More than 1 million Californians are affected by unsafe or
unreliable sources of water for cooking, drinking and bathing.
They can lose access to water supplies when their wells run dry,
especially during drought when groundwater is relied on more
heavily and the water table drops. Employment disruptions caused
by the COVID-19 pandemic can impair their ability to pay water
bills on time. Communities of color are most often burdened by
these challenges.
Below you’ll find the latest news articles raising
awareness on efforts to seek water equity written by the staff at
the Water Education Foundation and other organizations that were
posted in our Aquafornia news aggregate.
UN and partner water experts say it is time to increase the
tapping of Earth’s diverse and abundant unconventional water
sources – the millions of cubic kilometres of water in deep
land-based and seabed aquifers, in fog and icebergs, in the
ballast holds of thousands of ships, and elsewhere. A
new book, Unconventional Water Resources … says
these potential supplies can help many of the 1 in 4 people on
Earth who face shortages of water for drinking, sanitation,
agriculture and economic development.
The Biden administration’s ambitions to crack down on “forever
chemicals” — touted as an administration priority — are facing
headwinds from key industries that say they could be unfairly
punished and held liable for contamination they did not create.
Members of the water and waste sectors are ramping up pressure
on Congress and EPA to shield them from an upcoming proposal as
the agency makes progress on addressing PFAS
contamination.
The Orange County Water District and the City of Garden Grove
began operating one of four treatment plants being constructed
in Garden Grove to remove per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances
(PFAS) from local well water. PFAS are a group of thousands of
manmade, heat-resistant chemicals that are prevalent in the
environment and are commonly used in consumer products to repel
water, grease and oil. Due to their prolonged use, PFAS are
being detected in water sources throughout the United States,
including the Orange County Groundwater Basin, which supplies
77% of the water supply to 2.5 million people in north and
central Orange County.
Annette Morales Roe learned how to waterski off the north shore
of the Salton Sea in the 1960s. … Her family stopped visiting
in the early 1970s, around the same time scientists began
warning that the Salton Sea would shrink and become
inhospitable to wildlife without a sustainable water source.
… Now, Roe is certain that she knows how to fix the
problem — and has the team to do it. As managing partner
and chief strategy officer of Online Land Planning LLC,
she is advocating for a plan that would reroute recycled water
that’s currently flowing into the Pacific Ocean to the Salton
Sea …
Maria Herrera had about a quarter left in her last five-gallon
water jug. On that April afternoon, though, spotty water
service returned to the 67-year-old woman’s apartment, before
the jug emptied. If it hadn’t, that was all she had left to
bathe, do housework or drink. Herrera lives in Villas de Santa
Fe, a neighborhood of cookie-cutter apartment blocks on the
rapidly growing outskirts of Tijuana. Baja’s state water
agency, called CESPT, shuts off her water at least once a week,
she said. Last summer, Herrera said she went six days with dry
taps.
Bits of your pants, shirts, socks and fleece jackets are
polluting local waters. Cal Lutheran biology students have
discovered this disturbing fashion dilemma as part of a
scientific research project. For the past four years, CLU
biology professor Andrea Huvard, PhD, has guided dozens of
students in a long-term research project: They are studying the
presence of microfibers in the ocean, sediments and marine
animals around Southern California.
Engineers at UC Riverside are the first to report selective
breakdown of a particularly stubborn class of PFAS called
fluorinated carboxylic acids (FCAs) by common
microorganisms. Under anaerobic conditions, a
carbon-carbon double bond is crucial for the shattering the
ultra-strong carbon-fluorine bond by microbial communities.
While breaking the carbon-carbon bond does not completely
degrade the molecule, the resulting products could be relayed
to other microorganisms for defluorination under in aerobic
conditions.
For years, plaintiffs’ lawyers suing over health and
environmental damage from so called forever chemicals, known
collectively as PFAS, focused on one set of deep pockets—E. I.
du Pont de Nemours and Co. But over the past two years, there’s
been a seismic shift in the legal landscape as awareness of
PFAS has expanded. Corporations including 3M Co., Chemguard
Inc., Kidde-Fenwal Inc., National Foam Inc., and Dynax Corp.
are now being sued at roughly the same rate as DuPont,
according to a Bloomberg Law analysis of more than 6,400
PFAS-related lawsuits filed in federal courts between July 2005
and March 2022.
Last week, an official and dire-sounding warning about high
nitrate levels in the city of Exeter’s water supply began
appearing on social media sites, and with them came comments
rife with speculation, fearful reactions and visions of
impending doom. The water situation in the midsize foothill
town, however, is not as dangerous or widespread as some of
those who stumble across the notice without context imagine it
is. … The reality, says Exeter’s Director of Public Works
Daymon Qualls, is Exeter’s water remains safe for most
consumers. It should not be consumed by infants and pregnant
women until the nitrate levels drop, probably in the autumn
when the dry season ends.
Tuesday, a study published in the journal The Lancet expanded
on pollution concerns globally, revealing that air and water
pollution causes 1 in 6 deaths worldwide. At more than 9
million deaths per year, such pollution kills more people than
malnutrition, roadway injuries and drug and alcohol use
combined, the study found. … Though the changing climate
is often viewed as the most pressing global environmental
threat, researchers warned that on-the-ground pollution
poses ecological and humanitarian catastrophes of its
own.
When it comes to finding innovative solutions to drinking water
problems, the tiny community of Allensworth in Tulare county
has long been on the front lines. This spring, community began
testing a new technology that would “jolt” arsenic out of its
groundwater. And since 2021, Allensworth has also been home to
another new technology that “makes” water out of thin air. Both
technologies are currently being field-tested in Allensworth.
If successful, they could become viable paths to clean water
for residents of Allensworth and other small, rural San Joaquin
Valley communities …
Lemoore is speaking out against the efforts of an out of town
water entity to export water from the Kings River. The Lemoore
City Council approved a letter in opposition to a petition to
revoke the Fully Appropriated Stream (FAS) status of the Kings
River on Tuesday. The letter is directed to the State Water
Resources Control Board, which is hearing a petition from Kern
County water agency Semitropic Water Storage District to revoke
the FAS status.
A California federal judge has declined to lift an injunction
on two Northern California county ordinances that require
strict permits for the transport of water, saying that while
the local laws were enacted to quash illegal cannabis farms,
they’ve caused harm to a group of Hmong farmers. In a decision
handed down Friday, Chief U. S. District Judge Kimberly J.
Mueller found that although Siskiyou County had modified the
ordinances, they were still likely to cut off water to a
community of Hmong farmers within the county’s borders.
Two recent moves aim to benefit water access for tribal
communities in the Colorado River basin. One, a bill in the
U.S. Congress, could increase access to clean water. Another,
the release of a “shared vision” statement, outlines the goals
of tribes and conservation nonprofits. Tribes in the basin hold
rights to about a quarter of the river’s flow, but have often
been excluded from negotiations about how the river’s water is
used.
The process of connecting Tooleville’s water system to
Exeter’s, which would relieve the small community of longtime
water supply and contamination issues, is expected to take
eight years. Information from the feasibility study
needed to start planning the project has been unfolding bit by
bit, mainly through biweekly meetings held between Exeter city
officials, representatives from Tooleville, staff from Self
Help Enterprises and Provost and Pritchard, the consultants in
charge of the study.
As a young person growing up in Ventura County for the past 19
years, I am no stranger to droughts. Not watering the lawn and
taking shorter showers is simply a part of life in Southern
California. Although water is scarce in Ventura County, there
is currently a direct threat to our drinking water.
Unfortunately, the oil industry wants to profit at the expense
of our precious groundwater that supplies drinking water to
over 400,000 Ventura County residents and irrigation water to
our $2 billion agriculture economy. -Written by Alex Masci, an undergraduate in
environmental studies at UC Berkeley, a coordinator with CA
Youth Vs Big Oil, and a supporter of VC-SAFE.
A federal judge struck down a second attempt by a Northern
California county to dismiss a case against them for water
sanctions that would leave the local Asian community without
water. … In the original complaint, plaintiff Der
Lee compared living in Shasta Vista to his days hiding out in
the Laos jungles — just now without water. Others explained
that they only bathe once a week, are dehydrated and have had
their food sources — crops and livestock — die from the lack of
water access. As a result, many resorted to filling jugs with
water in streams and local parks.
A significant percentage of the world’s population does not
have adequate access to water, food, and energy resources
(WFE). Although efforts to achieve the UN Millennium
Development Goals and later the Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) have increased access to scarce resources, still, 25.9%
of the population is affected by moderate or severe food
insecurity in 2019, 2.2 billion people lacked access to potable
water in 2017, and 789 million people lacked electricity
service in 2018. The pressure on WFE resources will increase as
the world’s population grows from 7.4 billion in 2016 to 9.7
billion in 2050.
A plan has been put in place to help replenish
groundwater supplies in Allensworth, a community historically
affected by water supply issues. Led by the Tri-County
Water Authority, the Allensworth Project is a multi-component
plan aimed at replenishing groundwater supplies and mitigating
emergency flood water damage by constructing two gravity-fed
basins to catch flood runoff from the White River. The basins
will divert water from the river for direct use and recharge,
and will be used as a recreational park during dry seasons.
State regulators have fined a Havasu Lake water company that
has failed to provide potable water to its customers for more
than a month and been accused of allowing its equipment to fall
into a state of disrepair. The California State Water Resources
Control Board issued the $1,500 fine on Friday, May 6, after
the Havasu Water Co. failed to meet state-imposed directives
and deadlines. The state has given a new list of directives and
deadlines for the water company to meet by May 20 or it could
face additional penalties. The Havasu Water Co.’s system has
fallen into a state of disrepair over the years …
