Water Is Life
From 1944—86, miners excavated nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore from Navajo homelands. When the Cold War began to die down and the work ended, more than 1,000 mines and waste sites were abandoned across the reservation. Neither the mining companies nor the government has made any effort to clean up the toxic material that has leached into the water.
This is why your support is so incredibly important. In the Navajo Nation, 1 in every 3 people lacks access to clean, reliable water. And while the average American consumes 88 gallons of water each day, Navajos are forced to get by on as little as 2 gallons.
Your support empowers us to reach families who live every day without running water. Together, we can install rainwater harvesting systems that create a sustainable household water supply, teach vital water-conservation practices, provide water filters for homes with unsafe water sources, expand water-storage capacity, and increase our water-hauling operations so we can reach even more communities with safe, clean water.
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Rolanda Tohannie felt blessed to grow up next to a well that provided her family with the water they needed for drinking, cleaning, cooking, bathing and caring for their livestock.
After all, in the Navajo Nation, 54,000 people lack access to a public water system. That’s the highest number in any region in the United States. So even without running water or electricity at home in Box Springs, Rolanda knew how lucky her family was.
What she didn’t know was that the well like countless others on Navajo land had been contaminated with uranium and arsenic. She had no idea the water had been polluted by decades of uranium ore mining as part of the U.S. effort to develop a nuclear bomb.
Today, Rolanda says, “My health is gone and my body is worthless.” She has been diagnosed with thyroid and esophageal cancer and undergone 11 surgeries. She’s losing her hair and her teeth. Her children have developed numerous tumors and cysts, as well.
Yet, despite knowing the health risks, Rolanda and many other Navajos continue to use the contaminated water because they simply have no other option.
