WATCH: Kelly Discusses Tribal Clean Water Access in Senate Hearing
Today, during an Environment and Public Works committee hearing celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Safe Water Drinking Act (SWDA), Arizona Senator Mark Kelly highlighted the achievements of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in expanding clean water access to Tribal communities in Arizona. He also shared how Congress can continue to support Tribal communities through clean water programs and infrastructure investments.
Passed in 1974, the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) empowered the EPA to set national standards to protect Americans from contaminants in public water supplies. In 1996, the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) was introduced to finance infrastructure projects to help water systems meet these standards. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—championed by Kelly—built on this progress with nearly $60 billion to address aging infrastructure, water main repairs, lead service line replacement, and emerging contaminants like PFAS, including with dedicated funding to support the drinking water needs of tribal communities. Together, these efforts have ensured 92 percent of Americans have continuous access to safe drinking water, reflecting 50 years of improved quality and access.
During the hearing, Kelly introduced Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren who testified about the critical need for reliable, clean drinking water in Tribal households. President Nygren emphasized the importance of funding not only for building water infrastructure but also for workforce development, training, and regulatory streamlining to ensure long-term success.
In introducing President Nygren to the Committee, Kelly said, “I’ve had the honor of working closely with President Nygren on many of the issues we’ll be discussing today, including exploring every opportunity to make sure tribal households throughout the Navajo Nation have access to clean, reliable drinking water, cleaning up abandoned uranium mines, and securing water rights for the Navajo Nation and other tribes and communities in northern Arizona.”
See below to read a transcript of Kelly’s introduction of Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren:
Sen. Kelly: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to welcome the president of the Navajo Nation, Dr. Buu Nygren. President Nygren was elected President of the Navajo Nation in 2022. Upon his election, he made history as the youngest ever president of the Navajo Nation. Prior to his election as president, Dr. Nygren served as the Chief Commercial Officer of the Navajo Engineering and Construction Authority. He is a graduate of Arizona State University and has a doctorate from the University of Southern California. He and his wife Jasmine live in Red Mesa, Arizona.
I have had the honor of working closely with President Nygren on many of the issues that we will be discussing today, including exploring every opportunity to make sure that Tribal households throughout the Navajo Nation have access to clean, reliable drinking water. But also cleaning up abandoned uranium mines and securing water rights for the Navajo Nation and other Tribes and communities in northern Arizona.
President Nygren, thank you for agreeing to testify in front of the committee today. I know that the committee is going to benefit from your experience as we discuss maximizing the investments made by the bipartisan infrastructure law to improve tribal water infrastructure and also to get your perspective on what more that Congress can do to meet the needs of Tribal communities. So, with that, Mr. Chairman, I will hand it back over to you.
Click here to watch his full exchange with witnesses. See below to read a transcript of Kelly’s remarks and questions:
Sen. Kelly: President Nygren, thanks again for joining us today. I wanted to ask you to expand upon your testimony where you discuss the importance of making sure that tribal communities receive not just funding for physically building infrastructure, but also for staff and training and workforce development to make sure tribes can operate and maintain drinking water systems.
First, can you expand upon what you said during your opening remarks to explain what types of funding the Navajo Nation has received in prior years to administer drinking water programs? I’m talking about previous years, what were the types of funding that the nation received?
Dr. Nygren: Thank you, Senator. As mentioned in my testimony, we currently receive the Public Water Systems Provision Grant and we feel like it hasn’t been fully funded since 2014. I have been told that it is about half funded since then. And really to continue to rollout the Safe Drinking Water Act to make sure that program is funded, we would really appreciate that.
The other funding that we’ve gotten too is the Source Water Protection Grant. I’m told that was about 200,000, around that number, that we have received to try to provide some quality source water prevention for contamination as well. And the other grant we received is to make sure that these grants continue to work together in partnership to have us continue to implement these grants.
But sometimes the resources and the dollars we get are not quite enough and the vastness of the Navajo Nation we’ve got. As I mentioned earlier, about the size of West Virginia, two and a half times the size of Massachusetts. And really to implement the resources that are needed we have to make sure we have got our personnel to be out in the community testing whether it is well water, testing existing water systems that have not been looked at in a long time. So, again, the funding we get, we really hope we can get it fully funded to make sure that we meet those demands.
Sen. Kelly: Even when it’s fully funded, do you feel like it is still an insufficient amount of money to do the work you need?
Dr. Nygren: Yes, definitely, definitely. I was talking with our EPA team, that they have not gone out and evaluated some of the groundwater systems, like windmills, that a lot of our people continue to use. Having grown up 19 years, I grew up on well water. And the discussions I had with the EPA was: I wonder if the well water that I drank out of for 19 years, I wonder if it was ever tested? And, so, a lot of communities still use well water, spring water. Some of the spring waters on Navajo, they have had traces of uranium. But sometimes communities just need to drink water to satisfy their thirst.
So, again, I think that if we were fully resourced above and beyond what we are requesting at the moment, it would really help us. Because there is still 30% of the population that still doesn’t have access to clean reliable drinking water because most of them have to haul the water miles and miles at a time.
Sen. Kelly: I have a staff member who works for me in state, who you know, who has to haul water every week. Their frequency varies based on the time of year and how much water people tend to use. Can you talk about staffing, capacity, and how the funds that we provide help you administer these programs and why this is so important to tribal communities?
Dr. Nygren: I think when it comes to the staffing, we are definitely using the dollars that we can get. But, again, we staff them with as many people as we possibly can. As I mentioned earlier, we have some personnel that continues to try to monitor as much as they can. But as far as the other resources that we have received, the ARPA money, the Bipartisan Infrastructure dollars, especially with the Gallup water supply, and trying to complete some of those resources, we have really been trying to implement a lot of those working with our Navajo Tribal Utility Authority.
Some of the bipartisan money that has come down from Congress, we have continued to connect people to water on a month-to-month basis. But, again, that is just using existing water sources. And I know, at the moment, you are championing one of our biggest water rights settlements at the time but to really continue to build that out, we really need to have a really good idea of how much water we are going to have as we continue to build out some of those clean water efforts.
Sen. Kelly: If you know, how many families are getting access via pipe-to-water to their homes on average each month?
Dr. Nygren: On average, I think the number that I recently got a month ago is over the past year we have connected about 700 homes over the past year. If you divide that, probably – I’m not as quick as you at math – 60 something a month.
Sen. Kelly: I will come back to you, Mr. President, in a second. But, Ms. Fox, can you describe what ways the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in the Biden administration worked to provide additional capacity building assistance to help tribal communities?
Ms. Fox: Absolutely. During my time at the EPA, we established the first ever Tribal Water Action Plan, which was the Biden administration’s commitment to strengthen the nation-to-nation relationship with tribes through the implementation of the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act. That Tribal water action plan included several things. One was to invest more in technical assistance to support tribes. I talked about some of that technical assistance work earlier.
There was also a commitment to help an additional 100 tribes get Treatment as State so that they could also be setting and managing their water regulations. And then there were several rulemakings that were really focused on better aligning the implementation of the Clean Water Act with tribal treaty rights. So of course, there is more work to be done but those were some examples of efforts that we partook in.
Sen. Kelly: Can you think of additional resources you might need or additional authorities that the EPA could benefit from to help tribal communities meeting their drinking water needs?
Ms. Fox: I would absolutely agree with the recommendations that the President has already made. I think that we have well established programs for technical assistance, for infrastructure, and we really just need to continue resourcing them so that we can reach more communities.
Sen. Kelly: I think I am a little bit over my time, but I have one suggestion for President Nygren. When you come back to the committee and the chair will be Sen. Capito from West Virginia. I often talk about the Navajo Nation not being twice the size of Massachusetts but being almost as big as West Virginia. Just for your information. And with that, I’ll send it back over to Mr. Chairman.
