Clean up California’s water
For years a million Californians have watched tainted, dirty water flow from their taps. These residents, overwhelmingly poor, Hispanic and living in small Central Valley towns, drive long distances to load up on bottled water for everyday basics. It’s shameful that in a state this rich, people still have to share shower water and schools have to plug up their drinking fountains.
Thanks to overdue political attention, legislative horse trading and a dose of budget legerdemain, that situation is finally changing. Gov. Gavin Newsom showcased the final step with a bill signing in the aptly named hamlet of Tombstone in Fresno County.
A total of $130 million per year over the next decade will be spent upgrading rundown and pollutionprone delivery systems. Some 326 water agencies don’t meet state purity and treatment guidelines. Many private wells are no better off.
Because the worstoff spots are in farm country, the contaminants are believed to be agricultural chemicals, fertilizers and animal waste that drip into underground aquifers pumped up for human use. The problem can worsen through corroded pipes — as infamously happened in Flint, Mich.
Finding a fix has stymied rural water systems located in California’s poor areas. State officials offered aid to buy bottled water but stalled on the sevendigit bill needed for a serious overhaul, despite major bond measures.
The money, not the obvious need, became a friction point that is now resolved. Newsom proposed a statewide water tax. But the Legislature balked, rightly noting that state finances are flush with billions in surplus. A final deal puts the yearly bill into the California budget without an extra levy.
That’s not the full financial story. The funds will be taken from a climate change fund based on fees paid by polluting industries.
Cleaning up dirty water definitely stretches the notion of what constitutes a greenhouse gas peril.
The argument for tapping the money: backandforth driving to obtain clean water creates pollution that can be eased by better treatment facilities. Sacramento should get ready for other imaginative raids on climate change piggy banks.
The sleight of hand doesn’t mean a thing to communities living with dirty water. At the billsigning ceremony, Newsom rightly called the situation “a moral disgrace” alongside the author of the bill, state Sen. Bill Monning, a Carmel Democrat.
But a confirming remark came from the residents in attendance. In translated Spanish, one woman told the governor that her family shares a weekly supply of bottled water to bathe. Her tiny community of several dozen homes has relied on wells that are tainted with nitrates and other pollutants. The new spending will allow for pipes to connect the hamlet with nearby Sanger.
If the financing scheme isn’t ideal, the result surely is. California can’t condemn its poorest residents to unhealthy living conditions.