She Is The Only Source Of Water To A Remote US Navajo Village

By R. Siva Kumar - 17 Aug '15 09:34AM

The Navajo Nation, just 100 miles west of Albuquerque, is badly developed, with undeveloped infrastructure. While 70 per cent of the people are unemployed, about 40 percent don't get good running water.

"We don't use the sink because there's no running water," said Loretta Smith. She and her husband live in a small mobile home with a seven-year-old disabled granddaughter, Brianna.

There is hardly any indoor plumbing, and most of the water available to them is carried bucket by bucket as well as stored in plastic barrels outside.

The drinking water is available miles away, in the parking lot of the St. Bonaventure Indian Mission, in the town of Thoreau, New Mexico. Hence, when you get water, you have to make a trip of 100 miles. The Mission's office manager, Cindy Howe, agrees that too many of them cannot access a car.

How does the water come here then?

Through the miracle "Water Lady", Darlene Arviso.

She fills her big, yellow tanker truck and rides through the small town in order to deliver the water to all the houses.

"When I see her coming, I'm like, 'Yes ! Yes! Water!'" Lucinda laughed.

But Arviso is more just than a water deliverer. "She's also the tether between the far-flung homes on a wide stretch of this shrubby, rocky, high-desert plateau," according to hcn. Anyone can contact her through her mobile phone.

Being a Navajo, born and raised here on the Reservation, she is familiar with everyone here. While she drives the school bus in the Reservation, she is also the water lifeline for the people.

"I'm proud of what I'm doing for my people. And I love my job. I go out every day to meet different families," she said.

While she can reach just one family per month in the 250 homes on her route, if the mud gets too thick, she is vital for the survival of the families.

Most of the families store and are careful to use not more than about seven gallons of water a day. "Sometimes I wish I could do more," said Darlene. "But well, they just have to stretch out their water," she added.

Dan McCool, a political science professor at the University of Utah, who has studied Indian water rights for the last 40 years, says: "It should be regarded as a national embarrassment."

How did such a situation come about in America?

"American Indians in Arizona and New Mexico were not allowed to vote until 1948," McCool said. "They did not have a voice. They weren't in line politically when the money, the funding, the projects and the water [were] being allocated."

Hence, the only source of drinking water for them is groundwater, much under the the hard rock of the Continental Divide. However, most of that water is undrinkable and laced with uranium. There are a few wells in the area, but it is undrinkable. The situation is so bad that in some houses, a number of family members use the same water to wash their hair.

The only source, then, is the Water Lady.

The blame is not taken by any of the authorities. According one resident, the onus is not taken by anyone. The counties and the states say it's the Federal responsibility, and the Feds say that it's the state's and county's responsibility!