One in 3 households on the Navajo Nation lacks access to safe drinking water, but a $5 billion deal reached in May could change that by giving the sprawling reservation’s 175,000 residents rights to the highly prized Colorado River.
The agreement needs Congress’ blessing, though. And there are plenty of reasons for pessimism.
Those include the eye-popping price tag, as well as controversial provisions granting the tribe the right to move water across legal boundaries and lease its supplies to cities or farms. Those issues inject the settlement squarely into the heated negotiations over how to parcel out the Colorado River’s diminishing flows among the seven states that rely on it.
Advocates for the Navajo settlement say it is a matter of basic human rights. The reservation is not only the country’s largest but also one of its poorest. Residents drive hours over unpaved roads to haul water. Without access to sanitation, Covid-19 tore a deadly path through the population during the pandemic.