The United States, the world’s most prosperous democracy, has a hidden water crisis: millions of Americans are living without running water or proper sanitation. Without working toilets, households in Appalachia are forced to flush sewage into nearby streams—streams that are often the only source of drinking water for others in their community, causing outbreaks of illness. Families on the Navajo Nation walk or drive miles to haul drinking water, which they ration for weeks at a time. Along the Texas border, colonias residents often spend more than a third of their monthly income on trucked water deliveries which may or may not be potable. Water poverty is an issue that many Americans see as an issue affecting only low-income countries far away and are completely unaware that the same crisis exists right in their own backyards.

Founded in Los Angeles in 2011, DigDeep’s mission is to ensure that every American has clean, running water forever. DigDeep began as a global water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) implementer focused on a human rights-based approach to water and sanitation in South Sudan and Cameroon. In 2014, our focus shifted to Navajo communities — in rural Thoreau, New Mexico specifically — when our founder, George McGraw, first learned about the water access crisis in the United States. With that shift, DigDeep became the first US-based WaSH organization.

In 2018, DigDeep’s Navajo Water Project was awarded the US Water Prize, which celebrates outstanding achievement in advancing sustainable solutions to water challenges in the United States. Following this recognition, DigDeep led an effort with Michigan State University, the US Water Alliance, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study the root causes of the domestic water crisis in 6 “hotspots” of fragile water access around the country. The resulting report, Closing the Water Access Gap in the United States, brought visibility to the water access gap and has guided DigDeep’s expanded programming and continued WaSH sector research and coalition building.

DigDeep’s mission is to close the water access gap forever, ensuring that every person in the United States has equitable access to basic water and wastewater services. The vision is that by working together, every American family can achieve equitable access to water and sanitation in our lifetimes and that by learning to better care for our water resources, we can make them last for future generations.

DigDeep’s impact model is based on a holistic, systems-change approach:

1. Advancing community-led solutions by deploying proven WaSH strategies to ensure that every American has clean, running water and sanitation forever.
2. Empowering American people to solve this problem in their lifetimes by investing in experiential storytelling that brings the issue to life.
3. Developing an evidence base by collecting, sharing, and leveraging domestic WaSH data to inform our progress toward universal access.
4. Building an ecosystem of change by facilitating high-impact collaboration to lead a diverse, sustainable movement.

DigDeep believes that social change happens when people with a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, and identities come together with a common purpose.