For the run-up to World Water Day, Katherine Straus shares updates from each of DIGDEEP’s active field sites. Katherine is Director for People and Places.

SMITH LAKE, NM

We’ve been trying for months to drill this fact into your brain: 13% of American Indians do not have access to clean water. The water crisis is closer to home than you think.

DIGDEEP’s newest field site is only 10 hours form LA - in Smith Lake, New Mexico. We’re piloting a project in Smith Lake to improve trucked water delivery to rural homes. Water delivery gaps are a huge, complicated problem, and water trucks are only a first (urgently needed) step. 

Since planning started last Fall, we’ve spent a lot of time visiting local Navajo residents and hearing their stories. We’ve met people like Mrs. Johnston, a tribal elder who has spent most of her life walking 3-5 miles to collect water from a local pond. She and her family now receive about 400 gallons of water a month by truck. Without a local fill station, however, it’s not enough water to meet the basic needs of her 13-member household!

DIGDEEP is helping our partners in Smith Lake by constructing a new well in a centralized location, and improving home water delivery and storage.  Factors such as uranium contamination and water depth (over 2000 ft!) have made the planning period a long one. But this Spring, we’re moving out of the planning stage and into construction!

If you’re interested in defending the right to clean water in the US – we could use your help fundraising! Donate or create your own fundraising campaign here!

This is part of a series for World Water Day celebrating our international water access projects. Help DIGDEEP defend your right to water this March 22nd by visiting digdeepwater.org 

Without easy access to water on parts of the reservation, Navajo life has some unique, water-related quirks. Public schools used to have “shower days” for students from remote homes; some small hotels in Gallup, NM still offer “shower only” service, and coin-operated laundromats remain a popular gathering place all day long.

Learn more about DIGDEEP’s work to protect the human rights of Navajo living in the United States… because every person, everywhere deserves access to clean water.

We’re headed to New Mexico for a site visit this week. Keep your eyes peeled for updates here on the blog! #roadtrip

NEW MEXICO UPDATE

So everyone knows that we’re working hard to bring clean water to over 300 Navajo in rural New Mexico. (If you don’t, you can read about the project here.)

Here are a few teaser pics from our most recent trip to the field. They communicate the sparse vastness of this incredible place, and the beauty of its Diné people. We’re so honored to be working with local Navajo and non-profit leaders to make the dream of clean water a reality!

Every person everywhere has a right to the clean water they need to live in dignity. Help us bring water to our fellow Americans. 

DIGDEEP

photos courtesy of DIGDEEP’s volunteer photog: Heather Gildroy

DIGDEEP Starts Defending Water Access in the US

Every few weeks, the DIGDEEP team fields project suggestions from family and friends. With nearly one billion thirsty people on this planet, it seems someone’s always finding a new school, church or community that needs our help in the field. When we can, we do.

A few months ago our friend Karen called with a suggestion of her own. Karen knows all about our field work in East Africa – she’s one of our biggest fans – but she wasn’t calling to tell us about an under-served elementary school in South Sudan. Karen was calling about a community much closer to LA, just 10 hours away in northern New Mexico.

Karen does incredible work with rural communities in the Southwest, and on one of her most recent trips, she stumbled upon something of an anomaly… a community of about 200 Navajo families without access to water. Except it wasn’t such an anomaly at all.

Data shows that nearly 1.8 million Americans lack access to safe water and/or waste water disposal. That’s only .6% of the US population, a number that skyrockets to nearly 13% on American Indian reservations. (data)

This week, we’re headed to Thoreau (pronounced through), New Mexico for a site visit. After a quick drive down Route 66, we’ll arrive at the Saint Bonaventure school and mission on the nation’s largest American Indian reservation.

When we arrive, we’ll meet with Karen, school leaders, Navajo officials and some community members to begin planning a water project. Step one is a long visit to better understand the lives and needs of the local community. By combining this experience with environmental data, engineering information, and a public health assessment, we can begin defending the human right to water in earnest. That’s what this trip is all about.

Our friend and volunteer photographer Heather Gildroy will be along to help.

You can follow the adventure this week on DIGDEEP’s twitter (#roadtrip), on the blog, and on facebook.

DIGDEEP is now working to defend your human right to water in the United States. Join us @ digdeepwater.org

DigDeep defends your human right to water. It’s a big job - involving education and awareness work, access projects, field visits, sanitation and hygiene training, meetings, blogging, face booking, party planning and a hulla-valot of coffee. 

And yet we still get this question, almost every day: “What do you mean, my human right to water.”

Well listen up.

First off, you have a human right to water. You have a right to the basic amount of water it takes for you to live with dignity… the water you require to experience your humanity in its fullest, most beautiful form. Your right to water may seem like an obvious thing, but how sensitive are you to it? How often do you think about water and its relationship to your daily life? How much water do you even use a day? 

Sometimes it’s easiest to understand our human rights when they’re not respected - when they’re not enjoyed. DigDeep’s work to bring clean water to people around the world (people just like you) helps each of us better understand this lesson.

But here’s a little newsflash. There are people rights here, in the US, who lack access to clean water. Worse, there are some American communities in danger of having their basic water access degraded or taken away.

These 5 Hotspots are on our Radar. They should be on yours too…

1. Las Cruses, NM - where officials warned residents last month that they can cut off their water service for unpaid traffic violations, citing municipal code;

2. San Joaquin Valley, CA - where nitrate contamination is off the charts, threatening the health of residents;

3. Andrews, TX - where the city has failed to lower arsenic levels in the drinking water… levels that have reached three times the legal limit. The city does not have the money to upgrade water treatment facilities;

4. Dimock, PA - where methane pollution has made local water unsafe to drink (a gas contamination story may also be developing in Illinois);

5. In Lowndes County, AL - where Algood Water Works (a water company) has taken advantage of a new anti-immigration law to threaten water cut offs for residents without a valid drivers license.

Well there you have it. Because you have a right to the water it takes to live in dignity - no matter where you live - it’s simply wrong for anyone to completely cut off your access to this life-giving resource. We’re working to identify and protect the human right to water in the US, and to bring relief to US communities without water access. 

DigDeep believes that US states need water management plans that incorporate human rights, that upgrade infrastructure, and that ensure full domestic water access while preventing contamination and over-extraction.

Join us. After all, its your human right we’re defending!

DigDeep.

Thanks to our friends at Food and Water Watch for this excellent May 9th report on the status of the Human Right to Water in the US. 

Photo credit.