(Photo credit: Associated Press) |
Navajo access to water has been a longstanding issue. It’s estimated that about one-third of the 175,000 residents who live on the 17-million-acre reservation don’t have running water in their homes. The reservation’s primary water source is the Colorado River, which supplies water to much of the American Southwest and Southern California. The Colorado River has been under threat for decades, as the demands of residential development and industrial agriculture have increased and climate disasters like droughts have taken more water out than is being put in. The Supreme Court’s stance that simply recognizing that the tribe’s right to water exists should be sufficient is another example in an ongoing series of the federal government’s failure to uphold its own treaties with respect to Native American tribes. |
(Photo credit: Associated Press) |
Water rights in the West have been a point of contention between governments, tribes, farmers and other interested parties for a very long time. But in our current era of climate crisis, these disputes can get dialed up to an 11 as cities like Phoenix and Salt Lake City explode in population and mega farms in California’s Central Valley demand more water for crop irrigation. In the meantime, members of the Navajo Nation who live on the reservation are seeing their need for water pushed aside by state and federal governments, even as droughts and the climate crisis as a whole stand to make their situation more desperate. |
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