The Tualatin River Watershed Council has received from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB) a $270,000 grant that will advance a multiyear effort to remove an old dam that has blocked fish passage since at least the 1930s.

The dam, commonly known as the Balm Grove Dam, sits in Gales Creek, a tributary of the Tualatin River, near Forest Grove. Removal is expected to open more than 87 miles of historic, “in-stream” habitat for coastal cutthroat trout, 28 miles for winter steelhead, and several miles for coho salmon, Pacific lamprey, mountain whitefish, and mountain and largescale sucker fish.

“Gales Creek hosts one of the Tualatin Valley’s most important areas for winter steelhead.” stated Scott McEwan, executive director of the Tualatin River Watershed Council. “Removing this dam is going to open up miles and miles of historic habitat. This project has been a high priority for our watershed council for a very long time, and we’re grateful to have the support of OWEB and so many local partners.”

The Balm Grove Dam was built in the early 20th century to create a recreational area with a swimming hole, a tavern and a dance hall. The area has not been used in several decades and the facilities are in disrepair.

Clean Water Services in 2016 purchased the 12-acre property that includes the dam and has since worked with the watershed council and other local partners to restore the area for water quality, fish and wildlife.

Work to remove the dam will begin this summer and is expected to finish in 2023. The total cost is estimated at $750,000.

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By GILLIAN FLACCUS, FELICIA FONSECA and BECKY BOHRER
Associated Press

WARM SPRINGS, Ore. (AP) — Erland Suppah Jr. doesn’t trust what comes out of his faucet.

Each week, Suppah and his girlfriend haul a half-dozen large jugs of water from a distribution center run by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs to their apartment for everything from drinking to cooking to brushing their teeth for their family of five. It’s the only way they feel safe after countless boil-water notices and weekslong shutoffs on a reservation struggling with bursting pipes, failing pressure valves and a geriatric water treatment plant.

“About the only thing this water is good for is cleaning my floor and flushing down the toilet,” Suppah said of the tap water in the community 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Portland. “That’s it.”

In other, more remote tribal communities across the country, running water and indoor plumbing have never been a reality.

Now, there’s a glimmer of hope in the form of a massive infrastructure bill signed last month that White House officials say represents the largest single infusion of money into Indian Country. It includes $3.5 billion for the federal Indian Health Service, which provides health care to more than 2 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives, plus pots of money through other federal agencies for water projects.

Tribal leaders say the funding, while welcome, won’t make up for decades of neglect from the U.S. government, which has a responsibility to tribes under treaties and other acts to ensure access to clean water. A list of sanitation deficiencies kept by the Indian Health Service has more than 1,500 projects, including wells, septic systems, water storage tanks and pipelines. Some projects would address water contamination from uranium or arsenic.

About 3,300 homes in more than 30 rural Alaska communities lack indoor plumbing, according to a 2020 report. On the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation, about one-third of the 175,000 residents are without running water.

Residents in these places haul water for basic tasks such as washing and cooking, sometimes driving long distances to reach communal water stations. Instead of indoor bathrooms, many use outhouses or lined pails called “honey buckets” that they drag outside to empty. Some shower or do laundry at community sites known as “washeterias,” but the equipment can be unreliable and the fees expensive.

“You look at two billionaires competing to fly into outer space, yet we’re trying to get basic necessities in villages of interior Alaska,” said PJ Simon, a former chairman of an Alaska Native nonprofit corporation called the Tanana Chiefs Conference.

Many more tribal communities have indoor plumbing but woefully inadequate facilities and delivery systems riddled with aging pipes.

The coronavirus pandemic, which disproportionately hit Indian Country, further underscored the stark disparities in access to running water and sewage systems.

In Warm Springs, the water crisis has overlapped with COVID-19.

“During a worldwide pandemic, we’ve had a boil-water notice. How are we supposed to wash our hands? How are we supposed to sanitize our homes to disinfect, to keep our community members safe? How can we do that … when our water isn’t even clean?” said Dorothea Thurby, who oversees the distribution of free water to tribal members and food boxes to those who are quarantined.

A 2019 report by a pair of nonprofit groups, U.S. Water Alliance and Dig Deep, found Native American homes are 19 times more likely than white households to lack full plumbing. And federal officials note tribal members without indoor toilets or running water are at increased risk of respiratory tract, skin and gastrointestinal infections.

On the Navajo Nation, Eloise Sullivan uses an outhouse and often drives before dawn to beat the crowd at a water-filling station near the Arizona-Utah border to get water for the five people in her household. They use about 850 gallons a week, she estimated.

Sullivan, 56, doesn’t mind hauling water, but “for the younger generation, it’s like, ‘Do we have to do that?'”

“It’s kind of like a big issue for them,” she said.

She once asked local officials what it would cost to run a water line from the closest source about 2 miles away. She said she was told $25,000 and never pursued it.

Libby Washburn, special assistant to President Joe Biden on Native American affairs, recently told tribes the infrastructure bill included enough money to complete all the projects on the Indian Health Service list. The agency said it’s consulting with tribes and won’t make allocation decisions before that process is over.

Until now, tribes and outside organizations have worked to address needs with their own funding, donations or federal money, including pandemic relief.

“If you live without running water, you understand the importance and the connection you have with it, deep down as a person, as a human being,” said Burrell Jones, who sets up water systems and delivers water around Dilkon, Arizona, with Dig Deep’s Navajo Water Project. “You can’t exist without water.”

Andrew Marks recently moved back to Tanana, a community of about 190 people in Alaska’s interior. He initially relied on a washeteria but found the equipment unreliable. He now has running water and plumbing where he lives but hauls water for family members who don’t.

“I believe if we had more people with water, more people connected to the grid, it would drastically improve their life,” he said.

In Oregon, tribal officials have handed out about 3 million gallons of water — almost all of it donated — from a decommissioned elementary school on the reservation. A steady stream of residents pick up a combined 600 gallons of water a day from the building. Former classrooms overflow with 5-gallon containers and cases of bottled water.

“The infrastructure bill brought joy to my heart because now it gives me hope — hope that it’s going to be repaired,” said Dan Martinez, the tribes’ emergency manager, who expects to receive federal funds to replace underground pipes and address the 40-year-old treatment plant.

“If you came to work one day and someone said, ‘Hey, you need to go and find water for a community of 6,000 people.’ … I mean, where do you start?'”

The money won’t provide immediate relief. Funding to the Indian Health Service is supposed to be distributed over five years. There is no deadline for its use, and projects will take time to complete once started. The money won’t cover operation and maintenance of the systems, a point tribes have criticized.

In Warm Springs, tribal members don’t pay for their water, and proposals to charge for it are deeply unpopular. That provides little incentive for tribal members to conserve water and raises questions about how new infrastructure will be maintained.

“There are some Natives who say — and I believe this myself — ‘How do you sell something you never owned? The Creator has given it to us,'” said Martinez, a tribal member.

Building out infrastructure in remote areas can be onerous, too. Most roads on the Navajo Nation are unpaved and become muddy and deeply rutted after big storms.

In Alaska, winter temperatures can fall well below zero, and construction seasons are short.

Having enough people in a small community who are trained on the specifics of a water system so they can maintain it also can be a challenge, said Kaitlin Mattos, an assistant professor at Fort Lewis College in Colorado who worked on a 2020 report on water infrastructure in Alaska.

“Every bit of funding that is allocated is going to help some family, some household, which is wonderful,” she said. “Whether it’s enough to help every single household, I think, remains to be seen.”

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Oregon will soon receive more than $92 million in federal money from the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to strengthen drinking and wastewater systems and replace lead service lines and pipes. This funding is the first round of a five-year investment authorized by the new law.

“Access to safe and reliable drinking water is critical for our communities to stay healthy and thrive,” said Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01) in a news release. “Lead and contaminants pose serious health threats to Oregonians. As a mom and a policymaker, I’m especially concerned about making sure our kids can drink clean water at home and at school. This federal investment of $92 million will provide clean safe drinking water to hundreds of thousands of Oregonians. That’s what it means to build back better.”

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included $50 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency to improve water systems, which is the largest single investment in water in our nation’s history.  Over the next five years, $15 billion nationally will go toward replacing lead pipes and service lines across the country, with a special focus on advancing equity and justice for under-resourced communities.

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By CEDAR ATTANASIO
Associated Press / Report for America

OHKAY OWINGEH PUEBLO, N.M. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture will issue up to $307 million in grants and low-interest loans in an effort to modernize rural water infrastructure, officials announced Wednesday.

“Every community needs safe, reliable and modern water and wastewater systems,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement ahead of a tour at a small wastewater treatment plant run by an Indigenous tribe in New Mexico.

The grants are aimed at towns with less than 10,000 people in 34 states and the territory of Puerto Rico.

In New Mexico, the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo north of Santa Fe will receive a $610,000 loan and a $1.6 million grant to improve its wastewater treatment plant. Federal officials say it will allow the tribe to extend service to over 1,000 residents who are disconnected by treating 33% more water each day.

Vilsack was scheduled to tour the treatment plant with Democratic Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, who serves a majority Hispanic and Native American district.

“The consequences of decades of disinvestment in physical infrastructure have fallen most heavily on communities of color. This is why USDA is investing in water infrastructure in rural and Tribal communities that need it most to help them build back better, stronger and more equitably than ever before,” Vilsack said.

The announcement is part of a multi-state push by President Joe Biden and his administration to gain more support for a $973 billion infrastructure package that includes more than a half-trillion dollars in new spending.

Among some minority communities, Vilsack has been the target of criticism for how he handled discrimination complaints during his tenure as agriculture secretary in the Obama administration.

African-American farmers were angered by his appointment by Biden due to an unaddressed flurry of civil rights complaints. But in March, Vilsack announced a program that would forgive the debts of ranchers of color.

A coalition of Hispanic and Native American cattle ranchers in New Mexico complained in 2015 that they were being discriminated against through arbitrary revocations of grazing permits, concerns validated by a report from the agency’s Office of Compliance, Policy, Training and Cultural Transformation.

One of them still blames the agency for the death of his cows a decade ago.

“I had to liquidate 250 animals overnight,” said Dave Sanchez, 61, of Chama, north of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo.

He says that during the Obama administration Vilsack turned down many requests to meet and address the concerns of a large group of cattle ranchers in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

“We’re really disappointed in Vilsack for what he did in the Obama administration. I don’t know why he’s coming to New Mexico. He didn’t want to meet with Hispanic ranchers. He shunned us,” Sanchez said Tuesday after learning of the visit.

The agency did not respond to requests for comment on the outcome of the complaints.

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A small town in northwest Oregon is getting a $1 million grant to restore running water after the town’s water treatment facility burned during last year’s Labor Day fires.

The grant for the City of Detroit, coming from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, should allow it to create a temporary ultrafiltration packaged plant that will supply potable water.

The Statesman Journal reports that Mayor Jim Trett said it wasn’t clear when the water would actually be running. It could take anywhere from two weeks to a month or longer.

The fix is also temporary. Detroit will still have to figure out a long-term solution. For months since the fire, the county has been providing potable water via a water truck at the city park for a few hours each day.

Detroit is located in Marion County and has a population of about 80.

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KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is withholding $500,000 allocated for a water quality study of Oregon’s Upper Klamath Lake, citing potential budget cuts.

The bureau’s Klamath Basin Area Office Manager Jeff Nettleton told the Klamath Tribes that the funding will be reprogramed to other activities to avoid losing that money, the Herald and News reported.

In an email last month to the tribes, Nettleton said the bureau is expecting budget cuts between 13 percent and 20 percent next year. He said the office will continue to work with the tribes to “close out the current agreement and evaluate the possibilities for future funding of the key activities under the agreement, but that future is uncertain due to budget cuts and other issues.”

Negotiations about water allocation agreements cannot proceed until there is progress on improving water quality, Klamath Tribal Chairman Don Gentry said in a statement.

“In what can only be described as a giant step backwards, the federal government recently pulled funding for critical water quality research that could help us understand how to make the lake safer for people, fish, birds and other wildlife,” Gentry said.

The lack of funding and enforcement staffing is halting progress on reducing to the flow of damaging nutrients into the lake, Gentry said. The tribes have been working with the state Department of Agriculture, state Department of Environmental Quality, and local landowners to make reductions.

“The Tribes believe that the declining health of the lake and surrounding ecosystem is a community issue, one that can be solved with local collaboration to the benefit of all,” Gentry said.

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