Illustration by Molly Murphy
Monday, May 5, 2008
KICKAPOO INDIAN RESERVATION — Heading east on K-20 Highway toward Horton, a sign said "COMMUNITY CENTER" and pointed right.
Down a short gravel drive, a warehouse-like building was empty on a warm Thursday afternoon except for three women sitting around a table and smoking. “Can I help you?” one asked. I’m here to do a story on your water. “Don’t drink it!” one said, and the three women laughed.
Don’t Drink the Water is a phrase that’s grown funny on the Kickapoo Reservation only because of repetition. It’s also a very real warning. No one except those who lack good sense or have a profound faith in God dare drink the water on this small reservation 50 miles northwest of Lawrence.
The women recommended driving a little farther down the road, where a flashier sign said "GOLDEN EAGLE CASINO" and pointed left.There, just off the highway, sat the offices of the tribe, a row of modest, tan buildings labeled legal department, tribal office, tribal court, trading post, environmental office and gaming commission. Looming behind them was the casino, the primary source of income for the tribe.
Through the doors of the tribal office, the woman at the front desk heard “reporter” and instinctively dialed the tribe’s public relations woman, who was out to lunch. After hearing the reporter was interested in water, she immediately grew more helpful. Tribal Chairman Steve Cadue was in the weekly tribal council meeting, she said, but she’d pull him out. “He’ll want to talk about this,” she said. That’s OK, I’ll come back later.
In the senior center, a brick building set back from the tribal offices, a group of old men played cards at one table. Three women sat at another. “Can I help you?” one of the women asked. I’m here to do a story on your water. “Sit down.” One of the card players turned his head and shouted, “I need a drink of good water!”
“Doing a story on water?” a cook asked a few minutes later as he stepped out of the kitchen brandishing a glass in his disposable gloves like a chemist holding a volatile test tube. “This is what’s left after it’s distilled.”
The liquid in the glass didn’t look like water. It was yellow like piss but murkier, like a glass of lemonade with far too much sugar. When you boil the water, this gunk forms a deposit at the bottom of your pot. When you drink it, it gunks up your body. This is why the Kickapoo say, Don’t Drink the Water.
Reservation water
Kickpoo Tribal Chairman
Steve Cadue explains
the water situation
View audio slideshow (5 min.)
•••••
The wind was blowing strong on the Delaware River, rustling the leaves of the trees growing out of the cavernous bank—nature’s historical marker for the height the river used to reach.
Angie Cadue, the 72-year-old sister of the tribal chairman, had volunteered to guide a short trip across K-20 and down a gravel road to the small, decrepit dam where the water is piped from the river to the water treatment plant and out to the reservation.
“We used to swim in that Delaware,” Cadue said. “Now you can’t even wade across the thing. We’ve always had plenty of water. Always. And it was good water, up until the farmers started moving up there…”
The dam was built 31 years ago. Even then, tribal leaders knew it couldn’t produce enough water to sustain the reservation forever, so only a few years after its completion the tribe started looking for another water source. In the mid-’90s, the tribe proposed plans for a reservoir on Plum Creek, which feeds into the Delaware.
Even though the land that would be flooded rests on the reservation, most of it had been sold to white farmers who the Kickapoo have been unable to displace. The tribe has called upon surrounding local leaders, landowners and state and federal authorities for cooperation. It hasn’t come.
All the while, the leg of the Delaware that runs through the reservation has steadily shrunk and become polluted from upstream use. The contamination level is higher than the treatment plant can safely correct. In the summer of 2003, a drought caused the river to run dry and the tribe had to truck water in from the Missouri River.
These days, the Kickapoo get by on three staples: bottled water from the reservation’s trading post, five-gallon jugs from Pat’s Thriftway in nearby Horton and faucet purifiers. The dirty tap water is used sparingly for showers, laundry, dishes and, for some, cooking, as long as it’s boiled first.
Cadue is different from nearly everyone else on the reservation in one respect. She drinks tap water without a filter. She always has. “I believe in God,” she said. “I ask Him to purify my water before I get it.”
•••••
Sitting at a desk cluttered with paperwork, Steve Cadue, who’s served as tribal chairman off and on for more than 20 years, started his story in 1832, when the Kickapoo Tribe was removed by treaty from Missouri and forced west.
The tribe had originally inhabited the Great Lakes region, where its people had used the abundant waterways for drinking, fishing, travel, recreation and warfare. After exploring the land west of Missouri, part of the tribe settled on the banks of the Delaware River.
In the 1960s, the federal government began subsidizing housing projects on the reservation. With modern homes came the need for a strong water supply. Until that point, homes had been served by private wells. In 1977, the small dam and water treatment plant were built on the Delaware River.
“But that was to be a temporary situation,” Steve Cadue said. “Even when we built the intake area, we knew that the Delaware River would not supply enough water.”
Within a few years, the tribe was talking about building a reservoir on Plum Creek. They joined neighboring communities in Nemaha-Brown Joint Watershed District No. 7 with the understanding, Cadue said, that the neighbors of the tribe would invoke their eminent domain authority, if need be, on their behalf.
In the mid-1990s, the Kickapoo proposed the Plum Creek Reservoir project. The tribe owned only 30 percent of the land that would need to be flooded. While governments typically can invoke eminent domain for a reservoir, as was the case when Clinton Lake was built to provide water to Lawrence in the 1970s, the Kickapoo didn’t the rights to its former land.
“We asked the watershed board to honor their agreement of eminent domain, to use their power authority on behalf of the Kickapoo Tribe, as originally agreed to,” Cadue said. “But they’ve chosen not to honor that agreement.”
The landowners have rejected the tribe’s offers to buy back the land. Other solutions have been proposed, including a less expensive underground well built off the reservation. But Cadue is reluctant to back any solution involving land outside the reservation’s boundaries and out of Kickapoo control.
In 2004, the Kickapoo filed suit against the federal government, the state of Kansas and the watershed board. The tribe is now in negotiations to reach an out-of-court settlement.
With not enough water to pipe into new housing or business developments, the growth of the reservation remains at a standstill until the issue is solved. In 2002, the tribe rejected a plan to build 25 new houses.
LAWRENCE WATER MATTERS
The pollution from runoff that has contributed to poor quality of water on the Kickapoo Indian Reservation, while greatly exacerbated by the low level of the river that supplies the tribe, is hardly unique.
The lack of regulation and concern about the overuse of chemicals polluting the waterways, along with the prevailing mindset of leaving everything for the water treatment plant, is both bad for the environment and expensive.
In Lawrence, the city does a good job of treating the water, but people could do much more to keep pollutants out in the first place, says Stan Loeb, researcher and former director of the environmental studies program at KU.
Many farmers are guilty of plowing their land too close to streams rather than leaving a couple hundred feet as a buffer zone. City dwellers are guilty as well. Overfertilized lawns lead hazardous chemicals to trickle into rivers, streams and lakes, contributing to what’s called non-point pollution.
“Non-point pollution has gotten into our water systems, and we have to invest time, resources and money to clean it up so that we can drink it,” Loeb says.
Another underestimated issue is the scarcity of water. While most of Kansas, with the exception of the Kickapoo Reservation, haven’t had to deal with this problem, this doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen. Loeb points out that droughts have recently caused a dip in the water supply in Southern California, Georgia and much of the Southwest.
“We need to be careful with the very small resources we have,” he says. “Fresh water is one of the most endangered resources that we have available. We should use it wisely.”
“The shortage of water is more than just drinking water or health. It’s total,” Cadue said. “No society, be they Indian or non-Indian, can live without adequate water supply. You cannot grow.”
All the while, upstream landowners have gradually siphoned water from the Delaware to construct farm ponds and terracing. When the river ran dry in the summer of 2003, the tribe had to haul water by tanker truck around the clock from the Missouri River 50 miles to the east.
And the contamination level from upstream runoff is so high that the amount of chemicals added by the treatment plant creates its own set of problems.
To make matters worse, the dam has recently fallen into an emergency state of disrepair. Last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers examined the small dam (called a weir) after spring flooding.
The Corps’ report was quoted in the Topeka Capital-Journal as saying: “The erosion has now progressed to the point that it is a direct and imminent threat to the weir. The loss of this weir structure would threaten the tribe’s economic and cultural survival.”
The situation was declared an emergency, and the tribe, along with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Indian Health Service and the Kansas Division of Emergency Management, recently completed the first of two phases to fix it up.
•••••
Angie Cadue looked down at the shallow water as it slowly passed through the dam. In offices in Washington, D.C., Topeka and Kansas City, the legal battle continues. Meanwhile, the river flows slowly and Kansas children grow up without clean drinking water.
“We’re trying to raise them and give them something—and what?” she asked. “Dirty water?”
"Fundred" project
- When: Saturday, May 24, 2008, 3 p.m.
- Where: The Lawrence Percolator, Ninth and New Hampshire, Alley between the Arts Center and Ninth Street, Lawrence
- Cost: Free
- Age limit: All ages
Delores Hooper, a 24-year-old benefits and payroll specialist with the tribe, uses tap water only for quick showers, laundry and dishes. It is a major inconvenience, yes, but she describes the issue as something larger—a dark cloud hanging over the future of the tribe. Dwindling water equals no new business projects, like a hotel for the casino, and that equals no growth, which equals no new jobs.
Unemployment on the reservation is high. So is teen pregnancy, adding to the numbers of mouths needing sustenance. Jacob Brown, a 19-year-old general laborer, has a daughter and a second child on the way. He wants to move into his own house, but new houses won’t come until the water issue is solved, so he lives with family. He doesn’t see much in the future to look forward to.
“There’s no jobs around here,” he said. “And if we start losing water, we’re going to start losing our housing.”
Back at the dam, the old woman looked down at the water. “It’s terrible,” she said. “Really terrible.” «
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Posted by monkeywrench (Tim vonHolten) on May 7, 2008 at 2:26 p.m. (Suggest removal)
good story, frank. but i find it hard to believe that the u.s. government would break an agreement with the native population. there's just no precedent for this. maybe that's why it's so shocking.
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