Senate hearing next week on Tribal access to clean water: it takes more than just a pile of money

The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee is holding an important hearing Thursday on S. 2385, a bill to refine the tools needed to help Tribal communities gain access to something that most non-Indian communities in the western United States have long taken for granted: federally subsidized systems to deliver safe, clean drinking water to our homes.

Inkstain readers should find these numbers familiar:

• 48 percent of households on Native American reservations don’t have the sort of basic plumbing we all mostly take for granted – piped (and clean!) water into our houses, sanitation systems to take away waste
• Per the Universal Access to clean water for Tribal Communities project, “Native American homes are 19 times more likely than white households to lack indoor plumbing.”

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act allocated a lot of money to fix this stuff, but as is so often the case with large government investment efforts, there remain capacity issues associated with getting the money effectively spent. As the Universal Access folks explain:

While groundbreaking and long overdue, the funding now available for construction and repair of domestic water systems in Indian country is not a complete solution. Technical assistance is urgently needed to allow Tribes to plan and design the systems necessary to remedy the longstanding problem of lack of access to clean drinking water and bring those plans to the “shovel ready” stage where they can take advantage of available construction funding. In addition, Tribes need support to develop the managerial, financial, and regulatory capacity necessary for a fully functional and self-sustaining utility. Construction funding is not currently available to connect essential community facilities, like schools and clinics, to centralized water and sanitation, and this support is absolutely necessary to […]

Full article: www.inkstain.net