Navajo families don't trust their tap water, study says, and overpay for outside supplies

An estimated 30% of households on the Navajo Reservation lack piped water in their homes, forcing them to drive long distances to haul water, putting them at risk of sanitation-related diseases, raising costs for low-income households and burdening elderly family members.

But a study by Johns Hopkins University's Center for Indigenous Health suggests that even Navajo households with piped water don’t trust or like it enough to drink it, leaving them to buy bottled water from the store.

According to data from JHU’s Diné Household Water Study released in September, 72% of households surveyed in one region of the Navajo Nation used bottled water for drinking. The number is almost identical for households with (72.2%) and without (72.8%) piped water. Those percentages are more than twice the national rate (31%) found in a separate 2021 study.

Piped water within the survey area is safe to drink, according to JHU study data. Researchers conducted 200 water quality tests at surveyed households, finding that piped supplies met EPA drinking water standards. (Researchers did discover low chlorine levels in drinking water, likely from long distances between treatment plants and homes).

But researchers say federal water quality standards only protect health and safety. While tap water in surveyed homes was safe to drink, it wasn’t always enjoyable to drink.

Study leaders say respondents told them they didn’t trust their tap water because of historic pollution events — the results of local coal and uranium mining, for example — perceptions of tap water passed down from older generations, or because their water simply looks or tastes bad.

“There's a lot of aesthetically, kind of awful things happening with water across (the reservation),” said Reese Cuddy, a JHU researcher who is leading the study, which will continue to focus on other areas. “It comes out a certain color — we’ve heard yellow, brown, kind of greenish tint — and it doesn't taste good.”

Bottled water adds to household costs, burdens

For families who don’t trust or like their piped water, relying on bottled drinking water can create a financial drag. Purchasing bottled drinking water can cost thousands of times more than relying on tap water, according to researchers.

Water access nonprofit DigDeep estimated in a 2022 study that American households pay around $1,350 per year on bottled water when using it as a primary drinking source — an estimate DigDeep personnel called “conservative.” Families often pay that amount on top of their existing utility bills. Researchers said this cost is particularly meaningful on the Navajo Nation, where an average household makes $34,000 per year.

To Cuddy, buying bottled water is almost certainly an exacerbating factor in Navajo residents’ existing financial challenges. Nine out of 10 respondents in the JHU study have told researchers they experienced financial difficulty in the last year.

“I do think it adds an outrageous amount of burden,” Cuddy said.

Much of the Navajo Nation relies on limited and sometimes poor-quality groundwater for its piped supply, meaning connected households often see brown streams coming out of their taps and showers.

Rex Kontz, deputy general manager for the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, said metals in the reservation’s groundwater supplies create the discoloration and odors residents report. Some of the groundwater has high levels of iron and manganese, Kontz said, which are safe to consume but create unappealing orange and black colors when they mix with the chlorine used in water treatment.

Treatment facilities can remove those metals, but Kontz said the Indian Health Service, the federal agency that constructed most of the water treatment infrastructure on the Navajo Nation, only builds infrastructure to address water’s safety — not odor, color or taste.

Though these characteristics aren't strictly necessary for human health and safety, George McGraw, founder and CEO of DigDeep, holds that tap water’s aesthetic appeal is fundamental in decreasing reliance on bottled water. McGraw, whose organization operates in communities with low water access across the United States (including the Navajo Nation), said families often use clarity and taste to select drinking water supplies.

In Appalachia and on the Navajo Nation, McGraw said he has worked with families who use unsafe drinking water sources like wells, springs or mineshafts because the water looks and tastes clean. DigDeep has confirmed that some of these sources were causing illness among the people using them. On the flip side, McGraw said he often meets people who avoid their safe water sources because they look or taste suspect.

“The reality is that the water can be accessible, affordable, and safe, but if it isn't acceptable, people won't use it,” McGraw said.

How a water settlement will help residents

A recently signed water rights settlement could improve the quality of water flowing into Navajo homes, according to tribal officials. In May, the tribe approved a settlement agreement that legally establishes its rights to the Colorado River, Little Colorado River and other water sources. The agreement caps decades of negotiation and litigation.

“The nation has been fighting for (the settlement) for 20 years, and I think it's finally coming together,” Kontz said.

The agreement is working its way through Congress, where lawmakers must ratify it before it goes into effect. Arizona supports the deal.

Nearly 120 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Indian reservations were entitled to the water rights necessary to sustain themselves, the Arizona settlement marks one of the Navajo Nation's last steps in quantifying and establishing those rights, a process that required separate settlements in each of the three states within the reservation's boundaries.

The Navajo Nation reached a settlement in New Mexico in 2009 and another in Utah in 2022.

The surface water involved in the Arizona settlement, Kontz said, does not have the same metallic contents as local groundwater, meaning it will likely look and taste better.

“You're converting almost all of your groundwater to surface water, and then your groundwater wells will just stay online as backup,” Kontz said.

The settlement will also include federal funding meant to help the tribe build water infrastructure. Already, the tribe has used other federal funding to start improving and extending its water pipelines, according to Bidtah Becker, chief legal counsel to the office of Navajo President Buu Nygren.

The projects could improve water access for people on the reservation who don't have piped water at all. The NTUA has estimated that 30% of Navajo households don’t have piped water in their homes. Data from the Johns Hopkins September study found a similar result (27%) in the Fort Defiance area near Window Rock, the capital.

Trying to change perceptions

Underfunded federal agencies, struggles over water rights, and the reservation's widely dispersed population have all contributed to the lack of piped water access.

Becker said the settlement arrives amid historic federal investment in water infrastructure on Indian reservations. Congress pushed $3.5 billion to the chronically underfunded Indian Health Service in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021, allowing the agency to complete many of its delayed water infrastructure projects.

“If you had asked me, ‘What would Congress do?’ I would have said ‘absolutely nothing,’” Becker said. “And look what they did … So this is an interesting case of Congress actually acting.”

Now, Becker said, the key challenge for the Navajo Nation is implementing those funds. And even if governments complete effective infrastructure projects, researchers say communication and outreach projects will still be necessary to break through culturally ingrained and and historically informed distrust around tap water.

JHU researcher Ashley Thacker, who grew up on the Navajo Nation, said she remembered switching from drinking tap water to bottled water when she moved from the New Mexico portion of the reservation to the Arizona portion in the late 1990s. Thacker said inherited distrust of the piped water supply may also be driving families toward bottled water.

“Sometimes it’s a matter of how it’s perceived by older generations and how that gets passed on,” Thacker said. "That's something that we're trying to get at with this with this current study."

Having completed their survey in the Fort Defiance administrative area of the reservation, the JHU team has now moved on to the Chinle area. Ultimately, the team hopes to survey of the entire reservation.

Austin Corona covers environmental issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to [email protected].

Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Navajo families choose bottled water over tap