The Haury Program celebrates World Water Day by announcing the creation of the Navajo WaterGIS portal.

World Water Day is today, March 22. To celebrate, the Haury Program is excited to announce the creation of the Navajo WaterGIS portal. The portal, developed by researchers at the University of New Mexico, University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University, University of California, Montana State University, Southwest Research and Information Center, and the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources, compiles a database of water quality measurements from groundwater wells on the Navajo Nation. 
 
The portal builds on a water quality dataset initiated in 2011 by the Community Environmental Health Program at the University of New Mexico, expanding it to include data from more than 2000 wells on almost all chapters in the Navajo Nation. The portal is "a truly interdisciplinary effort," mentioned Ricky Camplain, Assistant Professor at NAU Department of Health Sciences and researcher at the Center for Health Equity Research. "Because of the different perspectives in Indigenous resilience, public health, and environmental sciences, the potential impact and reach of this project are vast. One of the most important things that makes this project special is the community aspect. Making this tool available to members of the Navajo Nation, policymakers, and other scientists can help move changes and improvements in water quality forward." 
 
One-third of homes in the Navajo Nation lack plumbing to deliver household drinking water, relying on other water sources, regulated and unregulated alike, for livestock watering, agriculture, domestic, and other purposes. Thus, access to reliable water quality information the Navajo WaterGIS portal offers is critical, particularly in a region dotted with thousands of unregulated groundwater sources. Dr. Crystal Tulley Cordova, Principal Hydrologist of the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources, pointed out the portal is "an accessible and interactive tool available to help Navajo Nation water managers better understand the water quality of unregulated water sources. It also provides an opportunity to include this knowledge in the decision-making process for water capital development and improvement projects."
 
The portal allows users to locate and download information about wells contaminated with metals and metalloids known to affect human health and abandoned uranium mines in the Navajo Nation. Randy Akee, Associate Professor of the Department of Public Policy and Chair of American Indian Studies at UCLA, commented this research is "an amazing display of Indigenous Data Sovereignty in practice. From the start, the researchers and collaborators dedicated themselves to collecting and providing data and analysis that could help inform policymakers in real-time. In particular, this work on the Navajo Nation helped showcase where there are remaining issues with access to clean water. Water is a precious resource and making data more readily accessible is a powerful tool for tribal citizens, leaders, and health officials. I appreciate the multi-disciplinary perspective that the researchers embraced and the joint work efforts that made this a success." 
 
In It Takes a Team: Tackling Water Quality Challenges and COVID-19 in the Navajo Nation, authors Joseph H. Hoover, Daniel Beene, and Karletta Chief talk about their journey in creating the Navajo WaterGIS portal. They indicate a group of scholars and students led by researchers from the Navajo Water Access Coordination Group (WACG) found that the lack of indoor plumbing and access to potable water was associated with a higher rate of COVID-19 cases affecting populations in the Navajo Nation. The study, American Indian Reservations and COVID-19: Correlates of Early Infection Rates in the Pandemic, published in 2020, also suggests a correlation between COVID-19 case rates and access to relevant information communicated in the language spoken by many Navajo Nation residents. "The development of the Navajo Nation WaterGIS portal," Nikki Tulley, UArizona Environmental Science Ph.D. student explained, "is a product of co-development much needed in response to the elevated need brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic to the long-lasting wicked water problems on the reservation. The portal further provides opportunities for future collaborations to address the Nation's water resource challenges."  
 
The WACG is a coordinated effort led by the Navajo Nation and the Indian Health Service assessing water wells and stations at each Navajo Chapter community. In addition, WACG aims to provide transitional water sites across the Navajo Nation to assist off-grid Navajo families with water needs for hand washing and quality drinking water. The WACG oversaw the construction of these water access sites and designed an interactive website (NavajoSafeWater.org) to raise awareness and help Navajo Nation communities locate the new water points – where people can find free water for in-home drinking and cooking. 
 
Daniel Beene, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies and a trainee with the METALS Superfund Research Program at the University of New Mexico (UNM), said he "was fortunate to work with Dr. Chief's group to support the WACG beginning in 2020. The web mapping and visualization app I produced builds off extensive work from two of my colleagues, Dr. Joe Hoover, a geographer at Montana State University - Billings, and Chris Shuey at the Southwest Resource Information Center in Albuquerque. They spent a few years compiling water quality data at unregulated wells across the Navajo Nation from various sources dating back nearly a century. Conversations with the WACG made it apparent that there's a crucial need to present and share those data in other formats. I'm a geography student at UNM and have a bias toward mapping and presenting data in a spatial format. I like to think of the app as a living product that will respond to user experience and needs and eventually include more geospatial data relating to water and Navajo communities. I hope that the tool's user base will be diverse, from researchers and policymakers to community members who rely on groundwater daily." 
 
Adding on to Daniel's comments, Chris mentioned, "it's gratifying for me to see the decade-long initiative to compile and publish water quality data for unregulated water sources on the Navajo Nation come to fruition. The initiative began in 2010 under the direction of former Navajo IRB chair Beverly Becenti-Pigman who challenged those of us working on population exposures to uranium to come together to exchange and compile water quality data to inform local communities of possible health risks. It represents the first collaborative effort to compile water quality data generated by academic researchers, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations over the past 40-50 years. Today, community members, elected officials, researchers, and government regulators have access to water quality data for local wells that can inform community health, land-use planning, and remediation policies. In addition, the Navajo Birth Cohort Study staff have been briefed on how to use the interactive map and data table to answer participants' questions about appropriate uses for local wells. The completion of the Navajo WaterGIS database would not have been possible without the financial support of the Haury Program." Christopher Shuey is a researcher at the UNM METALS Superfund Research Center. He is also part of the Dine Network for Environmental Health (DiNEH) Project and Navajo Birth Cohort Study at the Southwest Research and Information Center, Albuquerque, NM. 
  
The Navajo WaterGIS portal is one example of UArizona's most recent water access and water quality research projects to help community members and policymakers make informed decisions on water challenges in the Southwest and beyond. Another example is Integrating Land Use and Water Management, authored by Erin Rugland of the Babbitt Center for Land and Water Policy. The author outlines best practices in water management and land use planning and provides policy tools for their integration. The report features four success stories from across the US, including Colorado, Florida, Philadelphia, and Minnesota. According to the report, state policy is crucial to integrating land and water planning, and Rugland provides four recommendations for policymakers to accomplish integration goals. 
 
To learn more about crucial water policy and management issues, empower informed decision-making, and enrich understanding through engagement, education, and applied research on water-related issues, please visit the UArizona Water Resources Research Center (WRRC). Sharon Megdal, WRCC Director, has penned Reflections, Commemorating World Water Day, a must-read.