Washing your hands is one of the simplest preventative measures recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in fighting the spread of the coronavirus. But for thousands of Navajo and Hopi people, a preexisting water shortage now puts them at serious risk during the pandemic.
The vintage train was chugchugchugging its usual route out of Durango that sunny morning as tourists marveled at the postcard-pretty canyon. Just a few miles closer to Silverton, a plume of smoke started rising from the steep hillside.
Within minutes, a Good Samaritan tried to douse the flames, state and federal court documents say. Three separate efforts by the scenic railroad company—including one involving a helicopter—tried to put out the flames, too. But the fire burned out of control within minutes. By the time wildland firefighters finally extinguished the fire six months later, 54,000 acres, an area larger than the nearby Mesa Verde National Park, had been charred and recorded as Colorado’s sixth worst wildfire.
Many of Arizona’s Native tribes have long-standing claims to water rights that haven’t yet been settled, and a discussion of efforts to negotiate possible agreements took center stage at a meeting of Gov. Doug Ducey’s water council.
The meeting grew tense after Arizona’s top water official gave a presentation on the status of tribes’ unresolved water claims, and then didn’t allow leaders of four tribes to speak.
Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Tom Buschatzke said he sent letters a week ago to all 22 federally recognized tribes in Arizona inviting them to speak about the issue at upcoming meetings later this year.
On a hot summer’s day, marine ecologist Courtney Greiner walks the shore of a rocky Washington beach at low tide with a handful of staff and interns. They stake out the ground and hunch down, digging up the top two inches of mud, silt, and gravel looking for baby clams.
For thousands of years, the indigenous peoples of the West Coast would build rock walls at the low tide line, allowing sand to pile up behind them, making the slope of the beach gentler, and expanding the area of the intertidal zone that clams like to call home.
The nearest water station for Darlene Yazzie is nine miles away at the Dennehotso Chapter House — or community center — in the Four Corners region of the Navajo Nation. On Tuesday, she counted her dimes and nickels to pay for water. It costs $1.10 plus gas money to fill up two 50-gallon barrels and she’s just been told the price is going up next month.
Just outside Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, a year-round, mineral-rich spring turns the Little Colorado River a vivid turquoise. This final stretch, about 10 miles from the river’s confluence with its larger relative, is one of the West’s spectacular waterways, with bright water flowing below steep red-rock cliffs. But the view will change dramatically if a Phoenix-based company builds a proposed hydropower project.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
