IHS has delivered billions in water and waste projects to tribal lands. This engineer made it happen

IHS has delivered billions in water and waste projects to tribal lands. This engineer made it happen

Long before Lt. Cmdr. Melissa de Vera began her climb up the Indian Health Service management ladder, she and her sister would come home from school and be greeted with a note of caution from their mother taped to the front door of their apartment in Fallon, Nev. “Don’t drink the water today,” de Vera recalled those notes warning. “The arsenic levels are too high.” Known as both “the oasis of Nevada” and the “arsenic capital of America,” Fallon …