On the Hopi reservation, a silver well tower rises above a sun-bleached water tank streaked with spray paint and stamped with identification numbers. Once powered by wind, the system now runs on solar energy, a critical upgrade that helps keep water flowing for tribal members.
This site is more than a landmark for many Hopi families. It’s a lifeline, providing water for bathing, washing, livestock and other everyday needs.
Though the water is free, it isn’t safe to drink. High levels of naturally occurring arsenic have long plagued the reservation, forcing families to haul clean water from distant fill stations or buy it in town—an expensive and time-consuming burden that strains vehicles and budgets. While some wells remain in use, the tribe implemented the Hopi Arsenic Mitigation Project, or HAMP, to deliver treated drinking water to a limited number of residents. The system relies on a modern pipeline network serving villages in First and Second Mesa, including the tribe’s cultural and health care centers.
But the system comes with a catch. While the federal government helped fund its construction, it largely left long-term operation and upkeep to the tribe, in a region with limited resources and few qualified personnel. Now, the Hopi are expected to maintain compliance with Safe Drinking Water Act regulations or face steep penalties, without reliable federal support.
“We had a well here, but that was (contaminated with) arsenic too, so they closed that,” said Hopi Tribal Council member Robinson Honani, describing an aging well on Second Mesa that failed to meet compliance standards. “We had to shut it down, or we would have been fined thousands of dollars a day.”
The HAMP system emerged from a collaboration between the Hopi Tribe, the Indian Health Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and local village utilities. The Tribal Council established the Hopi Utilities Corporation in 2017 to oversee the system’s construction and management, with the project launching in 2022.
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Today, water is pumped from deep wells in the Navajo Aquifer, treated to meet federal safety standards and stored in 200,000-plus-gallon tanks before distribution. Villages pay a negotiated rate of $8 per 1,000 gallons to help cover operating costs, with monthly bills tied to metered water use.
The revenue supports routine maintenance and the replacement of water lines damaged during construction, but it often falls short of covering the full cost of keeping the system running. Repairs can be especially difficult in remote areas where access is limited and trained technicians are in short supply. Related delays, in turn, can jeopardize consistent operations across the network.
The tribe already has faced penalties tied to these challenges. In 2019, tribal leadership agreed to pay a $3,800 EPA fine for failing to transfer the Hopi Cultural Center to a compliant treatment system, violating a 2016 agreement to reduce naturally occurring arsenic in the tribe’s water supplies.
Hopi Chairman Timothy L. Nuvangyaoma said the tribe has made meaningful strides in building out its water infrastructure, particularly in areas once affected by arsenic contamination. But he stressed that future maintenance and upgrades will require stable, sustained investment.
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One potential solution lies in the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Act, a highly anticipated agreement reintroduced in Congress this year with bipartisan support. The legislation aims to resolve longstanding tribal water claims and allocate $5 billion to building out critical infrastructure across the region, including funding to support systems like HAMP.
“I know there’s a large price tag on that (settlement), but … being able to deliver the water to the places that it’s needed can’t happen unless we get the funding associated with it,” Nuvangyaoma said.
The tribe’s legal counsel noted that settlement money is unlikely to arrive for at least three years, and when it does, tribal leadership will need to decide how much it wants to dedicate to HAMP. That means villages relying on the system will almost certainly continue paying monthly fees.
Still, Hopi leaders remain optimistic that the settlement’s broader infrastructure investments will spur economic development on the reservation, gradually increasing the tribe’s capacity to fully fund and independently manage its water systems. Ensuring safe, reliable water access over time hinges on ending the cycle of underfunding and delayed repairs.
“Looking at the future, we need the reliability and the certainty of water settlement and agreement to be in place,” Nuvangyaoma said.
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Tribal water settlement aims to repair generations of exclusion
The Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Act would resolve decades of legal disputes and devote $5 billion to delivering Colorado River water to tribes in northeastern Arizona. For the Hopi and Navajo, the promise of assured water follows generations of exclusion from major allocation decisions. For the San Juan Southern Paiute, the agreement represents the chance to gain land and water rights for the first time in the tribe’s modern history.
