The Water Haulers

This program was funded in part by the Navajo Nation Water Rights Commission, the Healy Foundation, and by the State of New Mexico, Office of the State Engineer Interstate Stream Commission. Water is essential to every living thing. All who's need a continuous supply of water in order to live, a desert is a sign of migraine fall. Life here is greatly restricted. In school, we were taught man cannot live even a single day without water. We also learned that because of decades of government-sponsored public works projects, building dams and draining aquifers, the dream of huge American cities is possible anywhere, even the driest lands of the Southwest. Yes, America is still growing, and as we grow, so does our need for more water. And in industry today, water is the universal raw material, up to 10 gallons to produce a can of vegetables. 70 gallons to make a pound of wool and cloth. 10 gallons of water to produce

every gallon of gasoline. The modern American household uses an astounding 100 gallons of water each day, doing everything from washing dishes and washing clothes to watering lawns and air conditioning our ever larger homes. Yet there are still Americans waiting for water to finally arrive to their doors. Why did they get left behind? These people on the Navajo Reservation use the least water and they work the hardest to get it. For them, every drop of water is precious. They are known as the water haulers. Though it is hard to believe, in the year 2007, there are places where fresh, safe, water

is not the privilege of every household, where modern amenities brought decades ago to neighboring communities never arrived. Annie and Mark Soci are the sixth generation of their family to live in Coyote Canyon. Their quiet life forms an extraordinary bridge between ancient and modern times. Their daughter Sharon visits often. The office of the Environmental Health was out here from Crown Point and they did a presentation for our community and see how our wells are if they were safe or we had red light, green light, yellow light. And most of our water that we were using and consuming was all red lights. And only two in the whole entire community was green. But when we saw the red lights straight across the board, everyone was like, whoa, this is a surprise. You need to tell us that our water has been unsafe and we've used it for maybe the last 25, 30 years.

And we didn't know and we continue and we still use it. We haven't had running water out my mom's place for gosh ever since I was born, as far as I can remember. This is real all the time, some time, all that's in water with the cap. Sharon has watched her father haul water for over 30 years. Every day Mark rises at dawn and spends two hours filling water barrels. He then travels six miles to the edge of the canyon and releases the water down 600 feet of hose to feed his livestock below. My dad is 77 years old and he's retired. I believe the government forgot us down here.

They've talked about constructing the water line now for about 30 years and they keep promising, that it hasn't been done. He says, we're talking about water and here we're getting rain because we're getting blessed right over there. Rain is going to hit us pretty soon.

Maybe we'll stop dancing if you get the rest of this big roll of the canyon. Keep rolling, let it rain. And they really have to see how hard it is if it rains and rains. This is normal for us. There'll be snow on the ground that far and it's slippery and icy and we're at the canyon. I don't know how many times my dad has fallen and he comes home and tells us that he's fallen or he almost slipped down the canyon but he still continues to do it. I know barrier for him to say I'm not going to do it because I almost fell down the canyon or I slipped or I broke so or I bruised myself. It's normal. This is how we were raised. We can't decide to change it just because the weather's changing. We just have to keep going until we get the promises of our water running through our houses and get indoor plumbing.

Hey, that would be great. I think everyone will really celebrate that day but keep getting promises and having it to be broken every time. I mean, what does that tell you about the government? You know, not much. Even our own Navajo Nation Council, they don't have those strong voices in order for our people to get in the water because they're not doing what they were elected to do. It feels to be out there advocating for us to get water. I'm trying to... I'm trying to get water. I'm trying to get water. I'm trying to get water. I'm trying to get water. He says he hopes and wishes that his grandkids will have water so they can shower to look forward. That's what he wishes.

The soci's, like many families on the Navajo Nation Reservation, continue to live without access to safe and reliable water at home. It's an area the size of Connecticut, with no infrastructure to deliver the one greatest necessity for life, water. No pipelines run from nearby river basins. Sisters are expensive to dig in this rocky soil, and there is no truck service to deliver water to their doors. Every drop of water they use, they must retrieve themselves. So many often turn to non-potable water sources closer to home. I see a lot of the families, they usually have bucket at the corner of their roof. I know of a lady in her late 60s that was doing that. She pulled up her sleeves and that's when I saw that rash. She also had a lot of domino pain and also diarrhea.

I told her that there's all different types of chemicals and stuff that's used to do the roofing and so forth like that. And she's actually consuming that rainwater. And there's been a number of studies Indian Health Services produced a lot of this information that as a population's percentage of water haulers decreases, the incidence of a number of different kinds of waterborne problems also decreases. And those trends are very, very highly correlated. In fact, nearly 70,000 Navajos live without sufficient water infrastructure. That's nearly the same population as Santa Fe, with no readily available water that is safe to drink, safe to wash vegetables with, safe to bathe children in. And they are U.S. citizens. How did this happen? Before major pipelines can be funded and built,

a society must first own the water that runs through them. And the Navajos have been fighting for their water for over 100 years. Created in 1868, the 27,000 square mile Navajo Nation, is the single largest Indian reservation in the United States. And while a federal treaty reserved the ownership of Navajo lands, the laws concerning the precious water running through those lands were not so clear. There's very much a Navajo perspective, and you'll hear this express, all the water in the river, all the water within the four sacred mountains. That's what they really see as the Navajo nation's world. As a result of that, the U.S. Supreme Court in the winners' case determined that when the United States reserved land, that the Congress must have necessarily also set aside enough water to use that land. Certainly, when the Navajo signed the peace treaty in 1868,

they must have thought they would be able to use that water. It's enough to say that the tribal community has water to practice the arts of civilization, but nobody really knows how much water that is. Every day, families who once along with a whale or a sister are being provided with running water. Gone are the days when plumbing was a luxury. Today, the men of the water works industry are hard at work, keeping our water supply in balance. The U.S. Supreme Court rendered the winter's decision in 1908 when the Southwest was beginning to boom. Eager settlers from the east brought an expectation and demand for water. The result? Native claims were largely ignored in the name of Western Progress. And on their efforts to provide abundant water in the years ahead,

depends the pattern of life for a nation. In New Mexico, the San Juan River Basin has been a battleground for decades. This basin drains an area the size of West Virginia. The San Juan River is the second largest tributary to the Colorado River and is the second largest water source in the state. New Mexicans have capitalized on virtually unlimited use of the San Juan, whose waters help to create and continue to support many of the state's largest farms and ranches, as well as metropolitan areas like Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Meanwhile, historic Navajo claims on the river have never been fully quantified and have remained unavailable for modern development. The Navajo people have recently begun to reassert their rights to the water of the San Juan Basin. If you're looking at the case of the Navajo Nation, it could look at a claim on the San Juan River.

It's not hard, regardless of the signs, regardless of the engineering, to come up with a water claim that's very, very, very disruptive. That's really been the downside in the water rights claims in the entire Western United States. Their claims are far in excess of what's available. If they're successful in claiming the amount of water that they're going after, they will displace current users within our system. So you have agricultural uses, you have cities and towns, drinking water uses, all those could be displaced. And so the biggest challenge for us in New Mexico is to try to get those Indian water rights claims within the realm of reality. By litigation over the water in the San Juan River, which does stand still in the courts, development on the reservation remained at a stand still as well. When a business is coming to most towns and most communities in the West,

they don't have to give water a second buck. But if you're going to develop an industrial park out here, that subdivision is going to say, we want to connect it up to your system. Well, when we built this infrastructure, it was only sized for domestic needs. The Peabody Coal Company upon Black Mesa recently closed because that big industry that we have on a reservation didn't have water to use water for slurry purpose, moved a coal down to Mojave, Nevada. That's close. What happened to the jobs? We're 30 years behind the times, 30 years behind the mainstream. Looking about Navajo land, you tend to believe in the city of Albuquerque, you're going down in the city of Phoenix, two or three or four bathroom houses, you know, double-dactors. When you think that it's sort of the norm in the super-country of the United States, then you come out here to a native land, to Navajo land,

and you find grandma and grandpa at a little one-room house, no running water, dirt floor. It is a shelter. I used to be coming all the way around in Arizona, New Mexico, all that. I did all the work for a lot of people. I did a lot of job. This kind of started, my knees started bothering me. That's why my boss turned me into the hospital, told me nothing worked no more. I had to stay like this all the time. When it gets cold, it gets hurt. I can't walk some time. I stay inside, give me one. I feel the fire and all that. That's how we live.

Just mean her, we live. Come on, let's... I don't know, why am I going to get some water? We've been together, let me see. Thirty-nine years. Yeah, but the kids all grew up. They were gradually from school. They did a lot of things to help us out,

chuckwood, harvest some water. They're how graduate though. They laugh about when they graduate from the school. They're doing their own job. No, they're on their job now. We're on here, not only in any job, we're on here. We've got to look for a job all over the place where you can get all of the job. It's hard to get them. It's too hard, I don't know. If we get the water, maybe it's too easy for us. As soon as you get lazy, when you get the water, just taking the shower and go, this is hard.

We need to do a lot of things like chopping wood. You can't even walk or... You just stay down and suffering. It's hard for me, but sometimes I don't know what to do with him. Do you miss the kids a lot? Yes, we do. Do you think that water's ever going to make it out here? Yeah, pretty soon. Tomorrow's a meeting again, about six o'clock.

We have to be there. We had to figure out for ourselves. Otherwise, somebody had to not have to figure out for us, but ourselves. That's why they wrote for us and get the water. Help us out. If you look at the trends over the last couple of decades, in about ten years, more than half of the Navajo people will be living off of the reservation. And they're living off the reservation, and you can talk to any number of people where the kids, they're in Phoenix, they're in Albuquerque. That's where the jobs are. We still have language, we still have culture, we still have our way of life.

And we're looking to our bright minds, to our young, to help preserve who we are. I'd like to believe we're going to continue to have Navajo people, the way Navajo people were 200 years ago, 100 years into the future, 500 years into the future. But we can't do about ourselves. We need the bright minds to be here to do it with us. Manmade pipelines will have to reach far out, to tap the clear wilderness lakes, as well as the hidden treasures of groundwater. Seeing the high stakes for both future Navajo and New Mexican generations, both parties took the litigation over the San Juan Basin, out of the courtroom, and into direct negotiation. Eleven years later, a historic compromise was reached. The Navajos would retain just 56% of the water in the San Juan Basin, in exchange for massive water pipeline infrastructure, known as the Navajo Gallup Water Supply Project.

It will be the largest civil works project the region has seen in recent memory. 270 miles of pipeline will be built. The first, along New Mexico Route 491, and second, along US Route 550, with smaller pipelines branching out to rural communities on the eastern side of the reservation. Once completed, the pipelines will have the ability to bring safe and clean drinking water to over 60,000 people. While the settlement is a remarkable accomplishment, to this day, it remains unfinished. It still requires an $800 million appropriation from the US Congress to make it a reality. The problem that we're all little skeptical about is whether or not the federal funding will be there. I think it's a small price to pay with respect to fixing a problem that's been here for centuries, and a problem really that the federal government

has contributed to. There's politics in this. We could demand that every drop is Navajo, and I've stated that. To take that concept to console and to the state and to Congress, I would only be holding a piece of paper that says Navajo Nation has every drop of water. Well, what good is that going to do for me? Quite good is it going to do for my people. There's more certainty for even the middle of alley in the Rio Grande, the cities of Albuquerque, Espanola, Santa Fe, those that have San Juan Chama contracts are going to be better protected because of that certainty that's gone on with the settlement agreement. So really, for the entire state of New Mexico, it's a big boon. The waterworks men have the answers to the problem. With your help, they can put their plans to work to provide plenty of safe water for tomorrow. The big building project, something that people like

Pete Domenity loves, others think I don't want this project, I love it. It's almost inconceivable to think that we grow just as a sovereign state without the sovereign tribes participating in that growth as well. So if you're going to grow together, as we're finding more and more will be the case, then you need to solve things as fundamentally important as water rights. The federal government, under our Constitution, has a unique responsibility in its dealings with all the Indian tribes. And I think that this would be in fulfillment of that responsibility to go ahead and complete this. It's important to consolidate and consummate this agreement because they won't wait forever and where the agreement to not be consummated and therefore proved by the Congress, then everything is back on the table, particularly the uncertainty about the future for all the water users in this part of the Southwest. It's costing the US government a billion dollars

to fight the war in Iraq, to try to bring freedom to the Iraqi people. We're only asking for 800 million dollars here. It's not even a billion dollars. And this is to help communities across Navajo land, tens of thousands of people. You and I must understand and support the water supply projects affecting our communities. The health and happiness of our communities will be determined by how well we meet the needs for safe, abundant water. If the Navajo Nation does get a five or six, or whatever, you know, six, seven hundred million dollar project, it's giving something up that in the eyes of the Navajo Nation is worth that much and more. That's right, I'll learn some case engineer. There shouldn't be any argument over water

because it belongs to everybody. He says, we should all just love one another and combine and collaborate together. That's what his view is. This program was funded in part by the Navajo Nation and the Navajo Nation. This program was funded in part by the Navajo Nation and the Navajo Nation. This program was funded in part by the Navajo Nation and the Navajo Nation. This program was funded in part by the Navajo Nation. This program was funded in part by the Navajo Nation Water Rights Commission, the Healey Foundation, and by the State of New Mexico, Office of the State Engineer Interstate Stream Commission.