Members of the Navajo Nation, numbering more than 250,000, are spread across reserved land in the Southwest of the U.S., mainly Arizona and New Mexico. However, 30% of the Navajo families on this reserved land, granted by the government in 1868, do not have direct access to clean water and must travel long distances to secure water daily. A June 2023 Supreme Court decision ruled that the U.S. government is not responsible for overseeing water infrastructure for the sovereign land, putting Navajo water access in jeopardy.

The Navajo Water Project

Operating as a subset of the DigDeep organization since 2014, the Navajo Water Project is a program with the primary goal of securing clean and accessible water for members of the Navajo Nation where infrastructure has failed. The focus is on getting water systems in the homes of rural families so that they don’t need to drive tens of miles just to fill up jugs of water. When the United States (U.S.) government granted the land after a forced displacement, it acknowledged that the lack of natural irrigation made the arid land nearly unlivable. Still, water was not secured as a guaranteed right. The Navajo Water Project brings clean water to Navajo families across Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.

The Fundraiser

St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church sits in Hightstown, a small town in the center of New Jersey, and houses a Social Justice Committee as one of its ministries. In 2022, Lenore Isleib and other leaders of the Social Justice Committee led a fundraising campaign for the Navajo Water Project, raising $5,196.85, ranking as the fifth-highest fundraiser for the organization.

“Since water is such a basic need for life, it seemed like an important issue for our social justice ministry,” Isleib stated in an interview with The Borgen Project. The largest number of donations came from a concert, an organized effort among parishioners of the church, members of the Social Justice Committee and the nearby independent living community Meadow Lakes, which provided transportation for residents to attend. The concert featured a performance from the church choir, Pat Liquori on the Native American flute and the nearby Mt. Olivet Baptist Church choir.

“Our biggest challenges were coordination of musical performers and publicity. Singers, pianists and guitarists volunteered their time. Members of St. Anthony’s Social Justice Ministry dedicated their time to setting up the website and getting posters created.” The fundraiser’s success in a town of less than 6,000 residents represents a paradigm of community action making a difference.

The Success of the Navajo Water Project

The project, with organizational efforts such as the St. Anthony Social Justice Committee, has brought 1.54 million gallons of clean water to rural communities. It has also been so successful that it expanded beyond Navajo water access and provided rural Navajo families with solar power and septic systems. The current areas of interest include sustainable water sources, drilling wells for communities and ensuring piped water access rather than short-term solutions of delivering water via trucks.

The project has diverted some of the money raised to community leaders for self-determined solutions to water access challenges. Partially because of the lack of access to clean water, the Navajo nation had significantly higher rates of COVID-19 infection and death than average, and sick residents were often unable to make the trek to bring back clean water, leading to dehydration.

With the identification and addressing of the structural problem, the Navajo Nation has a chance at achieving better living standards.

– Cheyenne Astarita
Photo: Flickr