Village toasts water line

By Tom Purdom
Staff Writer

Louise Apacito, 79, of Rincon/Marquez holds up her credit card which allows her to turn on the watering point to get water. [Courtesy Photo]

RINCON MARQUEZ — Residents of this tiny, remote village in McKinley County have never seen anything like it in their community.

But there it is, fresh, safe and clear running water and now, for the first time since 1868, when Rincon Marquez became a community, residents here are on their way to one day seeing sinks for washing dishes in their homes, bathtubs in their homes, showers, toilets, all those things that many others in McKinley and Cibola Counties take for granted. The inhabitants are predominantly Navajo and the land mass is a maze of checkerboard holdings. Some of the homes in the area have electricity, but many do not.

For generations people have been forced to haul water in whatever containers they could find and sometimes, said Andrew Robertson, the trip was as far as 100 miles. Driving the roads in the area is no easy trick either. In wet weather, the roads are nothing more than ribbons of mud.

Robertson is the engineer from Sounder, Miller & Associates who put together a grant application for $1 million to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to fund the pipeline project. Now that the pipeline is complete, Indian Health Services (IHS) is looking at a $3 million grant to run up to 138 water lines into homes.

Open line
The project was a 15-mile, six-inch water line built from the Torreon Water Line to the middle of town in Rincon Marquez.

"This gives the community hope," said a happy LaVern Wagner, a Navajo Nation Council delegate and a member of the nation's resources committee.

Wagner was raised in the area. "Having water there means everything to the community," Wagner said. "We didn't have a potable water supply forever, until now, and it's the 21st century."

Ernie Watson, a public information officer with the USDA and a person who saw the project through to completion, also mentioned the fact that Rincon Marquez and Anthill, another small community along the new pipeline route, can now face the future with running water. "The benefits of that $1 million grant are amazing," Watson said. "From a health standpoint alone, it will bring the people's lifestyle up to the 21st century. It's been exciting to be able to go out and help people like this."

People living in the checkerboard area have talked about getting water since 1964.

Robertson said in 2001, IHS contacted him, asking if his firm could help in the building of a 15 mile long water trunk line. "IHS said the trunk line would allow them to do a follow-up project to provide water lines into individual homes," Robertson said.

Robertson soon found himself waist-deep in the project. He even learned how to speak Navajo to make the job flow more smoothly.

The trick was to get a grant to build the waterline. Robertson said the answer to that riddle came from USDA.

Addressing needs
An application process was started and the document even included letters from school children and parents telling of the critical need for water. Pastor Roy Archibald, pastor of the Rincon Marquez Mission, also wrote a letter to the USDA stating that virtually every drop of water for drinking, bathing and washing clothes has to be hauled to Rincon Marquez.

"Water that is closer would enable our families to maintain a better level of health and cut down on the amount of sickness," Archibald wrote. "I guess to sum up matters, a local source of water for our people would save lives, money, and prevent sickness. I know we tend to think in terms of dollars and cents on things like this, but it is really a matter of the quality of life of our people."

Watson said the USDA wants to fund projects it knows the people want. "This project didn't have 80 percent of the people wanting it. We had 100 percent of the people wanting it," Watson said.

Wagner, meanwhile, said the community formed an Authorized Local Emergency Response Team (ALERT) and a Land Use Planning Committee to push the project forward.

The USDA representative likes to explain the resident participation by example. Most federal grants need matching funds. But with sheepherding as the major area industry and the average yearly income slightly more than $2,000, matching funds was going to be difficult. "They did it though," Watson said.

The Rincon Marquez community held a bake sale, but because the community was so far back into the country, the only people buying the fry bread and other Navajo goodies were the people baking them in the first place. "They had to sell to each other," Watson said.

Bake sale
When the bake sale was over, the community had collected $90.64 in matching funds. While most communities give a 20 percent match, Rincon Marquez had given everything it had. Watson said it was one of the turning points in approving the grant.

The community's resolve, however, was far from done. When the grant was awarded the government needed 400 signatures of landowners living along the water line route following the county road to give right-of-way to the project. "When we needed the signatures we had three residents, Martha Charley, LaVern Wagner and Leo Charley, who went door-to-door and got every one of them (signatures)," Robertson said. "They used their own gasoline, their own time and energy, and they got it done."

Robertson said the project could not have been done without the help of many entities, including the Navajo Nation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Indian Health Services, the USDA, McKinley County and the Bureau of Land Management.

The grant was awarded in 2002. It took two years to get the preparatory work done prior to the actual construction and finally, Joe Padilla Utility Construction from the Isleta Pueblo got the low bid to do the work. Construction began June 21, 2004 and in February 2005, the pipeline was finished.

"It works with a plastic credit-card bought by customers at the chapter houses in Torreon and Whitehorse Lake," Robertson said. Customers put the credit card into a machine which counts the amount of water purchased.

Bargain prices
At 3 cents per gallon, the water is a bargain to those who used to spend about $48 per 1,000 gallons of water after paying for the water, gasoline to get it, wear and tear on vehicles and tires, and that did not include the time to go get the water.

For people like Robertson and Watson, what happened in Rincon Marquez leaves a warm, good feeling inside.

And for people such as 12-year-old Denise Toledo, who wrote to the USDA saying: "Will you please give us water. We need water here. I go to school at Torreon Day School. Sincerely, Denise Toledo," what happened in Rincon Marquez is nothing short of a dream come true.