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.
The delivery of safe, affordable and reliable drinking water is
a key responsibility of utilities and governments everywhere.
In the U.S. there is growing evidence that access to safe and
affordable drinking water is distributed unevenly. Low-income
and minority communities are more likely to experience drinking
water contamination, face higher water bills, and have less
reliable access to drinking water. The importance of drinking
water services are clear and gaining policy attention.
Nearly 14% of Visalia water users fell behind on their utility
bills during the pandemic, but many of them will have at least
a portion of that debt forgiven. California Water Service (Cal
Water), which provides water service to nearly 45,000 homes and
businesses in Visalia, received $20.8 million in relief for
customers across its 23 service areas. The funding, which Cal
Water advocated to help secure, is being administered through
the State Water Resources Control Board and will enable the
privately-owned utility to forgive past-due balances incurred
by its customers between March 2020 and mid-June 2021.
The popular motorist pitstop town of Kettleman City has sealed
a deal to keep from running out of water. Kings County
officials finalized a deal with the Mojave Water Agency this
week to purchase 235 acre feet of water for Kettleman City from
the southern California water agency at a cost of $1,400 per
acre foot for a total of $329,000. … Kettleman City sits
next to the California Aqueduct, which transports water from
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta south to farms and cities as
far away as Los Angeles through the State Water Project, which
is managed by the Department of Water Resources (DWR).
Swirling underground, invisible toxins leach into view. Potent
cocktails of mismanaged waste that ebb and drift and flow. Flow
into wells that hide in plain sight from the regulations and
rights of less domestic communities. Communities of water left
to rot, as filthy liquid spews its translucency across streets
once alive with colour. This poem is inspired
by recent research, which has found that 370,000
Californians rely on drinking water that is polluted, with
communities of colour disproportionally affected.
Drinking water for more than 370,000 Californians is
contaminated with arsenic, nitrate, and other chemicals,
according to an extensive analysis by researchers at UC
Berkeley and UCLA. In many cases, the state’s agricultural
industry is to blame. The study also found that water
contamination disproportionately affects communities of color —
particularly Latino communities — and researchers warned that
their results likely underestimate the extent of the problem.
In the San Joaquin Valley, concerns about airborne dust—and its
health impacts—are growing. As farmers prepare to fallow more
cropland to achieve groundwater sustainability under the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and adapt to the
valley’s warming, drying climate, two experts say people are
right to be concerned. We asked Dr. John Balmes, Professor
Emeritus at UCSF and UC Berkeley and Physician Member of the
California Air Resources Board (since 2008), and Dr. Isabel
Jones, postdoc at UC Berkeley, to tell us more about the dust
and its health impacts for valley residents.
A new report conveys significant progress made in the past 18
months to implement the Water Resilience Portfolio, the Newsom
Administration’s water policy blueprint to build climate
resilience in the face of more extreme cycles of wet and dry.
… Recent progress includes assisting tens of thousands
of Californians who depend on small water systems or domestic
wells that have drinking water supply problems, dedicating
hundreds of millions of dollars to improve streamflow for
salmon and other native fish species, advancing the removal of
four obsolete dams that block salmon passage on the Klamath
River, providing extensive financial and technical assistance
to local sustainable groundwater management agencies, restoring
streams and floodplains, and steadily improving the state’s
ability to manage flood and drought.
Roughly 10% of California’s public drinking water systems are
currently out of compliance with state drinking water quality
standards, and an estimated 6 million Californians are served
by systems that have been in violation at some point since
2012. A disproportionate number of water quality violations in
the state occur in smaller drinking water systems that serve
rural, low-income communities, where degraded infrastructure
and a lack of resources make it challenging to meet regulatory
standards. Communities served by water systems with
elevated contaminant levels are disproportionately poor and
Latinx, raising environmental justice concerns.
After months of uncertainty as water supplies dwindled, Kings
County is set to resolve Kettleman City’s water crisis for the
next year – for a price. The Kings County Board of Supervisors
is scheduled to approve an agreement with the Mojave Water
Agency on Tuesday for the transfer of 235 acre-feet of water.
Kings County will pay $329,000 – $1,400 per acre-foot – as part
of the agreement, which will come from the Kettleman City
Community Services District Reserve Fund.
For many people, the new year means a fresh start. But for the
million-plus California households with overdue water bills,
Jan. 1 had a much less pleasant significance: the end of
emergency water shutoff protections. Even though the pandemic
is still raging, a state water shutoff ban ended on Dec. 31.
Unfortunately, the billion dollars in this year’s budget meant
to wipe out water debt won’t reach many families who need it. A
lot of utilities are opting out of the voluntary debt relief
program, leaving customers in a lurch. -Written by Uriel Saldivar, a senior policy
associate at Community Water Center; and Nydia
Medina, an AGUA Coalition member and community activist
organizing for safe water solutions in Orosi.
Within three decades, the San Joaquin Valley’s annual average
temperature could increase by 4 degrees, worsening water
quality and health hazards in the impoverished communities of
California’s agricultural heartland, according to a new
regional climate change report. Those hit hardest by the
increasing heat will be poor farming communities that lack the
resources necessary to adapt, according to the UC Merced
report.
A new report released about how climate change is affecting
California’s San Joaquin Valley says the nation’s leading
agricultural region is facing the most challenging
environmental and socioeconomic conditions in the state
including water insecurity and some of the worst air quality in
the United States. … Jose Pablo Ortiz-Partida, the
Western States climate and water scientist at the Union of
Concerned Scientists and one of the lead authors of the report,
says increasing heat, drought and air pollution are worsening
the quality of life and economic conditions of millions of San
Joaquin Valley residents, particularly those living in
disadvantaged communities.
Water has become a precious commodity worldwide. In many
places, drought has dried up the water supply. And in places
where water is plentiful, it can sometimes be surprisingly
expensive. The city with the most expensive water in the world
is Oslo, Norway. … The city with the highest average
price of water was Oslo, Norway, at $6.69. It was also the city
with the highest water quality score, at 97.8 – compared to the
city with the lowest quality score, San Diego at 84.
Sacramento officials hope to relocate [a community of homeless
people] to an adjacent riverfront property, owned by the Sierra
Health Foundation. City contractors would provide security and
help connect residents with longer-term housing, mental health
and addiction services. But residents on “the island,” as
they call the encampment, are worried about change. They say
the small patch of land might not be big enough — and could
flood.
A lawsuit filed by the California attorney general and a dozen
district attorneys alleges Walmart has dumped nearly 80 tons of
hazardous waste, plus confidential customer information, in
California landfills each year over the last five years. The
lawsuit, filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court, accuses
the nation’s largest retailer of dumping lithium batteries,
insecticide, aerosol cans, cleaning supplies, electronic waste,
paint and LED lightbulbs as well as confidential customer
information in landfills throughout the state from more than
300 Walmart stores.
Warning Wall Street against commodifying what has been treated
since ancient history as “a common right for everyone,” more
than 130 civil society groups on Monday demanded that federal
regulators shut down the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s water
futures market. Food & Water Watch organized the petition,
which was sent to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
(CFTC), a year after the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)
opened the world’s first market for water futures contracts,
based on water rights in drought-plagued California.
The city has changed how it will put tax liens on properties
for delinquent water or sewer bills. If a bill is unpaid and
less than $200, the city will not put a lien on the property as
a consequence. The City Council met Dec. 14 to discuss putting
tax liens on 118 properties for delinquent water or sewer
accounts. As of Nov. 30, the combined total owed from all
the properties was $138,665.47. Due to the pandemic, the city
cannot shut off water services.
When Jeni Knack moved to Simi Valley, California, in 2018, she
had no idea that her family’s new home was within 5 miles of a
former nuclear and rocket testing laboratory, perched atop a
plateau and rife with contamination. Radioactive cesium-137,
strontium-90, plutonium-239 and tritium, along with a mix of
other toxic chemicals and heavy metals, are known to have been
released at the industrial site through various spills, leaks,
the use of open-air burn pits and a partial nuclear meltdown.
Residents of Ramona’s Acres community are working with local
officials and a nonprofit on an application for a $1.32 million
grant that would give them better access to clean water. The
funds would pay for new water main pipelines for the community,
which has contaminated well water and inadequate pipes. Toby
Roy, a specialist with the nonprofit Rural Community Assistance
Corporation, provided an update on the application process at
the Dec. 14 Ramona Municipal Water District meeting.
