originally posted on June 29, 2016

 

LAHORE (Dunya News) – Locals in Lahore are deprived of clean drinking water despite installation of 400 filtration plants, reported on Wednesday.

According to details, the water being supplied to various areas in Lahore is unhygienic and substandard as at least 105 filtration plants have stopped working.

The negligence of district government has badly disrupted the water filtration system due to which the citizens have suffered a lot.

Sources told that many of the purification plants are lacking skillful staffers however, the officials are still promising to make them functional till August 1.

originally posted on June 29, 2016

 

HOMINY, Okla. (AP) — Inmates at an Oklahoma prison have been drinking bottled water and using buckets of water to fill their toilets after a waterline break.

Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokeswoman Terri Watkins tells The Oklahoman (http://bit.ly/291UHsY ) that the approximately 1,200 inmates at the Dick Conner Correctional Center in Hominy were able to shower Sunday and Tuesday, but that the water pressure wasn’t sustainable.

The department reached out to the state Office of Emergency Management and the Oklahoma National Guard for assistance transporting water to the facility. Watkins says that aside from bringing in bottled water and ice, each cell was given a bucket of water to refill toilets after each use.

The department said in a news release Wednesday that full water power is expected to be restored by early next week.

by Samantha McDaniel-Ogletree, originally posted on June 29, 2016

 

The to-get list was short for many of those hitting stores in Jacksonville on Tuesday: Water.

A water emergency and boil order prompted by a major leak at the city’s treatment facility made life’s most basic need a bit of a commodity at some places.

For Amanda Sabino, the need to cook and drink meant it was time to stock up on two cases of bottled water from County Market.

“I was relieved to get some,” Sabino said, expecting the store to be out by the time she arrived. “You never really realize how important it is until something happens and you can’t use it.”

With two children, Sabino said the most difficult part about the water emergency will be keeping her children away from the tap.

Because parents teach their children to wash their hands after they use the restroom, to drink water, Sabino said she’ll have to monitor her children to make sure they don’t wash their hands with the tap water or try to get a drink themselves.

“You have to think about everything you do,” Sabino said.

Terry Grant, whose two children were home for the day because day cares were closed, said because he still has to help his daughter get drinks, he’s hoping it’ll be a little easier.

“I figured we should get a few (cases), because we don’t know how long this will last,” he said.

County Market manager Jerry Beck said the store sold out of gallons of water within a few hours but still had a supply of cases of bottled water with more on the way.

“We have plenty coming and we hope to keep up the supply,” he said. “It was pretty crazy in here earlier.”

Some restaurants either closed or limited what they could serve. Fast-food places like McDonald’s and Wendy’s had to buy canned soft drinks for their customers.

A few medical offices also closed their doors, as well as day care centers and social services.

Blessings on State Bed & Breakfast was open, but having to contact guests about the water situation before their scheduled arrival.

Morgan County Health Department administrator Dale Bainter said while the boil is just precautionary because of the chance of bacteria or debris getting in the water, it is important to be vigilant to avoid problems.

By using only bottled or boiled water to cook, wash dishes and drink, Bainter said it is less likely to be affected by any contaminants. Bainter said it is safe to use tap water for showers and baths, but it is important not to wash hands in water straight from the tap.

“Though it is safe for bathing, you are not consuming it,” Bainter said. “You use your hands when handling food or eating. It gives any contaminants an oral access.”

Bainter said if there is a problem with the water, it is likely to show itself through gastrointestinal problems such as vomiting or diarrhea.

Anna Meyer said she plans to avoid the order by spending time with her aunt and uncle who use well water.

“They live off of well water, so they have a nice filtration system,” Meyer said. “If this lasts awhile, I’ll probably be out there more often than not.”

by Sonia Narang, originally posted on May 2, 2016

 

Bindu Nagarkoti pulls a blanket over her 10-month-old baby and gets ready for an afternoon full of household chores and agricultural work. The 7.8 magnitude Nepal earthquake last year hit her village hard, destroying homes and drastically cutting access to water.

In a matter of minutes, the earthquake erased decades of progress in water and sanitation. Areas that had previously seen the construction of newer, better taps, pipes, and wells, are now cut off completely from water. Communities that had finally eradicated open defecation before the disaster returned to the old ways of going to the bathroom out in the open, as toilets lay in ruins.

“It’s even difficult to get one pot of clean water now,” Nagarkoti says. “Now, we can only get water from a shared tap for one hour a day, and there’s a line of people,” she says. Nagarkoti and the others line up at 6:30 am to take turns filling up water from this tap. If someone is too late, or at the end of the line, they’ll have to manage without water that day.

“I need at least two more buckets to clean my baby,” Nagarkoti says, “and even more for washing the clothes.”

Before the earthquake, water flowed out of the tap all day, and local residents could fill up as much water as they needed anytime. Now, Nagarkoti and her neighbors have to make do with an extremely limited supply of clean water and walk a half hour away just to bathe.

The earthquake ruined water and sanitation infrastructure across Nepal’s hard-hit areas. In many communities, water tanks and pipes cracked or completely broke. In some other areas, the infrastructure remained intact, but the disaster shifted the earth. This changed the direction of streams and dried up water sources in certain places.

The earthquake destroyed nearly 5,200 water supply systems and sanitation facilities and 220,000 household toilets, says Ram Chandra Devkota, Director General of Nepal’s Department of Water Supply and Sewage. After the earthquake, around 1 million people had no access to safe drinking water, and about 1 million people needed toilets.

“Our losses and damages totaled about $110 million US dollars,” Devkota says. He estimates the country will need to spend much more than that, almost $181 million, to rebuild water and sanitation facilities. But so far, the government has only allocated $8.4 million. “It is not enough,” Devkota says, “it is just for the starting phase.”

Now, he and others doubt that the country can meet its previously set goals.

“Nepal had a national target of having [universal access to] basic water supply and sanitation by 2017, but we can assume that we’ve gone back,” says Tripti Rai, WaterAid’s Nepal director. “It’s going to be quite difficult to meet those targets.”

Devkota concurs. “It is a big setback for the country,” he says. In some remote areas, people now have to walk two to three hours to fetch water from the nearest source.

This has taken a major toll on women, since they are usually the ones who collect water for their families. Additionally, water and sanitation has a larger effect on women’s health and even girls education. Young women often miss school if there’s a lack of water or toilets when they are menstruating.

“Water affects women because they need to be looking at all of these multiple uses,” says WaterAid’s Tripti Rai. She estimated women in Nepal spend six hours a day doing household work and, on average, almost a third of those hours are spent collecting water. This is valuable time that could be spent on other things.

“Most work involving water, like laundry and cleaning children, is done by women,” says Ratna Ramtel, the recently appointed, and very first woman president of her village water committee in Nala.

The earthquake destroyed Ramtel’s local water storage tank, but she recently inaugurated a new earthquake-resistant, 5,000 liter-capacity tank. The new tank, constructed by WaterAid for about $1,000, will allow women in the village to fill up lots of water more efficiently.

Ramtel picks up her large, gold-colored water pot, called a gagri, and walks a couple minutes from her house to the nearest water tap. She turns on the faucet and a steady stream of clean water fills up her container.

“We’re now ensured a regular supply of water,” she says. “This will give us time to do agricultural work in the fields, and increase our productivity.”

 

 

by Sujit Bijoy, originally posted on April 27, 2016

 

Bhubaneswar: Easy access to drinking water is still a dream for rural areas of the state. Only 2.5% rural households have access to piped drinking water on an average.

The state government, which has been in power since March 2000, has ensured piped water supply to only 2,03,776 rural households out of a total of 81,55,383 rural households in Odisha.

“We will supply piped water to the remaining 79,51,706 rural households by 2025,” rural development minister Badri Narayan Patra informed the assembly in a written reply.

The state government has failed to ensure availability of drinking water to even one per cent rural households in five districts, namely Angul (0.99%),Balangir (0.92%), Boudh (0.23%), Bhadrak (0.25%) and Puri (0.72%).

According to the reply, Deogarh district fares best by providing piped drinking water to 6.15% rural households, followed by Kandhamal (5.74% households). In Ganjam district, which is represented by chief minister Naveen Patnaik and three other senior ministers, only 3.51% households have access to piped water supply.

The tribal districts also fared poorly with the percentage of rural households getting piped water being 1.17% in Gajapati, 2.95% in Kalahandi, 1.39% inKeonjhar, 1.91% in Koraput, 2.6% in Malkangiri, 3.71% in Mayurbhanj, 1.39% in Nabarangapur, 1.54% in Rayagada and 1.13% in Sundargarh.

The minister’s reply assumes significance as people in a number of places are facing acute shortage of drinking water. In some areas, locals are being forced to walk three to five kilometers in the scorching heat to fetch water.

In a separate reply, the minister said the state government has deployed 451 tankers in 27 districts to tackle the drinking water problem in rural areas. “We are supplying 4,000 litres of water on tankers to dry areas daily,” he added.

Against a target of 2,000 tube wells by September, the state government has so far dug 643 tube wells. There are altogether 4,19,364 tube wells in the rural areas of the state, official sources said.

originally posted on April 26, 2016

 

KYKOTSMOVI, Ariz. – An appointee by the court recently issued a parallel ruling to accelerate judicial review of both the Hopi Tribe and Navajo Nation water rights claims in the Little Colorado River General Stream Adjudication.

Special Master Susan Ward Harris was appointed by the court hearing the case to preside over aspects of the case, which will determine water rights to the Little Colorado River Basin water resources.

In orders issued on April 13 and April 14, Harris set July 7, 2016 as the date for the Hopi Tribe to update its claims concerning the Hopi Industrial Park and Hopi Ranches, including the Aja, Clear Creek, 26 Bar, Hart and Drye ranches.

Hopi Tribal Chairman Herman G. Honanie, in response to the orders, discussed the Hopi Tribe’s commitment to obtaining sufficient water to meet all of the needs of its homeland.

“The Hopi Tribal Council continues to be very focused on securing an adequate supply of good quality water for the Hopi Tribe, as water is essential to our future as a sovereign Nation,” he said. “Good quality water is becoming less and less available in northern Arizona due to rapidly rising rates of use and drought conditions.”

Harris also ordered the Navajo Nation to update its water rights claims, which have not been revised since 1985, according to a press release sent out by the Hopi Tribe. Harris also ordered the Arizona Department of Water Resources to prepare a Hydrologic Survey Report to provide new technical information about the Navajo Nation’s claims. Harris set a final deadline of July 12, 2016 for the Navajo Nation to update its claims.

The Little Colorado River General Stream Adjudication has been pending for decades. The case was filed in Apache County Superior Court in 1978. The case will determine the priority and allocation for all water rights claims in the Little Colorado River Basin, including both surface and groundwater. Over 3,100 claimants have filed more than 11,300 claims in the case including the United States, the Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the cities of Flagstaff, Winslow and Holbrook, and farmers and ranchers throughout the Little Colorado River Basin.

Gov. Doug Ducey, Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake met with Navajo and Hopi Tribal leadership at the beginning of April for a discussion about Little Colorado water rights issues.

Honanie, Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye and Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council LoRenzo Bates pledged cooperation to address long-standing issues related to the Little Colorado River. The meeting also included a number of state and local government representatives and non-Indian water users.

“We live in a thirsty land,” Begaye said. “We cannot provide economic development for our people without a reliable water supply.”

Honanie agreed.

“Water is life for both tribes,” he said.

The state parties have pledged their cooperation to develop a settlement.

“Water is the defining issue for the future of our state,” McCain said. “We cannot have a predictable future without completing the Indian water settlements.”

Ducey echoed McCain’s remarks.

“A water settlement for the Little Colorado River is a high strategic priority for Arizona,” he said.

Both McCain and Flake agreed to introduce federal legislation to implement a water settlement if the parties reach agreement.

Significantly, Navajo and Hopi leaders pledged to cooperate to present a unified position.

“We are two Nations, one voice,” Honanie said.

Begaye pledged to move quickly.

“Both tribes are prepared to move forward to discuss settlement,” Begaye said.

Bates also pledged to support negotiations.

“Settlement for the Little Colorado is a high priority for the 23rd Navajo Nation Council,” he said.

Council Delegate Alton Joe Shepherd said the process would not be easy.

“But we have learned from the previous attempt,” he said. “Settlements are about compromise, but it needs to be done. Water rights is a priority of the Navajo Nation Council.”

To secure water for the Hopi Reservation’s present and future needs, the Hopi Tribe claims water from all available sources in the basin, and dates it priority over these resources to the beginning of time.

Hopi Tribal Council Vice Chairman Alfred Lomahquahu, a participant in the historic meetings between the two tribes, views the talks as an important opportunity to find common ground.

“Both the Hopi Tribe and the Navajo Nation have interests in securing water to preserve their traditional ways of life as well as for future economic growth,” he said. “It makes sense to explore ways the tribes can work together to strengthen our position on our water rights.”

The case is ongoing.

 

 

originally posted on April 22, 2016

 

At least four million people in Chile’s capital city, Santiago, had their water turned off from Saturday through Monday. The shutdown affected households in 27 of the city’s 35 municipal districts. It’s the latest chapter in what has become an extended fight about water in Chile, putting the country’s population in competition with its highly influential mining sector. FSRN’s Robert Packard reads for Joshua Tucker, who reports from Santiago.

Most of Santiago’s the six million residents woke up last Saturday morning to dry taps after the privately-operated provider of water to the Chilean capital shut off the city’s water supply. The company, Aguas Andinas, said the shutoff was necessary because avalanches triggered by heavy rains had dumped sediment into the city’s primary water source: the Maipo River. While the two-days without running water was a massive inconvenience, service was restored late Monday. But the story doesn’t end there.

The Maipo River provides 70 percent of the city’s water and has been threatened for some time. Despite seven years of opposition, a hydro-electric project to reroute the river and funnel it through a tunnel outfitted with turbines is now under construction in the same area where Aguas Andinas draws water for the people living in Santiago. And the energy created by the controversial project? It’s not to supplement the local power grid; it’s designed to generate electricity to operate a mine.

The project, called Alto Maipo, is owned by a multinational company based in the United States. A Chilean congressional committee unanimously opposed the project, as did Aguas Andinas initially, which cited the risks deforestation and construction along the river pose to Santiago’s supply of drinking water. But the water company switched gears.

“What we’re seeing in this case, I think, is a private company that is potentially putting six million people at risk of not having drinking water,” explains American environmental lawyer, and International Director of Futaleufú River Keeper, Patrick Lynch. “They’re doing it because they’re profit seeking and they’re not regulated. They’re very lightly regulated. That, to me, I think is the big issue.”

Water has long been a major issue in Chile, where much of the country’s supply is often stored in glaciers. Following the Pinochet dictatorship, economic and regulatory restructuring opened to the door to large scale privatizations of the country’s water. Chile eventually became the first nation in Latin America to privatize all of its urban water and sewage systems, resulting in short-term, profit-driven resource management.

When it comes to access to water and energy, Chileans must compete with the mining sector, one of the world’s thirstiest industries and Chile’s top source of revenue.

For years, indigenous communities, environmental groups and tourism companies have opposed the the Alto Maipo hydroelectric project. At a march along the banks of the Maipo months before the water shut off, a protester named Julio explained why.

“We are defending the Santiago Basin and the potable water of Santiago, our region’s water,” Julio explains. “We’re here to defend the Maipo and its waters, we want rivers in the Maipo watershed to run free. We don’t want intervention from big multinational companies or water being used for mining.”

In December, thousands more marched on the presidential palace for the fourth time in two years. Protesters followed a banner that read “No to the Alto Maipo Project Now, For the Water of Santiago.” Many spoke out against the dangers to drinking water posed by the nation’s number one industry, copper mining, which is set to increase its water use by 66 percent by 2025.

Despite initial opposition from the Chilean Congress, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce and the then-U.S. Ambassador to Chile applied pressure to Chilean cabinet ministers, citing potential “damage to [Chile’s] external image” if the project did not move forward. Shortly thereafter, the Alto Maipo project received a construction permit and the president of the U.S. based company partnering in Alto Maipo, the AES Corporation, has since been appointed as an advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama.

While the Maipo River provides much of Santiago’s fresh water, another regional water source, the glacier-fed White River, is also under threat from mining. In February, a spill from a government-owned mine turned the White River black.

Even before the spill, the Chilean Superintendency for Sanitary Services reported that Santiago’s water supply was contaminated in 14 of Santiago’s 35 municipal districts, with levels of sediment and heavy metals above  those safe for human consumption. Felipe Guevara is the mayor of one of two areas where arsenic, a heavy metal used in mining that can cause brain damage, was double safe levels.

“The people are obviously worried, worried about what’s going to happen with the glaciers, worried about what is going to happen with the water, about what’s going to happen with the dust in their homes in a region that is saturated with pollution,” Guevara points out.

In a debate with an executive of the state-run mining company, CODELCO, aired on CNN Chile, Guevara argued against the expansion of another government-owned open-pit mine north of the city, which he says threatens water quality and 26 glaciers that feed his municipality’s water supply. That expansion has since been put on hold, while the mine continues to operate.

A so-called “Glacier Law” has been slowly advancing in Congress, but former advocates say regulatory measures proposed in the legislation have been severely weakened after lobbying efforts by mining companies and they now oppose the bill.

“We have some very influential industries,” points out Roberto Molina, a public information officer for Chile’s Ministry of the Environment. “We see this with the Glacier Law. Because it will affect mining interests, it will not reach political agreement easily.”

Santiago is still reeling from the water shut off, after millions of residents faced the reality of losing access to clean water at their own kitchen sinks. It remains to be seen if those now speaking out to protect the city’s drinking water can leverage this wake up call to effect any real policy change.

A third of tribe members lack clean water while cities thrive on rivers running through reservations. New deals are enabling them to take some of what’s theirs.

-by Erica Gies, originally posted on April 22, 2016

 

Shirley Peaches hails from Tall Mountain in the Navajo Nation, 25 miles from the nearest paved road and functioning water faucet. “My family still uses melted snow to wash dishes, wash clothes,” she says. Drinking water is hauled from Shonto, a reservation town in northern Arizona. It’s a two-hour drive round-trip when the road is passable. In February, Peaches says, it was dicey: “The snow is melting; the road is muddy. You have to get there early in the morning when the ground is frozen, and you can’t get back until 11 p.m. when the ground is refrozen.”

Peaches’ water story is all too familiar in the Navajo Nation, which stretches across parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Thirty-eight percent of people on the reservation don’t have water in their homes and must truck it in from long distances. They typically rely on watering points—simple hoses at public spots such as post offices that are common features in towns bordering the reservation—or perhaps a visit from the “water lady,” Darlene Arviso, who delivers water in a tanker to a couple hundred families in New Mexico (as shown in the video below).

Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert, Canyon de Chelly, and Canyons of the Ancients National Monument lie in or border the reservation. It’s a cruel irony that this landscape so spectacularly crafted by water is so arid today, and climate change promises worse to come. Annual rainfall here averages seven to 16 inches, supporting only sparse farming and livestock. The animals roam free so they can follow the forage, and the reservation’s human population of 200,000 is cast wide, scattered across the plateau.

The San Juan and Little Colorado rivers, tributaries of the most contested river in the West, the Colorado, are the Navajo Nation’s primary water resources, but with the infrastructure necessary to bring that water to homes limited, many on the reservation rely on groundwater. Small wooden buildings housing wells and round tanks topped by windmills dot the land, but many are contaminated from decades of uranium, coal, and other mining in the region, as well as from naturally occurring toxins such as arsenic. Still, people draw from them to water livestock and sometimes for drinking.

The picture makes for a bitter contrast to the Navajo’s growing numbers of neighbors in cities such as Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Navajo without running water limit their consumption to around 10 gallons a day per person, which doesn’t go far: A low-flow showerhead uses two gallons a minute, and washing dishes efficiently by hand drains eight gallons. Forget about flushing toilets; many Navajo make do with outhouses. Meanwhile, residents of the Southwest’s boomtowns go through 100 to 200 gallons per person a day. The fountain outside Las Vegas’ Bellagio hotel alone loses 12 million gallons of water annually to evaporation and leakage.

These starkly different realities are not unrelated. Lack of water has left the Navajo and other local tribes languishing in poverty, while access to it has been the single enabling factor for population booms in the Southwest’s desert cities. The excess of the urban Southwest—the misting wands at chain restaurants, the acres of alfalfa and cotton carpeting the floor of the Sonoran Desert—are to no small degree a function of the Navajo not having the resources to develop the water claims to which the law entitles them.

Now the Navajo have the opportunity to secure legal rights to some of their water and much-needed funds to supply water for the first time to thousands of people. In exchange, they must relinquish to the federal government, states, and private interests such as developers and investor-owned utilities their claims to water the rest of the West is using (or wants to use), easing several states’ anxiety about water security. Western tribes have completed 29 such water rights settlements with the U.S. Department of the Interior since 1978, and 17 more are in process, according to Pamela Williams, the director of the Secretary’s Indian Water Rights Office at the department.

In January the Navajo Nation Council passed the latest such deal, with Utah, which will bring the Nation’s Utah chapters water and $192 million to build pipelines, water treatment facilities, and irrigation systems. Some Navajo support the settlements, seeing them as a crucible they must pass through to gain economic growth and a better quality of life, and Navajo in New Mexico have already seen benefits from their deal with that state. Others feel they are giving up too much, and the settlements will cut off the Navajo Nation from water it will need to sustain itself in what climate change models predict will be much drier years to come.

Like other tribes across the West, the Navajo have extensive claims to their local waterways, dating to a 1908 Supreme Court decision, Winters v. United States, that said Indian reservations came with implied rights to the amount of water “sufficient to fulfill the reservation’s purpose.”

But the court didn’t say how much that was. Because the figure was disputable, the question of how much water tribes were entitled to remained, and Winterseffectively went unenforced. That uncertainty—and a federal blind eye—allowed other users, including the federal government, to assume that any water a tribe was not using was water they could take, and they helped themselves. The Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers built 30,000 dams across the West over the next several decades, spurring a regional population boom.

The water grabs may have been illegal, though, because Winters made clear that the “use it or lose it” principle that has been a cornerstone of water policy in the American West since the 19th century didn’t apply to tribes: They are entitled to more than the tiny amount they’ve been able to draw from surrounding rivers with their existing limited infrastructure.

For the Navajo, as for many Western tribes, poverty has limited their access to water, and perversely, water is the key ingredient needed to lift them from poverty. The U.N.’s World Water Development Report for 2016 found that three of four jobs globally are either heavily or moderately dependent on water and that water shortages and lack of access to water and sanitation could limit economic growth and job creation in the coming decades. “Water and jobs are inextricably linked on various levels, whether we look at them from an economic, environmental, or social perspective,” said the director-general of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, in a statement.

In 1963, the Supreme Court weighed in again: Tribes were entitled to the amount of water needed to irrigate their fertile acreage, more or less. Because that amount, like the allocation in Winters, was vague, the court recommended that tribes and other water users work it out legally—tribes could either sue or settle. Suing has a certain appeal, but even if a tribe wins a lawsuit, it doesn’t come with any money for infrastructure development, effectively leaving the tribe with “paper water” that’s not much use. Settlements, on the other hand, come with money to build infrastructure. Although they would potentially be giving up significant quantities of water, at least tribes would get “wet water.”

Life as most people know it in the Southwest would not be possible had the Navajo and other tribes been able to exercise their claims on the Colorado. This offers a powerful incentive for states to settle with tribes. Even today, tribal claims cast a shadow over lifestyles and the expansion potential of cities, states, electric utilities, housing developments, industry, ranches, and farms.

The Navajo’s deal with Utah is typical: The tribe signs away a large portion of its claim, relinquishing it to the non-Indian users who have already been taking it. In exchange it gets money from the federal government and the state to build infrastructure and bring water to people who have been living without. The tribes end up with more wet water than they had, and states get to continue the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed and secure water for growth. The funds that settlements provide to tribes are “a major benefit,” says Williams. “Settlements provide certainty to tribes in terms of water rights while protecting existing non-Indian users. It’s a win-win.”

Not everybody thinks so. On a bright day in February, I’m on Navajo land just across the southern border of Utah to meet Curtis Yanito, a Navajo grazing official who is strongly against the Utah water settlement.

Because Yanito’s house is remote and difficult to find—out here, street addresses don’t exist—we exchange several fruitless phone calls before he gives up on my navigation skills and drives down the mesa, meeting me on a dirt track framed by tufts of rabbitbrush and scraggly Mormon tea. About 70 miles north, the Blue Mountains jut out of the tableland like snowy gods. Yanito has brought a posse of dogs, friends, and family, including his brother Ambrose. Both wear bandannas tied into thick headbands.

I am greeted with a “Yá’át’ééh!”—“Hello!”—as Yanito lets down the tailgate of his truck and spreads out papers in his “office,” inviting me to park my laptop there as well. The others lean against the sides of the truck, listening, chiming in, and snapping phone photos.

The Navajo Nation has entered into water settlement negotiations with each state into which it extends. A 2010 deal with New Mexico funded a 14-year construction project that will serve many people water for the first time, while a contentious deal with Arizona fell apart in 2012. As for the Utah settlement that the Navajo Nation Council passed in January, it must still be approved—and funded—by the U.S. Congress and Utah’s state government and then signed by Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye.

Most Navajo agree that settlements offer the promise of economic development, improvement of their quality of life, and the last chance to stop the creeping de facto loss of their water rights. Yet there is an undeniable power imbalance in the negotiations: on one side, a tribe that suffered an attempted genocide, with a 43 percent poverty rate and a 42 percent unemployment rate; on the other, states made wealthy by water, giant utilities, and developers. Some tribal activists say their leaders unquestioningly accept the non-Indian worldview as a starting point, setting the stage for unfair deals for the tribe. If the process were more open, they would have a better chance to make their voices heard, they say.

The Yanitos are outraged at the basic premise of water settlements: that non-Indian water users, who as far as they are concerned have been appropriating Indian water for 100 years, must be allowed to keep it.

Gesturing across the plain to distant cities, Ambrose says, “Everybody has got a swimming pool out there, just about.” If the tribe had more of its water, people could grow vegetable gardens and eat healthier, perhaps reducing the 22 percent rate of diabetes on the rez. “We can’t grow nothing out here because those people over there are just jumping in the water and wasting it,” he says. His voice rises. “What would happen if we turned that off? How would they feel?” he asks. “We gave them their life! See?”

Curtis’ ideal solution would be to take the tribe’s entire claim on the San Juan River and lease some of it to existing users. With the money, he says, “we can build our own swimming pools and water parks for our kids, alfalfa fields for livestock….”

A group of activists agrees with the Yanitos in principle but is perhaps more pragmatic. A few days earlier I met with two members of the activist group Tó Bei Nihi Dziil, which means “Water is our power.” I drove into hardscrabble Gallup, racing the Burlington Northern Santa Fe along old Route 66, past payday loan shops, un-gentrified Mexican restaurants serving sopapillas, and ’50s-era motels with campy neon signs featuring cowboys and Indians. Turning down a residential street studded with adobes, I pulled up at a modest house.

Inside was Colleen Cooley, who spent her high school and college years boarding in Flagstaff, graduating with a master’s degree in climate science and solutions from Northern Arizona University in 2012. Now she has returned to her childhood home in Shonto, where she wants to promote the use of renewable energy and teach students how to grow food, compost, and reduce waste. Her water bottle was plastered with stickers, one of which read, “Indigenous Liberation: Resist Existence, Expect Resistance.”

Sitting across from her at a small table was Janene Yazzie, a fierce woman with a ready laugh who works as a community organizer. The walls were decorated with children’s artwork and activist propaganda painted on plywood. Both young women multitasked on laptops and cell phones, pulling up supporting documents and sources and extracting relevant papers from surrounding piles. When Yazzie’s two-year-old daughter wandered into the room, she sat with Cooley, a favorite “aunt.”

Cooley and Yazzie see the settlements as water grabs motivated by states’ greed. Yazzie cites an Arizona Department of Water Resources document that identifies the department’s No. 1 strategy to achieve water security as resolving Indian water rights claims.

The deal with Arizona drew the ire of Tó Bei Nihi Dziil, group members say, because it was larded with handouts to corporate interests that had historically taken advantage of the Navajo. Former Sen. Jon Kyl, representing the state in the Senate at the time, didn’t improve the optics when he introduced the proposed settlement to Congress on the 100th anniversary of the state’s induction into the union, saying, “I think it would be a fitting birthday present to people in the state of Arizona.”

The activists say they have largely been shut out of the Navajo political process, a contention that tribal leaders strongly dispute. When tribal leaders collude with states and the federal government to exclude so many tribal members from the process, they run afoul of the international law standard of free, prior, and informed consent for indigenous people, maintains Peaches, who also works on water issues.

The Utah draft deal, which all seven Utah chapter presidents supported, now awaits congressional funding, which is usually the largest hurdle to implementation, said Pamela Williams in a 2013 presentation. James Adakai, president of the Oljato Chapter of the Navajo Nation, says the Navajo population is growing, and the water will facilitate schools, health care, public safety, and regional development. “We have maybe over 50 percent of people who still need water” in the Oljato chapter, says Adakai. A proposed road project would funnel Monument Valley tourists through his town of Oljato, as well as Navajo Mountain (another Utah chapter) and Ts’ah Bii Kin, also known as Inscription House. “We need water to do this,” he says.

One aspect of the draft settlement with Utah particularly troubles Tó Bei Nihi Dziil: The tribe could go without water in times of drought. By law, those with the oldest water rights get most of their water in dry years, while junior rights holders suffer drastic reductions. Most Navajo rights in Utah date to 1884, when land there was added to the reservation; that gives the tribe seniority over most other water users in the area. But the settlement forces it to waive its right to assert its seniority on the vast majority of the water that the settlement allots to it. In a time of shortage, today’s users will be ahead of the tribe in line for all but about 10 percent of its settlement quantity. With a 22-year drought underway, causing reduced spring snowpack, decreases in at least 30 surface water features, and expanding sand dunes that now extend over one-third of the reservation, the activists see the Utah settlement as a bad deal. “We don’t want our grandchildren to say, ‘Why did you waive that?’ ” says Peaches.

Although it may seem counter to the Winters ruling, which pinpointed tribes’ seniority to the establishment date of their reservations, the waiver is typical of water rights settlements, says Stanley Pollack, the Navajo Nation’s assistant attorney general and an Indian water rights specialist.

“Every Indian water rights settlement protects the existing non-Indian users,” he says. In general neighbors don’t fear that tribes will develop infrastructure and take some of their water because they know that tribes don’t have the money—but the settlements give them that money. “States say, ‘We will help you get funding, but in return, we need to protect non-Indians because they’re operating under the assumption that tribal water development isn’t going to occur. Now we’re developing it.’ ”

After meeting with the women in Gallup, I drove west at sunset toward Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation, to meet with the chair and the vice-chair of the Navajo Nation Water Rights Commission, Benjamen Cowboy and Gil Arviso. Gnarled piñons and junipers stood sentinel on hills, silhouetted against the sky. On the radio I flipped through multiple country stations, Christian talk and rock, classic rock, and Navajo-language talk. In the capital, plain buildings housing government offices sat at the feet of charismatic stone monoliths, including the eponymous Window Rock.

Despite the activists’ contention that tribal leaders could negotiate more forcefully, Cowboy and Arviso said they don’t feel that power in the negotiating room. They are trying to restart the Arizona talks but are not hopeful about improving the terms this time around.

Arizona is “pretty motivated to get us a small deal,” said Cowboy while Arviso laughed ruefully. “That’s their motivation.” Negotiating is different with each state, and in Arizona, “you’re not only dealing with state folks but all of the corporations that are tied into using water,” he continued. “So you’re negotiating with different groups of maybe 50 or more people sitting at the table.”

Yet despite the decades-long processes, despite the concessions, despite disgruntled constituents, the water settlements have value, he said: “Really, to me it’s like security. We will finally have water that we can actually call Navajo water.”

Six years after the nearly $1 billion New Mexico deal was completed, some tribal communities are beginning to benefit from running water in their homes, a new reality that tends to make them appreciative of the settlement. In Whitehorse Lake I met chapter President Chee Smith. He welcomed me into the chapter house, a simple building used for community meetings and offering various services to local people, including showers, copies, and faxes.

The Bureau of Reclamation, using funds from the New Mexico settlement, is building two water lines, two water treatment plants, and several pumping stations in two north-south transects. The first water line will run about 100 miles along the New Mexico border with Arizona. It will bring water from the San Juan River, which travels nearly 400 miles from southwestern Colorado to Lake Powell, to users as far as 15 miles south of Gallup. The second will run along the eastern portion of the reservation in central New Mexico.

Whitehorse Lake was one of the first communities to receive water pipelines. Meanwhile, Smith worked with the state of New Mexico and the Navajo agency that builds water infrastructure to get pipes in local houses. Right now, those houses are receiving groundwater. By 2024 the whole project should be built, and people in Whitehorse Lake will start to receive river water as a result of the settlement. (Even when the project is completed, not all Navajo in New Mexico will have running water; some houses are too remote.) But life in Whitehorse Lake is already much improved, said Smith. “One hundred percent of my community has running water now,” he said.

Getting water lines has allowed his chapter to turn a corner, said Smith. Plans are in the works to build police and fire stations, a convenience store, a gas station, a road maintenance yard for heavy equipment, and homes. Smith expects the improvements to reverse the population decline of recent decades: “When there was no water or electricity, a lot of the people moved into the border towns. So since they saw that we have water now, they’re starting to move back to the community.”

It’s a big change, he said, from when daily driving to fetch water was a fact of life, as it still is for many Navajo. Smith is particularly grateful that his father, who died a year ago at Thanksgiving, lived to see the water turned on for the first time. “It really put a smile on his face,” he said, choking up a bit. “I think he thought he’d never see the day it would happen.”

 

 

 

by Lahja Nashuuta, originally posted on April 21, 2016

 

 

While in some parts of the world people with access to clean potable water take it for granted, the majority in southern Africa does not share the same luxuries.

In countries such as Namibia, people not only in rural areas but also from impoverished parts of the cities walk long distances to fetch water mainly for drinking and cooking, with a small portion used for bathing and laundry.

Normally, the lack of clean drinking water gives rise to unhygienic living conditions. When people have to trek about 20 km or more every day to collect water, personal hygiene takes a backseat.

In such a situation, people do not bother to take a bath regularly, or wash their clothing and bedding because water is reserved for cooking and washing utensils, and since proper sanitation facilities are also non-existent, people are at risk of communicable diseases.

Namibia has one of the lowest sanitation coverage rates in Eastern and Southern Africa, with only about 33 percent of the population having access to improved sanitation, according to UNICEF. While only 14 percent of the rural population has improved sanitation access.

Although Namibia has excelled in water provision, of up to 90 percent of the population, there are still people experiencing water stress, and people in informal settlements in metropolis like Windhoek are living under unhygienic conditions due to lack of water and proper sanitation.

Many people in informal settlements engage in various types of enterprises, some are selling food, fruits and vegetables in unhygienic conditions. This is a ticking time bomb Namibia because these are the perfect breeding grounds for communicable diseases such as diarrhoea, malaria, trachoma, typhoid and even cholera.

Nearly 20 million people worldwide are said to die each year of waterborne diseases. Approximately half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from diseases associated with lack of access to potable water, poor sanitation, and inadequate hygiene.

According to UN, diarrhoea kills 4 000 children every day around the world. In Africa, it is the leading killer of children under five years old, causing more deaths than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

Although the world water crisis is a multifaceted issue, the issue needs to be addressed in order to curb waterborne diseases.  Personally, I believe the only solutions to this problem are providing clean drinking water, hygienic toilets and encouraging effective hand washing, especially to people who live in rural areas as well as women and girls.

One way we will do this is to improve the water supply network by making sure that there are enough water pipes to supply water to all villages.

There is a need to build more toilets and sewage systems and inform people of the benefits of good hygienic practices, to stop them getting sick and dying from preventable diseases.

Apart from providing more taps and toilets, we must also promote good hygiene. Hand-washing with soap should also be encouraged at key points of the day – before food preparation and after using the toilet in order halve the likelihood of w, reduce acute respiratory infections by up to a quarter, and combat worm infestations, trachoma and infectious skin diseases.

Of course, Namibia is trying to address this problem.  Town councils and villages have made efforts to address lack of sanitation facilities.

The issue is also expected to be addressed during the implementation of newly introduced government plan known as the Harambee Prosperity Plan whereby 50 000 rural toilets are expected to be constructed and the bucket system eliminated by 2017. However, the question of water availability to flush those toilets still remains.

Until then . . .