Foundation helps Navajo Nation receive clean, safe water

A Louisville Water Foundation grant helped supply water filtration systems for the Navajo Nation.

The foundation awarded the grant last year to Water with Blessings, a Louisville-based charity that works to make clean water technology available in 48 countries.

Water with Blessings had requested a grant of $30,000 to complete funding for a $60,000 project conducted in collaboration with the elected Navajo Nation leadership. The project focused on providing water filtration systems for 800 households.

These households supply water to an additional 1,600 families for a total impact of 2,400 households.

The Foundation had supported successful Water with Blessings projects in previous years and approved a new grant for the requested amount.

Sister Larraine Lauter, Water with Blessings Executive Director, said the funding helps “provide clean drinking water in an indigenous community whose members experience water scarcity every day and who must rely on bottled water or trucked-in water stored in a cistern.”

She added that the filtration systems also have helped “prevent the further spread of COVID-19 — which devastated the Navajo Nation — as well as decrease the incidence of water-borne illnesses.”