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.
It wasn’t the appearance of a flashy, high-ranking California
official at the podium, or the review of 35 years of efforts to
protect the Bay’s watershed at the beginning of the May 2024
State of the Estuary conference that made me sit up in my red
velvet auditorium seat. It was an awards ceremony for
outstanding projects. … There to receive each small plaque
from Friends of the Estuary were long lines of “collaborators.”
As they snaked on and off the stage for a photo and handshake,
the line of folk who had helped complete this or that project —
from mapping the range of the salt marsh harvest mouse to
involving students and teachers in watershed restoration — got
longer and longer. … Though the region’s ability to
collaborate with other agencies and scientists and managers to
protect and restore the San Francisco Estuary has grown
exponentially, over the years, these same folks are now
tangling with a new challenge: how to make this work relevant
to the Bay Area’s most “underserved” communities.
Almost 400 water systems serving nearly a million Californians
don’t meet state requirements for safe and reliable drinking
water supplies — and fixing them would cost billions of
dollars. More than two-thirds of these failing water systems
serve communities of color, and more than half are in places
struggling with poverty and pollution, according to an annual
assessment released today by the State Water Resources Control
Board. These water systems failed to provide water “which
is at all times pure, wholesome, and potable,” as required.
Some violated drinking water standards for chemicals, bacteria,
taste or odor. Others rely on bottled water, or have failed to
meet treatment, monitoring or other requirements. … The price
tag for ensuring safe, affordable and accessible water supplies
for all Californians is staggering — an estimated $16 billion
over the next five years — as the state grapples with a
multibillion-dollar deficit.
The vast territory known as the Owens Valley was home for
centuries to Native Americans who lived along its rivers and
creeks fed by snowmelt that cascaded down the eastern slopes of
the Sierra Nevada. Then came European settlers, and over time,
tribe members lost access to nearly all of that land.
Eventually, the water was lost, too: In the early 20th century,
the developers of Los Angeles famously built a 226-mile-long
aqueduct from Owens Lake to the city. … Owens Lake is now a
patchwork of saline pools covered in pink crystals and wetlands
studded with gravel mounds designed to catch dust. And today,
the four recognized tribes in the area have less than 2,000
acres of reservation land, estimated Teri Red Owl, a local
Native American leader. But things are changing, tribal members
say. They have recently reclaimed corners of the valley, buoyed
by growing momentum across the country to return land to
Indigenous stewardship, also known as the “Land Back”
movement.
Under a shaded refuge adjacent to a still pond in the Central
Valley, dozens of California State Parks officials and
nonprofit leaders assembled Wednesday to laud the first state
park to open in a decade. Among the beaming faces was
Lilia Lomeli-Gil, a community leader representing the tiny town
5 miles away that, thanks to the park’s debut, is being
transformed. If Merced is the “Gateway to Yosemite,”
then Grayson is the gateway to Dos Rios State Park.
The 1,600-acre property lies within the floodplains outside
Modesto and features the intersection of the San Joaquin and
Tuolumne rivers. The park’s proximity to Grayson
offers the town a sense of renewal. Dos Rios will lure visitors
off Interstate 5 and provide residents with a communal backyard
haven. Efforts to restore the floodplain have already shown
signs of success in protecting Grayson from disaster. The
town owes part of its livelihood to restoring the original
habitat and defending itself from flooding.
More than 20,000 San Joaquin Valley residents could be left
high and dry, literally, by Sacramento politicians intent on
using $17.5 million that had paid for water trucked to their
homes to help fill California’s gaping two-year $56 billion
deficit. A local nonprofit that has been hauling water to those
residents sent a letter recently to Governor Gavin
Newsom and top leaders in the Legislature begging them to
reinstate the money in the ongoing budget negotiations.
“Cutting funding for such a crucial program would have
devastating effects on rural and disadvantaged communities by
immediately cutting them off from their sole source of water
supply, and doing so with no warning,” states the June 11
letter from Self-Help Enterprises, a Visalia-based nonprofit
that helps low-income valley residents with housing and water
needs.
Today, Congresswoman Norma Torres and Congressman David Valadao
– members of the House Appropriations Committee – announced the
introduction of the bipartisan Removing Nitrate and Arsenic in
Drinking Water Act. This bill would amend the Safe Drinking
Water Act to provide grants for nitrate and arsenic reduction,
by providing $15 million for FY25 and every fiscal year
thereafter. The bill also directs the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) to take into consideration the needs of
economically disadvantaged populations impacted by drinking
water contamination. The California State Water Resources
Control Board found the Inland Empire to have the highest
levels of contamination of nitrate throughout the state
including 82 sources in San Bernardino, 67 sources in Riverside
County, and 123 sources in Los Angeles County.
Water bubbles up in streets, pooling in neighborhoods for weeks
or months. Homes burn to the ground if firefighters can’t draw
enough water from hydrants. Utility crews struggle to fix
broken pipes while water flows through shut-off valves that
don’t work. … Across the U.S., trillions of gallons of
drinking water are lost every year, especially from decrepit
systems in communities struggling with significant population
loss and industrial decline that leave behind poorer residents,
vacant neighborhoods and too-large water systems that are
difficult to maintain.
The climate-driven shrinking of the
Colorado River is expanding the influence of Native American
tribes over how the river’s flows are divided among cities, farms
and reservations across the Southwest.
The tribes are seeing the value of their largely unused river
water entitlements rise as the Colorado dwindles, and they are
gaining seats they’ve never had at the water bargaining table as
government agencies try to redress a legacy of exclusion.
… A state audit from the California Water Resources Control
Board released last year found that over 920,000 residents
faced an increased risk of illness–including cancer, liver and
kidney problems–due to consuming unsafe drinking water. A
majority of these unsafe water systems are in the Central
Valley. The matter has prompted community leaders to mobilize
residents around water quality as politicians confront
imperfect solutions for the region’s supply. Advocates point
out that impacted areas, including those in Tulare County, tend
to be majority Latino with low median incomes. … This
year’s extreme weather has only worsened the valley’s problems.
The storms that hit California at the start of this year caused
stormwater tainted with farm industry fertilizer, manure and
nitrates to flow into valley aquifers.
When the Colorado River Compact was
signed 100 years ago, the negotiators for seven Western states
bet that the river they were dividing would have ample water to
meet everyone’s needs – even those not seated around the table.
A century later, it’s clear the water they bet on is not there.
More than two decades of drought, lake evaporation and overuse of
water have nearly drained the river’s two anchor reservoirs, Lake
Powell on the Arizona-Utah border and Lake Mead near Las Vegas.
Climate change is rendering the basin drier, shrinking spring
runoff that’s vital for river flows, farms, tribes and cities
across the basin – and essential for refilling reservoirs.
The states that endorsed the Colorado River Compact in 1922 – and
the tribes and nation of Mexico that were excluded from the table
– are now straining to find, and perhaps more importantly accept,
solutions on a river that may offer just half of the water that
the Compact assumed would be available. And not only are
solutions not coming easily, the relationships essential for
compromise are getting more frayed.
A pilot program in the Salinas Valley run remotely out of Los Angeles is offering a test case for how California could provide clean drinking water for isolated rural communities plagued by contaminated groundwater that lack the financial means or expertise to connect to a larger water system.
Martha Guzman recalls those awful
days working on water and other issues as a deputy legislative
secretary for then-Gov. Jerry Brown. California was mired in a
recession and the state’s finances were deep in the red. Parks
were cut, schools were cut, programs were cut to try to balance a
troubled state budget in what she remembers as “that terrible
time.”
She now finds herself in a strikingly different position: As
administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
Region 9, she has a mandate to address water challenges across
California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii and $1 billion to help pay
for it. It is the kind of funding, she said, that is usually
spread out over a decade. Guzman called it the “absolutely
greatest opportunity.”
State work to improve wildlife habitat and tamp down dust at California’s ailing Salton Sea is finally moving forward. Now the sea may be on the verge of getting the vital ingredient needed to supercharge those restoration efforts – money.
The shrinking desert lake has long been a trouble spot beset by rising salinity and unhealthy, lung-irritating dust blowing from its increasingly exposed bed. It shadows discussions of how to address the Colorado River’s two-decade-long drought because of its connection to the system. The lake is a festering health hazard to nearby residents, many of them impoverished, who struggle with elevated asthma risk as dust rises from the sea’s receding shoreline.
As California slowly emerges from
the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, one remnant left behind by
the statewide lockdown offers a sobering reminder of the economic
challenges still ahead for millions of the state’s residents and
the water agencies that serve them – a mountain of water debt.
Water affordability concerns, long an issue in a state where
millions of people struggle to make ends meet, jumped into
overdrive last year as the pandemic wrenched the economy. Jobs
were lost and household finances were upended. Even with federal
stimulus aid and unemployment checks, bills fell by the wayside.
Across a sprawling corner of southern Tulare County snug against the Sierra Nevada, a bounty of navel oranges, grapes, pistachios, hay and other crops sprout from the loam and clay of the San Joaquin Valley. Groundwater helps keep these orchards, vineyards and fields vibrant and supports a multibillion-dollar agricultural economy across the valley. But that bounty has come at a price. Overpumping of groundwater has depleted aquifers, dried up household wells and degraded ecosystems.
Disadvantaged communities are those carrying the greatest
economic, health and environmental burdens. They include
poverty, high unemployment, higher risk of asthma and heart
disease, and often limited access to clean, affordable drinking
water.
Every five years the California Department of Water Resources
updates its strategic plan for managing the state’s water
resources, as required by state law.
The California Water Plan, or Bulletin 160, projects the
status and trends of the state’s water supplies and demands
under a range of future scenarios.
An estimated 1 million Californians, living in economically
stressed pockets of the state, face daunting challenges in
obtaining clean and affordable water to drink, addressing
sanitation or stormwater needs, and gaining the help to do so.
Across the state, efforts are underway to provide help. The goal
is to do so in a way that allows members of disadvantaged
communities to express their needs and wants, set priorities and
obtain the technical assistance necessary to begin to solve their
challenges.
This handbook is intended as a resource for anyone in, or
involved with, communities throughout the state that have
historically struggled to make their water resource needs known
to agencies with the power to help.
Out of sight and out of mind to most
people, the Salton Sea in California’s far southeast corner has
challenged policymakers and local agencies alike to save the
desert lake from becoming a fetid, hyper-saline water body
inhospitable to wildlife and surrounded by clouds of choking
dust.
The sea’s problems stretch beyond its boundaries in Imperial and
Riverside counties and threaten to undermine multistate
management of the Colorado River. A 2019 Drought Contingency Plan for the
Lower Colorado River Basin was briefly stalled when the Imperial
Irrigation District, holding the river’s largest water
allocation, balked at participating in the plan because, the
district said, it ignored the problems of the Salton Sea.