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.
A windfall could help carry out the agreement.
The federal infrastructure bill signed last month includes a large amount of money for Native American water rights settlements, a tool tribes have used to define their rights to water from rivers and other sources.
The federal government has not said how the money will be divided. The White Mountain Apache of the Fort Apache Reservation are eligible and eagerly awaiting details.
Heather Whiteman, who is from the Crow Nation of Montana and directs the University of Arizona's Tribal Justice Clinic, said that these are longstanding gaps in the building out of infrastructure to make sure that people in Indian Country are not left behind.
Hundreds of thousands of people are denied access to reliable, clean water and basic Sanitation facilities on tribal lands. The infrastructure law headed to Indian Country will provide basic needs like running water, and funding for settlements is part of it.
The US Supreme Court ruled in 1908 that tribes have the right to as much water as they need to establish a permanent homeland, and those rights are still valid today. In the West, tribal water rights are more important than others because of the fierce competition for the scarce resource.
Many tribes have turned to settlements because litigation can be expensive. It can take years if not decades to negotiate with tribes, states, cities, private water users, local water districts and others.
The White Mountain Apache Tribe's attorney general from 2010 to 2018, Richard "Jim" Palmer, said that the process is very slow and complicated.
Some of the water rights settlements include more than one tribe. 31 of the settlements are eligible for funds from the infrastructure bill, according to the Interior Department.
Elizabeth Klein, senior counselor to the Interior secretary, said that the money would help fulfill the end of the deal.
The White Mountain Apache settlement was approved by Congress. The tribe received more than one-third of the water it claimed it was entitled to from two rivers that flow on the mountainous reservation in exchange for the promise of federal money to deliver the water to tribal communities.
The tribe wants federal funding for water storage, surface water treatment facilities and miles of pipeline so residents can have a reliable and clean source of drinking water.
Palmer said that cost overruns and technical issues took years to resolve and even more negotiations to secure additional funding caused the projects to stall. He said that is typical of many tribal water rights settlements.
Palmer said that it was difficult to access and implement because of the amount of red tape.
The residents of the reservation still rely on over-pumped wells or water that is potentially contaminated with heavy metals.
The infrastructure deal is important because of Congress' piecemeal approach to funding tribal water rights settlements.
He said that it clears the decks on the annual funding cycles so you have less competition.
The largest Native American reservation in the U.S. expects to receive funding from the infrastructure law for a 2020 water settlement with Utah.
Lawmakers did not provide full funding for the water delivery infrastructure and agricultural projects authorized by Congress.
Residents and public health experts are concerned about the risks of arsenic and uranium in the water. Roughly 40% of the households on the Utah portion of the Navajo Nation lack running water or proper Sanitation facilities, according to the tribe.
The reservation is larger than West Virginia and spans into Arizona and New Mexico. There are homes scattered on the landscape.
The quicker the funding is received, the quicker the projects can be started.
The point of the whole exercise is to allow tribes to be able to put their water to use.
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The person reported from Arizona.
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