Native Peoples Are 19 Times More Likely To Lack Access To Safe Water

For more than 2 million people In America, accessing safe water isn't as simple as turning on the faucet in the kitchen or washroom. Several people live near contaminated water sources and require to travel for miles to pay for access to dedicated taps. Nevertheless up until Monday (November 18), there was little statistics on the scope of the water crisis In America — which is why the corporations DigDeep and US Water Alliance released the most comprehensive report on the allocate, NPR reported.


Called "Closing the Water Access Gap In the
U.S. the report found that someone's race is the greatest symptom as to the likelihood of their living without access to safe water. Three out of every 1,000 white Americans lack complete plumbing in their homes, and five out of every 1,000 Black and Latinx Residents of the
U.S. Are identically affected. Nevertheless that number jumps to 58 out of every 1,000 Native households; per the National Congress of American Indians, around 5.2 million Native peoples stay in the U.S., Meaning just over 300,000 Native peoples are forced to navigate life with the added challenge of ensuring they have safe water.


"To live day-to-day without reliable drinking water and with untreated sewage are conditions more frequently regarding impoverished nations, nevertheless it’s happening in our own backyards," George McGraw, the founder of DigDeep, mentioned in a statement.


Revenue and location also serve as factors as to whether people have access to tidy water, as does unemployment and education rates. Several Native peoples in particular live on reservations that are supposed to be self-determining (though the federal government has a long history of undermining such treaties, to devastating effect). Per NPR, the Indian Health Service estimated a cost of $200 million to allocate safe water to the Navajo Nation alone; that is just one of the 326 reservations in the country.


The report highlighted issues plaguing most of them Latinx population in Tulare County, California, the colonias in El Paso County, Texas, and on the island of Puerto Rico; and also because the majority-Black population of Lowndes County, Alabama; and the rural communities in the Appalachians. The more than 550,000 people In America experiencing homelessness, 2.3 million people currently incarcerated, and millions of others who work in precarious jobs are also affected, though there really is much less quantifiable intelligence about their access to water.


A press release provided to MTV News also underscored the racist policies that influenced such inequities, detailing how, "in the 1960s, Roanoke, VA would not extend water lines to black neighborhoods. In the early 1900s, Hispanic communities were discouraged from incorporating [as townships], which excluded them from water and sanitation initiatives from the 1950s on."


Issues are ongoing, too; the report noticed that water access has worsened in Delaware, Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Dakota, and also in Puerto Rico even before Hurricane Maria devastated the island. It's no doubt gotten worse: In September 2018, the Washington Post reported that 58 percent of Puerto Ricans worry about the excellent class of water in their homes. And in Flint, Michigan, residents are still forced to navigate life with limited access to water they can trust, soon after a government-mandated shift toward a new water distribute put thousands of lives at risk.


MTV News has reached out to both the Department of the Interior and the Department of Health and Human Services for comment.