Central Valley continues marathon fight for clean drinking water
Susan Ferriss
Sacramento Bee
08/19/2009
David McNeir is a bishop of his church and a man of faith. But he has found himself banging his hand on a table more than once when negotiating with public health authorities for clean drinking water.
"We've always had bad water," said McNeir, a cannery employee who lives in Monterey Park Tract, an area southwest of Modesto flanked by dairies and farms. "We've been on a list for a project now for four or five years. We've applied for every kind of grant there is."
Up and down the Central Valley, the frustration is palpable.
After years of effort by community activists, politicians and even young teens, the state's progress toward clean water for all is dwarfed by discoveries of more problems. Residents continue to rely on groundwater tainted by pesticides, nitrates, industrial chemicals and arsenic.
Californians have voted twice for bond money to ensure clean water, with $230 million in grants and loans aimed at mostly small and disadvantaged communities.
The state also receives annual federal money for clean-water projects, this year totaling $67 million. And, thanks to the federal stimulus plan, the state's getting another $160 million bump.
But a 2007 federal study estimated it will take $39 billion over 20 years to improve California's drinking water quality.
Adding to delays is the fact that budget problems forced the state to stop taking applications for bond money in December.
"Having money frozen is 10 steps back," said Susana De Anda of the Community Water Organization in Visalia.
De Anda's group has decided it's time to try a new tack: Pass a state law declaring clean water a human right.
A grass-roots movement
Joanna Mendoza, a 13-year-old in the Tulare County town of Cutler, said families are tired of receiving official warnings that their water contains a pesticide linked to cancer.
Residents spend money every month to buy bottled water, on top of paying for what comes out of the tap.
"The only thing that ever changes on those notices is the date," said Mendoza, who belongs to Youths for Water, a group of Central Valley teenagers who are urging their water districts to find ways to improve water quality.
Two decades ago, Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union rallied farmworkers in the Central Valley to demand better drinking water. As awareness and testing for contaminants grew, water districts and even entire communities have joined the call for action.
That's happening in Monterey Park Tract, where McNeir is chairman of a small utility district that provides water to 48 homes.
In November the state dropped the maximum allowable level of arsenic from 50 to 10 micrograms per liter of water. One well in Monterey Park Tract has three times that standard.
For two decades, McNeir said, local wells also have violated the standard for nitrates, which seep into groundwater from leaking septic tanks, farm fertilizers and – as the state's dairy industry has grown – cow manure.
Attempts to dig new wells have run into more pollution, and efforts to find funding sources have failed.
Now, McNeir's district is looking for money to drill a cleaner well farther away or to tap into a neighboring city's water system.
A growing problem
Officials at California's Public Health Department acknowledge it's difficult to monitor 8,000 public water systems and enforce more than 100 drinking water standards and regulations.
With limited funding, money goes first to water systems contaminated by an acute bacteriological threat, such as fecal matter that can sicken someone instantly. In those cases, the law requires public health authorities to act swiftly, ordering districts to close wells or provide bottled water.
It's much harder to get prompt action when contaminants pose long-term health threats, such as cancer risks.
Yet that may be the biggest challenge.
In November, California followed the federal government in setting a lower safety standard for arsenic in drinking water. That decision meant scores of water systems suddenly were serving up too much arsenic with their drinking water.
Arsenic is common in the West, seeping into water from rock or through runoff from mining or orchards. Even if concentrations do not trigger an immediate water system closure, they can pose cancer risks and vascular and skin problems.
South Lake Tahoe and Galt have water systems that violate the new arsenic standard. Both are developing treatment plants.
Though those two cities can handle the cost, that's not true of all.
"Small systems just don't have that ratepayer base," said Dennis Cocking, spokesman for the South Lake Tahoe utility district. After construction, he warns, districts must shoulder ongoing costs for maintenance and disposal of the concentrated arsenic waste.
In the Fresno County town of Lanare, population 640, a $210,000 arsenic treatment plant went on line in October 2006 and was shut down the following spring. Lanare couldn't afford the treatment chemicals or the electricity.
To the southwest, in Tulare County, Alpaugh – population 840 – received a notice from state health officials on Dec. 18 warning that its drinking water had violated arsenic standards for several years and should be cleaned up.
On Dec. 23, Alpaugh received another letter advising that its state grant had been frozen, and that it should not sign a contract yet to build an arsenic treatment system.
For months, the district waited. In April, the state Department of Finance lifted the stay on some grants awarded before the freeze, including Alpaugh's. But no one on Alpaugh's water board knew that until The Bee told them.
"Well, it's something I would have liked to have known," said Josephine Jennings, the board's executive director.
Contaminants spur warnings
Before arsenic became an issue, the Central Valley's major water-related concerns focused on other chemicals, including perchlorate, the pesticide DBCP and nitrates.
Public health officials consider nitrates an "acute" health risk, but the state policy in most cases is simply to issue a warning that water should not be boiled – which concentrates the nitrates – and that pregnant women and infants should not drink it.
Tulare County is the largest dairy county in the world, and nitrates are pervasive. In groundwater tests of small water systems with more than 200 customers, about 20 percent exceeded state limits.
The Tulare County town of Cutler has lost some of its wells to nitrates. Residents have been warned their water has too much of another contaminant, the pesticide DBCP, which was banned in 1977 for causing cancer and sterility.
Cutler was not listed as violating DBCP standards in a 2007 report. But a new state Water Resources Control Board database shows its wells have violated those standards since 1988.
On June 18, residents received notice once again that their water contains DBCP but that there is no immediate threat requiring them to stop drinking it.
The resulting confusion breeds suspicion, not just of the water, but of the surrounding farms.
Cutler resident Jesus Quevedo, 75, blames his son's death last year from leukemia on the water and on exposure to farm chemicals in the air.
