Navajo Water Lady Delivers Water to 250 Families for the Last Six Years

The St. Bonaventure Indian Mission in Thoreau, New Mexico has only one driver, a woman by the name of Darlene Arviso and she has been delivering water to 250 households within a 50-mile radius at the reservation for the last six years.

Water is a very precious and tremendously limited commodity in the nearly barren and dry Eastern Navajo Nation and about 40 percent of the households in the area rely on water delivery for their daily water needs. Shallow wells in the Navajo Nation are contaminated by many pollutants, including radioactive uranium.

The mission has one water truck that is filled from the mission’s onsite well, the only source of safe, clean and potable water in the area. Darlene Arviso then delivers this precious water to people with limited mobility, either due to their advanced age or lack of any means of transportation.

Delivering water since 2009

Ever since the mission started water delivery service of water coming from its onsite well in 2009, Arviso has been the driver of the mission’s water truck, which has a capacity of 8,000 gallons. She tops two blue 55-gallon barrels at each home, driving for 75 miles biweekly over unpaved, bumpy roads. She also fills any other containers each household may have once she’s filled up their water barrels.

The people that Arviso services with water delivery consider her a saint and they call her the water lady, a person whom people in the northwest section of the reservation eagerly watch out for. They will wave to her as soon as they see the big, yellow water truck of the mission.

On the average, a person in the U.S. uses 100 gallons of water a day. At the reservation, the residents use an average of seven gallons each day to clean, bathe, cook and drink.

Not a perfect solution

The biweekly water delivery is not a perfect solution. The mission thus contacted DigDeep, a nonprofit founded by George McGraw. Its mission is to provide water systems to developing countries around the world. DigDeep had finished making several surveys and plans to drill a 1,800-foot well at a site near Smith Lake, which will allow the mission to expand its program of water distribution.

Arviso, who is also a school bus driver for the mission as well as a silversmith said she has no plans to retire yet, since nobody would be able to deliver the water to their members.

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