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For years, the organizations working to close the U.S. water gap have moved in parallel, rarely from a shared plan. The Vessel Collective has set out to change that, bringing together more than 100 contributors across community organizations, Tribal and rural operators, funders, and researchers through a series of sensemaking sessions, turning a year of hard conversations into a shared set of priorities.

That groundwork became the foundation for the National Roadmap for Closing the Water Access Gap, the sector's first unified strategy, launched in 2026.

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Closing the water gap will take more than any one organization. We grew an open-source database of more than 175 groups working on water and sanitation across the country. It’s a shared resource that helps organizations find each other, coordinate, and build on each other's work. To deepen that coordination, Vessel launched a monthly Conversation Series, drawing an average of 50 attendees each month to tackle challenges in data collection, financing and affordability, and decentralized systems. Together, these actions form the quiet infrastructure of a growing movement.

To Capitol Hill We Go

In October, Vessel and partners brought the water access gap straight to Capitol Hill, building on a sector-wide letter sent earlier in the year supporting funding for infrastructure and direct-access programs like Closing America's Wastewater Access Gap (CAWAG). In a single day, the group met with four Senate and five House committees, across both parties. That it happened during a government shutdown made the strong turnout and warm reception all the more remarkable.

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For nearly 40 years, Diné families in Westwater lived less than a quarter mile from running water they couldn't reach. The barrier was never distance or engineering. It was a bureaucratic tangle of land status, missing homesite leases, and an unfunded engineering report. This is the kind of logjam DigDeep exists to break. Our catalytic funding cleared those prerequisites and unlocked major commitment from the Navajo Nation and the state of Utah. From there, a coalition of partners, including Navajo Nation hydrologist Ryan Barton, got it done. In April 2025, Westwater turned on the tap.