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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (April 10, 2019)
A3 THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 2019 The cost of clean water in Warm Springs System puts people’s health in danger By EMILY CURETON Oregon Public Broadcasting ity collaborative to central- ize the administration of customer billing, expertise and supplies. Engineer John Warren said it’s been a win for water quality, public health and economic viability. “We’ve seen communi- ties that were hundreds of thousands of dollars in the red … and after a few years they are hundreds of thou- sands of dollars into the black,” said Warren, a direc- tor with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium . It’s a nonprofi t focused on meeting health needs, which estimates roughly 30 villages in rural Alaska still don’t have running water and fl ushing toilets. While Warren credited the non- profi t with creating sustain- ability in small-scale sys- tems, the biggest downside to utility collectivization, he said, is cutting off service for non payment. “In a very small commu- nity, it’s diffi cult. It may be that you’re required to cut off your uncle, or your aunt, or your mother. In a lot of cases that doesn’t happen, or becomes very diffi cult to do,” he said. There are cultural reasons Native people resist and resent paying for water, said Marleah LaBelle, the proj- ect manager for the health consortium. “Historically, tribes lived on the land and were a part of the environment. We had our own uses of water, through subsistence or per- sonal use and also a con- nection through ceremony,” she said. “This notion that it’s something to be paid for, something that somebody owns, is really different.” Resistance In a kitchen on the Warm Springs reservation, the idea of paying to get clean water exasperates 81-year-old tribal member Arlita Rhoan. “How are they going to charge water to people” who can barely afford their homes, Rhoan exclaimed. She said her home won’t be paid off until 2023, even though it hasn’t had any sig- nifi cant updates in decades. She’s skeptical of what’s in the pipes, and dislikes the tap water’s chlorine smell. Consult a PROFESSIONAL Q: What is the most LEO FINZI Astoria’s Best.com Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA effective way to speed up my computer? Upgrade the hard drive in High quality your computer to a solid-state printer hard drive (SSD). 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According to a state- ment from the agency, its “enforcement and compli- ance role is geared to fi rst working with the tribal gov- ernments … through offer- ing technical assistance.” However, “If attempts to fi x acknowledged problems using this approach fail to produce desired results, per- sistent problems frequently prompt additional enforce- ment actions.” 10TH STREET Alert Last year, though, plant operators didn’t add the right chemicals to sepa- rate solids from the water. According to public records, it took four days before an alert with highly technical language notifi ed residents anything had gone wrong. The next month, a boil water notice went out 24 hours after a main line break, and lasted eight days before crews could get the supplies and assistance needed to fi x the line. “The main line is old. We are very fortunate that it hasn’t happened again. But honestly it could,” Macy said. “We have to get our plant to operate the best that it can until we replace it.” In September , the tribe got about $1 million in federal grants to deal with the immi- nent threat of a system fail- ure. Macy estimated actually replacing the plant will cost $30 million to $40 million, a fi gure daunting for any rural community. One key differ- ence between Warm Springs and the town down the road is that in most places, 80% of the water fund to main- tain infrastructure comes from billing customers. On the reservation, that revenue stream is next to nil. Only businesses pay for water. “What we could do dif- ferently is we could look at charging a user fee,” Macy said. Charging tribal com- munities for water when the system isn’t tied in to a city is uncommon and often unpopular, but it’s not entirely without precedent. In Alaska, 27 tribes recently formed a rural util- Emily Cureton/Oregon Public Broadcasting Warm Springs water treatment plant engineer Ron Palmer stands by the ox bow, a side channel dug into the Deschutes River, where surface water is collected for treatment. always begin with a drink and a prayer. “We are the oldest water right in the Deschutes Basin, back to time immemorial.” That seniority hasn’t stopped diversions upriver, where most of the fl ow is redirected before it reaches the reservation, its aging infrastructure and those struggling with the cost of replacing it. Meanwhile, the tribe’s water treatment plant on the ASTORIA TRANSIT CENTER Miles downstream from the towns and irrigation dis- tricts of c entral Oregon, the Deschutes River becomes tap water for thousands of people in Warm Springs. The reservation has the largest community water system operated by a tribe in the Pacifi c Northwest. Defi ciencies at the treat- ment plant risk people’s health and violate the Safe Drinking Water Act, accord- ing to the U.S. Environmen- tal Protection Agency. But upgrades will be hugely expensive, and how to pay for them hits a nerve in the community. At the nearly 40-year-old facility, leaky pipes elbow their way through a dark room where the treatment process begins. “If we open this hatch right here, there’d be noth- ing but water down in this pit … nothing but river water,” said plant engineer Ron Palmer. He shined a fl ashlight at the metal grate under his feet. The overhead lights were off, he said, because of an electrical surge a week earlier. “Us and a house are the only ones out here on the power circuit,” Palmer explained as his narrow beam passed over a pipe stamped “POTABLE.” The plant has problems documented for years, many stemming from the chal- lenges of treating surface water and removing river sediment. Two major out- ages last year heightened scrutiny by the EPA, which sent a violation notice to the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in March. The t ribe sent back a plan of action, but until the signifi - cant issues are corrected, the plant is out of compliance with federal law that pro- tects public water sources. Warm Springs Chief Operating Offi cer Alyssa Macy said the water is safe to drink. “Now, if there are inci- dents where we have turbid- ity issues or other issues with the plant, we are required by the EPA to give notice to the community — and we have done that,” Macy said. “We just go ahead and use it,” she said. “Your food smells, tastes like — I don’t care how much seasoning you put it in, it still tastes like that water.” Rhoan grew up collect- ing water from springs and creeks on the reservation. She remembers a little black bug was her original indicator of water quality; if the bug lived in the stream, it was good to drink. She said she has watched over the decades as water quality degrades with upstream development and climate change. “Suppose they start charging us for water, then our water really gets con- taminated. Then what?” she asked. She drinks from the tap using her one special cof- fee cup, which stays perched on a window sill above the kitchen sink. Rhoan said she ignored the latest boil water notices, and to her, a famil- iar source is always more trustworthy than a foreign one. “I buy water when we’re traveling. I will not trust other cities’ water,” she said. Bend quit taking its drink- ing water straight out of the Deschutes before Rhoan was born. A hundred years ago, fl ooding reservoirs for irrigation let loose contam- inants, and health offi cials declared the river unfi t for human consumption. The tribe advocates for its treaty rights through a Natural Resources Depart- ment, with Bobby Brunoe at its head. “To this day people are very aware of water and how important it is to us, because it’s in all our cer- emonies and embedded in our culture,” Brunoe said, describing how ceremonies care without a referral from your primary care physician. Barry Sears, D.C. 503-325-3311 Call us today for more information or to schedule your appointment. 2935 Marine Drive Astoria, Oregon Now accepting new patients. Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500 questions should I be Q: What asking the local funeral homes before I decide on which one to call when a loved one dies? A: Eric J. Anderson - Funeral Director Hughes- Ransom Mortuary Astoria: 576 12th St. 503.325.2535 Seaside: 220 N. Holladay 503.738.6622 www.hughes-ransom.com Educate yourself by visiting each funeral home to get a sense of who they are and what they offer for what price. 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