Photo Courtesy San Carlos Apache Tribe: The San Carlos Apache Tribe will move ahead with the construction of a $34.7 million wastewater treatment facility. Pictured is San Carlos Lake.
Contributed Article
SAN CARLOS APACHE RESERVATION – The San Carlos Apache Tribe will begin the construction of a new wastewater treatment facility after receiving additional funds needed to pay for the $34.7 million facility.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allocated the needed $4 million on July 17 allowing the Tribe to move ahead with the construction of the state-of-the-art treatment plant.
“This was long overdue,” said San Carlos Apache Tribe Chairman Terry Rambler. “Thanks to the EPA and the Indian Health Service, the Tribe will soon have a modern and dependable wastewater treatment system. A special thanks goes to the dedicated members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe Utility Authority for their hard work of keeping an outdated system running.”
The new facility will replace the Six Mile Lagoons, an undersized and often overwhelmed wastewater facility that the Bureau of Indian Affairs constructed in the early 1980s to serve Peridot, 7-Mile Wash, and other nearby communities.
Six Mile Lagoons had a design capacity of 610,000 gallons of wastewater per day. The Tribe’s population has increased by 25% since the 1980s. Additional developments, including the San Carlos Apache Healthcare Corp. hospital and other enterprises, now send up to 1.1 million gallons of effluent into the plant every day.
The EPA’s commitment of $4 million is the final piece of the funding puzzle. The Tribe had already secured $25 million from the Indian Health Service and $5.7 million previously committed from the EPA.
The Indian Health Service expects the plant to be completed in 2027.
