Topic: Water Equity

“If I had a chance to tell Gov. (Gavin) Newsom something about the pollution in the Tijuana River Valley, I would tell him to get it fixed as soon as possible because the odor is horrible, and I don’t know what else it’s doing to our health. Like my partner says, if this was happening to rich people in La Jolla, this would have been taken care of a long time ago.” That’s what Analisa Corrales, a nine-year resident of the Nestor neighborhood in San Diego, told me when I asked how she felt about the pollution from the Tijuana River Valley and how aerosolized contaminants might be affecting the health of her and her three children. They are 12 years old, 7 years old and 6 months old, and they live less than 2 miles from the sewage-choked river.
-Written by Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border program and a longtime human rights advocate.

When Racha Mousdikoudine opens her kitchen faucet, she never knows what will happen. “Maybe I won’t get any water at all,” she told CNN. … For the last four months, Mousdikoudine and her two children have had little or no running water in their home on the French territory of Mayotte, and island of around 310,000 people in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Africa, between Mozambique and the island of Madagascar. Mayotte is facing an unprecedented water crisis amid one of the worst droughts in its history, as the impacts of the human-caused climate crisis collide with a chronic lack of investment in the water system. The island is grappling with its worst drought since 1997. Its two water reservoirs have reached a “critical level of decline” – one is at 7% of capacity and the other at 6%, according to the most recent estimates, and they are on the verge of drying up. It has led to drastic water cuts.

EARTHseed Farm is unlike its counterparts among Sonoma County’s rolling vineyards and redwood forests. A hand-painted sign at the entrance greets visitors with the words, “Welcome Black to the land.” … The Afrocentricity that radiates across EARTHseed is meant to make Black visitors in particular feel welcome … For the farm’s founder, Pandora Thomas, there’s an even greater purpose. Thomas, a Berkeley-based naturalist and environmental educator, wants to teach her fellow Black Californians to use their African American heritage to usher their communities — and all of humanity — through the climate crisis.

African Agriculture Inc., an investment company based in a ninth-floor Regus co-working space on Park Avenue in New York, is growing 300 hectares (740 acres) of emerald-green alfalfa east of Saint-Louis inside a desert nature preserve called the Ndiael. The farm draws its water from nearby Lake Guiers, which is fed by a canal from the river. The only freshwater reserve in Senegal, the lake supplies half the water for Dakar, Senegal’s capital.

Nearly 10 months after floods devastated parts of Planada and Woodlake, residents in both small towns have banded together, hired attorneys and are pursuing legal action. More than 250 households are involved between the two towns.  Residents in the Tulare County town of Springville are also working toward legal action after flooding knocked out wells and residents suffered prolonged water shortages. The attorney for Springville residents did not respond to requests for comment.  It’s early stages for the legal battles, which aren’t technically lawsuits yet for either Woodlake nor Planada, said Shant Karnikian, partner at Kabateck LLP who is representing residents in both towns. Karnikian is also representing residents in the hard hit town of Pajaro on the central coast. 

Martha Lorenz lives in the shade of orchards, living in the house where she grew up outside of Ceres, California. She remodeled it in the 1980s. … She’s always gotten her water from a well. ”I didn’t think anything about it as a kid, you know, you just go to the sink and get your glass of water,” Lorenz said. But that all changed two years ago when she found out her drinking water was contaminated with nitrate. … Nitrate is odorless and colorless and can be dangerous. In infants, it can cause “Blue Baby Syndrome,” which causes low oxygen in the infant’s blood. It can be fatal. Nitrate can also cause cancer if the level in water is higher than 10 milligrams per liter. … Nitrate can come from a number of sources: urban wastewater applied on the land, septic tanks, farm manure, or fertilizer on golf courses or crops.

Related article: 

• Circle of Blue: EPA restarts assessment of health risks from nitrate in water

After this year’s historic storms and devastating floods, the federal government has been swamped with requests from agencies across the San Joaquin Valley seeking reimbursement for repair costs.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provided SJV Water a data sheet that enumerates more than 460 such requests from six counties, including Fresno, Madera, Merced, Kern and Tulare. Agencies in Fresno County have made requests for about $40 million, combined. Most requests are self-explanatory, such as $1.45 million for debris removal made on behalf of the Fresno County Parks Department. … But one request stood out – $1.23 million for “X-Ray Rooms” made on behalf of “Fresno Community Hospital and Medical Center,” according to the FEMA data sheet.

[A]t least once a year since 2019, the Smithwick Mills water system, which serves about 200 residents in [Texas], has reported high levels of the synthetic chemical 1,2,3-trichloropropane … Water quality tests from the Smithwick Mills utility have revealed an average TCP level of 410 parts per trillion over the past four years — more than 80 times what would be allowed in California. But the utility hasn’t taken any action. It doesn’t have to. The chemical isn’t regulated in drinking water by the EPA or the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which means neither agency has ever set a maximum allowable level of TCP. 

Communities across California are facing extreme water challenges. Decades of overpumping groundwater coupled with ongoing drought has led to crises including depleted aquifers, domestic and shallow wells running dry, issues with groundwater salinity, and devastating floods. Fairmead, an unincorporated community in the San Joaquin Valley, faces significant concerns about its drinking water supply. The Madera Subbasin, in which the community is located, is categorized as “critically overdrafted.” Many residents have experienced their wells drying up, and drilling deeper wells is cost-prohibitive for most.