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If you turn on a faucet on the Santee Sioux reservation, the water that comes out looks normal enough. But there’s a good chance the sink it’s pouring into is discolored or corroded. If you let it sit out for a while, you’ll see a significant amount of floaters. Inside Santee’s water tank on a hill above the village, the water looks like a black slough.

If permitted, the project would bring a new alternate source of drinking water to the water system, benefitting Tribal residents.

At a tribal council meeting in mid-September, Santee Sioux leadership heard about a variety of changes coming to the reservation. But some of the best news for the tribe came toward the end of the meeting. That’s when Clinton Powell, the tribe’s engineer, assured the group that a project to provide Santee with clean water will be fully funded in the coming months.

The Nebraska Santee Sioux Tribe is hopeful a solution to its five-year water ordeal may be on the way.

The Santee Sioux Nation reservation in northeast Nebraska has been under a no-drink order since 2019. Leaders hope a new state law could jumpstart funding needed to fix the problem.