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.
Water is a crucial topic in the American Southwest, as
continued drought and cuts to Colorado River water allocations
make more urgent the policy decisions on the future of water in
the region. Gaps in water policies have historically left
tribal communities with limited access to clean water and
infrastructure, a situation that Cora Tso is working to
correct. Tso, a new senior research fellow with the Kyl Center
for Water Policy at Arizona State University’s Morrison
Institute, is particularly well-suited to address tribal water
policy issues as both a lawyer specializing in Indian and water
law and an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. She aims to
share her expertise with others, both through an assessment
tool she is creating and an upcoming free webinar on tribal
water issues April 9 that is open to the public…. Tso
was recently recognized as a Colorado River Water
Leader by the Water Education Foundation
and has strong ambitions as she continues in her career.
Groundwater in Arizona belongs to all of us. It is a public
resource and sensible management of it is vital to our shared
future. But instead of fulfilling their obligation to
protect this finite and diminishing water supply, Arizona’s
Republican legislators have introduced dozens of bills at the
statehouse aimed at enriching residential developers and
corporate farmers who want to expand their groundwater
use. Many of these bills are advancing and will end up on
the governor’s desk. One intent of these bills is to
weaken the state’s assured water supply requirement for
development in urban areas. This crucial consumer protection
prevents the sale of subdivision lots that lack a 100-year
water supply, thereby assuring our desert state’s
longevity. -Written by Kathleen Ferris, a Phoenix water
attorney and sits on the Governor’s Water Policy
Council.
California’s State Water Board is wrestling with what terms to
set for water conservation regulation for urban areas. This
regulation implements state policy designed to Make
Conservation a California Way of Life. But the only way to make
that vision equitable is to ensure the needs of low-income
communities are taken into account. Unfortunately, the Water
Board is considering making it too easy to slow-walk
investments in conservation, not only in low-income
communities, but also in wealthy places like Beverly Hills that
use significantly more than their fair share. The proposed
regulation currently under consideration means that 72% of
Californians will not need to save a single additional drop
until 2035. -Written by Kyle Jones, Policy & Legal Director
at the Community Water Center.
[Denise] Moreno Ramírez wasn’t surprised when she heard an
Australian mining company, South32, planned to open a
manganese, zinc, lead and silver operation in the same area
where her family had worked. … But this latest proposed mine
was alarming, she said, because Biden is fast-tracking
it in the name of the energy transition – potentially
compromising the mountain’s delicate ecosystems, many of which
have begun to be restored as mines have shut
down. … A growing network of Arizona residents say
that allowing the mine to proceed as planned could introduce a
grave new layer of environmental injustices.
…Conservationists say they worry that South32 is seeking to
use water irresponsibly amid long-term drought.
An elected member of a Ventura County water board has pleaded
guilty to a felony charge of stealing water for his Oxnard
farm. Daniel Naumann, 66, admitted to one count of grand theft
of water, Ventura County District Attorney Erik Nasarenko said
in a Friday news release. As part of his plea agreement,
five other felony charges will be dropped, the Ventura
County Star reports. Naumann,
a Camarillo resident who is owner and operator of
Naumann Family Farms, was an elected board member of the United
Water Conservation District and an alternate board member of
the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency. … Despite
those roles, Naumann took nearly $30,000 in water between 2019
and 2021 using “diversion bypasses [that] were installed on two
commercial water pumps that irrigated Naumann’s crops,” the
release stated.
A generational issue for the families living in San Lucas
continues as they’ve gone decades without drinking water. Soon
federal, state, and local leaders will secure nearly a million
dollars to build a pipeline to King City. … Plants not
growing, animals dying, young children unable to bathe, this is
the reality for those living in the unincorporated South
Monterey County town of San Lucas.
As a homeowner, you invest a great deal of time, money, love,
imagination, and hard work into your house and property.
Of course, you hope nothing will go seriously wrong. Still, you
purchase homeowner’s insurance to give you peace of mind and to
ensure you’re financially protected if your home and belongings
are damaged by unpredictable events such as fire, vandalism,
theft, or storms. Today, climate change is causing
increasingly erratic weather patterns. Natural disasters,
including severe storms and wildfires, are becoming more
frequent and devastating. In 2023, nine “atmospheric
rivers” pummeled the western United States, dumping record
amounts of rain and snow. According to the National
Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, more
than 32 trillion gallons of water drenched California, racking
up $4.6 billion in damages. -Written by John Petrov, a contractor and public
insurance adjuster with over 25 years of experience in the
construction industry.
To address the concern of historic groundwater overdraft in the
San Joaquin Valley, the California Water Institute at Fresno
State, with assistance from students and faculty, conducted a
feasibility study to explore the potential for groundwater
recharge within disadvantaged communities. … The analysis
identified four potential locations for the design and
construction of recharge basins near or in the cities of
Kerman, Raisin City, Caruthers and Laton.
For two weeks, Tsholofelo Moloi has been among thousands of
South Africans lining up for water as the country’s largest
city, Johannesburg, confronts an unprecedented collapse of its
water system affecting millions of people. Residents rich and
poor have never seen a shortage of this severity. While hot
weather has shrunk reservoirs, crumbling infrastructure after
decades of neglect is also largely to blame. The public’s
frustration is a danger sign for the ruling African National
Congress, whose comfortable hold on power since the end of
apartheid in the 1990s faces its most serious challenge in an
election this year.
CBS 8 is Working for You to get to the bottom of water billing
problems in the City of San Diego. It’s been four months since
Mission Hills homeowner Ken Perilli received a notice in the
mail that his water bills were being withheld, pending an
investigation by the city of San Diego into “abnormal water
use.” “The first reaction is to panic that you have a leak
under a slab, and that you’re going to be facing an expensive
plumbing repair bill,” said Perilli. He called a plumber and
checked for water leaks, but nothing seemed abnormal. “I
investigated the abnormal reading. And you can see that there
is dirt in front of the meter. So, the abnormal reading is that
there was no reading taken, I believe,” said Perilli. On
the social media site Next Door, Perilli said he found dozens
of similar complaints by neighbors.
“Water is Life,” was the Lakota rallying cry at Standing Rock
as thousands weathered severe freezing conditions to stop an
oil pipeline threat to their water. In Arizona water is life
too but here we’re way beyond having our water resources
threatened. They’re right now being needlessly and excessively
plundered for corporate profit as the Arizona Corporation
Commission rolls out the red carpet for fossil fuel energy,
depletes our precious water resources and ends up maximizing
utility shareholders’ dividends. Now most of us can wrap
our heads around this — burning fossil fuels to make
electricity causes and worsens climate change, but it’s harder
to wrap your head around just how much water is consumed in the
process. Here’s how much water is used by different energy
sources to produce 1 megawatt hour of electricity. -Written by Rick Rappaport, a member of Tucson Climate
Coalition, Tucson Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby and
Arizonans for Community Choice Energy
At the Indian Wells Valley Water District board meeting on
March 11, the Water District board moved forward in learning
about the process of consolidating the Dune 3 water mutual
company into their service area. Some negotiation and planning
still needs to happen before any decision is finalized, but for
the moment the board is willing to cautiously move forward in
the process. The IWV Water District serves water to IWV
residents by pumping water out of the IWV groundwater basin.
However, they are not the only ones doing so. Dotted all across
IWV are domestic well owners and even a few other public or
private organizations resembling a water district. If one of
those organizations fails, an obligation still exists to serve
water to the people in that region.
The U.S. government is warning state governors that foreign
hackers are carrying out disruptive cyberattacks against water
and sewage systems throughout the country. In a letter released
Tuesday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan
warned that “disabling cyberattacks are striking water and
wastewater systems throughout the United States.” The letter
singled out alleged Iranian and Chinese cyber saboteurs.
Sullivan and Regan cited a recent case in which hackers accused
of acting in concert with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had
disabled a controller at a water facility in Pennsylvania. They
also called out a Chinese hacking group dubbed “Volt Typhoon”
which they said had “compromised information technology of
multiple critical infrastructure systems, including drinking
water, in the United States and its territories.”
At least 70 million Americans get their water from a system
where toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” were found at levels that
require reporting to the Environmental Protection Agency.
That’s according to new data the EPA released in its ongoing
5-year review of water systems across the nation. The number
will almost certainly grow as new reports are released every
three months. … Found in drinking water, food,
firefighting foam, and nonstick and water-repellent items, PFAS
resist degradation, building up in both the environment and our
bodies. Salt Lake City; Sacramento,
California; Madison, Wisconsin; and Louisville,
Kentucky, were among the major systems reporting PFAS
contamination to the EPA in the latest data release.
Water shortages are becoming a way of life in cities across the
globe — Los Angeles; Cape Town, South Africa; Jakarta,
Indonesia; and many more — as climate change worsens and
authorities often pipe in water from ever-more-distant sources.
“Water sources are depleted around the world,” said Victoria
Beard, a professor of city and regional planning at Cornell
University. “Every year, more cities will face ‘Day Zero,’ with
no water in their piped systems.” Mexico City — founded by the
Aztecs on an island amid lakes, with a rainy season that
brought torrents and flooding — might have been an exception.
For decades, the focus has been getting rid of water, not
capturing it. But a grim convergence of factors — including
runaway growth, official indifference, faulty infrastructure,
rising temperatures and reduced rainfall — have left this
mega-city at a tipping point after years of mostly unheeded
warnings.
Nearly six weeks after a major winter storm led to flooding and
landslide throughout Southern California, some homeowners in
Beverly Glen are still trying to return home. On Caribou Lane,
a landslide knocked a home off its foundation, and the debris
slid into the neighbors’ homes. That debris and mud left Samila
Bahsoon’s home with a lot of damage. … She has
potentially more than $600,000 in damage, and two insurance
companies already denied her claims. … She also
said when the neighbor’s home was knocked off the foundation,
the debris broke her water main. And it led to a massive water
bill. “LADWP sent me a $9,500 water bill, which is 6,500%
more than average for the last 35 years that this house has
been used,” she said.
The Biden administration will be allocating more than $120
million to tribal governments to fight the impacts of climate
change, the Department of the Interior announced Thursday. The
funding is designed to help tribal nations adapt to climate
threats, including relocating infrastructure. Indigenous
peoples in the U.S. are among the communities most affected by
severe climate-related environmental threats, which have
already negatively impacted water resources, ecosystems and
traditional food sources in Native communities in every corner
of the U.S. “As these communities face the increasing
threat of rising seas, coastal erosion, storm surges, raging
wildfires and devastation from other extreme weather events,
our focus must be on bolstering climate resilience …”
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of
Laguna, said in a Wednesday press briefing.
Gavin Newsom’s stealthy divide and conquer tactics are pushing
marginalized communities against each other in a war over
water. Newsom, his administration and State Water Contractors
are appropriating environmental justice language to sway public
opinion in Southern California about the Delta Conveyance
Project – also referred to as the Delta tunnel. They argue that
the Delta tunnel is essential for Southern California’s
disadvantaged communities, yet misrepresent the harm the
project continues to have on the tribal communities along
California’s major rivers and on communities in the Delta
watershed. Pitting disadvantaged communities from different
regions of the state against each other is a cynical strategy,
and is all the more egregious when considering it’s done in the
interest of serving only one sector of California’s economy
that these players have deemed all-important – special
interests in Southern California and portions of Silicon
Valley. -Written by Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director
of Restore the Delta.
Hastings, Minnesota, is staring down a $69 million price tag
for three new treatment plants to remove PFAS chemicals from
its water supply, ahead of new US federal regulations limiting
the amount of so-called forever chemicals in public drinking
water — which could come as early as this month. … [T]he
project amounts to a “budget buster,” says city administrator
Dan Wietecha. Operation and maintenance costs for the new
plants could add as much as $1 million to the tab each year
… Cities across the US are bracing for costly upgrades
to their water systems as the Environmental Protection Agency
moves to finalize the first-ever enforceable national drinking
water standards for PFAS — or per- and polyfluoroalkyl
substances — a large group of man-made chemicals used for
decades in manufacturing and in consumer products.
School-age children affected by the water crisis in Flint,
Mich., nearly a decade ago suffered significant and lasting
academic setbacks, according to a new study released Wednesday,
showing the disaster’s profound impact on a generation of
children. The study, published in Science Advances, found
that after the crisis, students faced a substantial decline in
math scores, losing the equivalent of five months of learning
progress that hadn’t recovered by 2019, according to Brian
Jacob, one of the study’s authors. The learning gap was
especially prevalent among younger students in third through
fifth grades and those of lower socioeconomic status. There was
also an 8 percent increase in the number of students with
special needs, especially among school-age boys.