ENR: Environmental Justice: Righting the Water Wrongs

Via Engineering News-Record, article by Pam Radtke Russel:

“Growing up on a Navajo reservation in Arizona, Jay Yazzie, now a senior environmental engineer at Brown and Caldwell, did not have running water in his home. To get its water supply, the family would take a 55-gallon drum to a livestock well or to a distribution point to obtain potable water for everyday use. He was 10 when his family was finally hooked up to a reliable supply.

Today, some 30 years later, things have not improved much, if at all, on most reservations, he says. “In some places it got better, but in others it’s gotten worse,” says Yazzie, who works occasionally on tribal projects. For every home that had a water distribution system installed, another may find its well dried up or contaminated by toxic chemicals. Within the Navajo Nation, only one in three homes has running water, while in the Hopi Nation, the tribe estimates 75% have water tainted with arsenic.”

Read the rest of the article here.