Overview of Disadvantaged Communities and Native American Tribes in the Santa Ana River Watershed

This report provides a brief description of Disadvantaged Communities (DACs) and Native American Indian Tribes (Tribes) located in or near the Santa Ana River Watershed (SARW), and a summary of water and related resource opportunities and challenges facing these entities.  The information was gathered from several sources including personal interviews, web research, documentation review, and publicly available information.

This report addresses DACs and Tribes separately, as they each have very different and distinctive demographics and economic bases. This document is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis of their unique factors, but rather an introduction and, in some cases, an overview of these populations and their unique water resources requirements.  There are legitimate water quality issues that impact low income and Tribal communities throughout the SARW, but some perceptions of unsafe water where water supplies are clearly safe for public consumption identify another problem. The solution to these issues is to ensure that all communities have the information, financial and technical resources, and administrative and regulatory policies they need to make informed decisions that can result in benefits to all members of communities within the Watershed.

One of the key provisions found through this research that could assist DACs is the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Amendments and the 2006 Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF) program.  Through the DWSRF, states can provide below-market interest rate loans to publicly and privately owned community water systems and nonprofit non-community water systems for necessary infrastructure improvements. States may also establish separate eligibility criteria and special funding options for economically disadvantaged communities through this program.

Section 1452 of the SDWA defines a disadvantaged community as “the service area of a public water system that meets affordability criteria established after public review and comment by the State in which the public water system is located.” Under this section, states may provide additional subsidies (including forgiveness of principal) to communities that meet the established criteria, or that are expected to meet these criteria as a result of a proposed project.

Though no special provision was found related to Tribes, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) supports “Tribal Assumption of Federal Environmental Laws” under federal statutes, stating, among other things, that “[t]he Agency will recognize tribal governments as the primary parties for setting standards, making environmental policy decisions, and managing programs for reservations, consistent with Agency standards and regulations.” Three Federal environmental statutes – the SDWA, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act – explicitly authorize EPA to “treat tribes in the same manner as states” for purposes of implementing various EPA environmental programs that may be of benefit to these communities.