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.