Contamination a ‘huge challenge’ for affordable drinking water in California
Francisco Diaz remembers when the water piped to his home in the Central Valley community of Monterey Park Tract made everything smell rotten, including himself. … Unsurprisingly, the water was undrinkable. Agricultural run-off, heavy in potentially toxic nitrates, had contaminated both wells that supplied water to Monterey Park Tract, nestled amid the crop fields and dairy farms of Stanislaus County. The small community of some 200 people had few options. And so about five years ago, it started sourcing its water from the City of Ceres, a suburb of Modesto about four miles away.