More than 10,000 homes on Native American reservations in the Southwest still don’t have running water — a startling reality despite the fact that many of those tribes hold substantial legal rights to water.
A newly passed federal law has been put forward as a potential solution to finally deliver clean, running water to those households. However, progress is being complicated by an ongoing dispute among states over access to the Colorado River.
As those state-level tensions continue to simmer, thousands of tribal families remain without a basic necessity that most Americans take for granted.
