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Tribe delivers bottled water to Crow Agency after treatment facility was vandalized

CROW AGENCY — Crews of Crow Tribe employees worked into the night Wednesday and again Thursday morning to deliver trailer-loads of bottled water to homes in Crow Agency, where the municipal water supply has been shut down after a break-in at the water treatment plant.
The tribe’s chairman, A.J. Not Afraid, declared a state of emergency Wednesday after workers at the water treatment facility discovered the plant had been broken into overnight and much of its contents had been destroyed.
The shutdown applies to about 1,600 residents in the city, said Candy Felicia, who is the director of the Crow Tribe’s Water Authority.
"The main thing is we’ve got to get all this equipment replaced.
But an adjacent water treatment plant managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs was unaffected, and he said it would be able to temporarily satisfy demand.
A suspect was taken into custody at some point on Wednesday in connection with the break-in, according to Jared Stewart, a media liaison for Not Afraid.
A shotgun appeared to have been fired through the window of a door into a small, adjoining building in the back of the plant, where bullet holes riddled the regulator on a tank of chlorine used to treat water, as well as the wall behind it. The chlorine tank itself was not damaged, McComb said.
Much of the equipment inside the facility had also been burned and shot, said Tanner Black Eagle, the lead operator at the plant who was among the employees to see the damage firsthand when he arrived at work Wednesday.

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