure bill brought joy to my heart because now it gives me hope — hope that it’s going to be repaired,’’ said Dan Martinez, the tribes’ emer- gency manager, who expects to receive federal funds to replace underground pipes and address the 40-year-old treatment plant. “If you came to work one day and someone said, ‘Hey, you need to go and find water for a community of 6,000 people.’ ... I mean, where do you start?’’’ The money won’t provide immediate relief. Funding to the Indian Health Service is supposed to be distributed over five years. There is no deadline for its use, and projects will take time to complete once started. The money won’t cover opera- tion and maintenance of the systems, a point tribes have criticized. In Warm Springs, tribal members don’t pay for their water, and proposals to charge for it are deeply unpopular. That provides lit- tle incentive for tribal mem- bers to conserve water and raises questions about how new infrastructure will be maintained. “There are some Natives who say — and I believe this myself — ‘How do you sell something you never owned? The Creator has given it to us,’’’ said Martinez, a tribal member.
