This California town hasn’t had clean drinking water in 11 years
In 2013, the state ordered the roughly 300 residents of San Lucas to stop drinking from their faucets, after nitrate levels spiked in the water supply. … Nitrate consumption increases the risk of illnesses like “blue baby syndrome” — a potentially fatal condition in which nitrates replace blood oxygen and can cause suffocation — and has been linked to cancer in adults as well. Officials at the town’s water district — headquartered in a three-room house on the city’s main street — decided a pipeline to King City, eight miles away, was the best long-term solution to the city’s nitrate issue …The State Water Resources Control Board approved the $8 million project in 2015. But the next year, the state backtracked and ordered the water district to stop all pipeline planning.
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