First their wells went dry. Then this summer’s brutal heat wave made water in emergency storage tanks so scalding hot, some valley residents had to siphon it into containers and let it cool before it could be used. “We’re very grateful to even have the tanks,” stressed Merideth Moreno, who lives near the small Tulare County community of Orosi. “But it [heated water] is one of the things that we have found to be trouble.” The well that served Moreno’s home and her 80-year-old father’s home went dry two years ago. They’ve survived ever since on water from two storage tanks paid for by the state and refilled every two weeks by the Visalia-based nonprofit Self-Help Enterprises. That water is just for household use, not drinking. … Self-Help has 1,244 storage tanks currently deployed in the valley. It deployed 50 new tanks this summer to families whose wells went dry. This record-breaking summer made relying on water from those tanks especially difficult.

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