Pottery becomes water treatment device for Navajo nation | Hacker News Reader

Pottery becomes water treatment device for Navajo nation

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23 pointsBrajeshwar6 comments

I'm sure the authors meant well, but it's absurd to act like this is a solution. They could have a clean source of water, but the federal government is siding against them[1] for water rights so that retirees in Arizona can have golf courses and manicured lawns in the middle of a desert[2].

1: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/20/1164852475/supreme-court-nava...

2: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/05/arizona-wate...

100% correct and the idea that nano-particle silver lined clay pots are the solution to water access in 2023 is laughable.

My dad was setting up local factories for similar pots in several nations in Africa 20 years ago. They sourced local clay and sawdust and provided plans for clay presses. There was a fund that provided the starting capital and the silver solution. The same fund also provided plans and technical help with the construction of locally built rope-pumps. These technologies were used in tandem to provide relatively easy (drinking) water to remote communities. The most amazing effect was that women from these villages would save a lot of time everyday and used that time for some little side hussling and village life really improved.

It's one thing when there's no infrastructure or easily accessible source of water. It's another when you're in Arizona next to the Colorado River. The thought of people in the first world having to get their potable water from a treated pot for purely political reasons is why it's absurd.

Water rights on the Colorado are a huge, contentious issue and there are many states involved in the fierce negotiations over who gets a slice of the ever dwindling pie. As per the Guardian article, California is among the major stakeholders drowning out the pleas of the Navajo nation for access to drinking water. In fact, of all the states vying for more water access, California takes the most water out of the Colorado by a large margin.

This problem is not exclusively at the feet of Arizonans nor retirees.. with a population of 40 million in Cali (and 1/4 of the state being desert) vs 7 million in Arizona, I daresay Californians are spending more of this limited resources on golf courses and manicured lawns, which regardless of how opulent and wasteful it feels, these aren't even the main issue. 80% of all the water in the Colorado river goes to farmland (and I do mean all, 100% of the water is being diverted before it reaches the ocean and has been for some time). Much of it for water-intensive crops such as alfalfa, not to mention producing 90% of the nation's winter vegetables in California.

All of that is to say, if we're going to point fingers, let's not stop at lawns in one particular state. And before we dismiss possible solutions out of hand, we should probably do an assessment of whether or not a proposal to help the issue is economical, practical, and scalable (cultural relevance is just a nice bonus). Bear in mind, the federal government has successfully argued that the treaties do not require them to assess the needs of tribal peoples nor build the infrastructure to meet that need and the supreme court has formally ruled that the Navajo will not got water access under the attempted legal push. California, Nevada, and Arizona all lobbied the court in support of this "no" ruling (I'm assuming amicus briefs, but reporting doesn't specify). Hopefully further political and legal efforts can grant the Navajo nation this basic human right, but in the mean time, it is worth looking into stop-gap solutions for the 40,000 Navajo on reservations who don't have access to drinking water.

I wasn't pointing fingers at the retirees, I specifically blamed at the federal government, who refuse to recognize the Navajo Nation's water access rights, as you said.

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