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New Report Published About Water Accessibility In The United States

DigDeep, a human rights nonprofit organization, published a new report with the US Water Alliancethis month about closing the water access gap in the United States. 

“It’s important because there are two million people in the United States, one of the richest and most prosperous democracies on Earth, who wake up every day and don’t know how they’ll find enough water to survive,” said George McGraw, CEO of DigDeep. 

DigDeep’s mission is to provide people in the United States, including parts of Utah, with access to clean water for life. 

“I think this is a human rights issue,” McGraw said. “It’s a front to human dignity and there’s no reason it should exist in the United States in 2019.”

In 2014, after doing research in sub saharan Africa, McGraw found this issue was prevalent in the American Southwest. 

“If you’re black or Latinx, you’re twice as likely as a white household not to have running water or basic plumbing at home; if you’re Native American you’re 19 times more likely,” McGraw said. “Race and equity is really a big factor here. These communities haven’t had access to the same resources that white and more prosperous communities have had access to.” 

McGraw sent researchers to look into what was happening to the water in these communities. 

“It was really important for us to show not just what this looked like in numbers, but what this looked like in lives,” McGraw said. “We’re all drawn to this work because we love people, and we want them to be healthy and happy. So we inject ourselves into their lives in order to solve injustices, or really to empower them to solve their own injustices.”