For over a decade, residents of the rural Fort Apache Reservation in eastern Arizona have been promised miles of pipeline that would bring clean drinking water to their communities. The federal infrastructure bill signed last month includes $2.5 billion for Native American water rights settlements, a tool tribes have used to define their rights to water from rivers and other sources and get federal funding to deliver it to residents. “These are longstanding lapses in the building out of infrastructure … to make sure that people in Indian Country are not left behind,” said Heather Whiteman Runs Him, who is from the Crow Nation of Montana and directs the University of Arizona’s Tribal Justice Clinic.
Read full article
$2.5B headed to tribes for long-standing water settlements
