The right to water in the San Joaquin Valley

It has been widely reported by the news and by Governor Newsom that over one million Californians do not have access to clean drinking water in their homes. The good news is that the state has taken serious legislative action to address the issue over the past decade. Beginning in 2012, California became the first state to recognize a human right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water. At that time, the state was in the middle of a drought that would ultimately be its driest three consecutive years on record. As everyone in the state was called on to use less water, divisions grew about its proper allocation. Indeed, the San Joaquin Valley remains starkly divided on the issue: potable water is primarily diverted to agricultural use while many of its residents and labor force still lack safe drinking water. Within the Valley, those living in unincorporated communities are the most vulnerable to this public health crisis.

A recent article from the Hastings Environmental Law Journal notes:

The majority of those [one million] Californians [lacking safe drinking water] are Latinx and live in disadvantaged unincorporated communities (DUCs) throughout the state’s rural agricultural belts. The greatest number of noncompliant public water systems is located in the San Joaquin Valley, where approximately forty percent of DUCs with noncompliant systems are located within a mile of a city’s borders, while one-third are too far from a city’s borders to extend drinking water service. These dire spatial and racial inequalities suggest that California must explore new strategies to augment current efforts to implement the human right to water.

Unincorporated communities are residences located outside any municipality. They can be directly adjacent to one or miles away, as stated in the quote above.  Unincorporated in the rural context has been discussed before in this blog here. Their proximity to towns aside, these communities are often disconnected from public water systems that could provide safe drinking water, and they are left to their own devices to figure out their water needs. Historically, these communities have relied on groundwater basins, which have become polluted after decades of chemicals from pesticides and fertilizer seeping into the ground, as discussed here.

To address this issue, the California legislature enacted a plan to consolidate these communities with compliant water districts. The protocol calls for the State to identify noncompliant systems in unincorporated areas for consolidation, encourage the nearby compliant water system to consolidate voluntarily, and if unsuccessful, make consolidation mandatory. According to the state, nineteen systems have received notices asking to consolidate voluntarily. Two actions have ceased because they did not involve disadvantaged communities. Eight resolved to voluntarily consolidate; one is completed. Four mandatory orders have been issued; one is completed.

At this rate, the problem likely will not be fixed any time soon for the thousands of San Joaquin Valley residents in unincorporated communities. Furthermore, the Hastings article points out that the plan is targeting communities in close proximity to existing water systems. There has not been any progress for remote unincorporated communities in the Valley.

This short documentary follows the community of Tooleville’s effort to join the town of Exeter’s water system. Being unincorporated, Tooleville’s 80 homes do not have clean water, and the community has suffered because of it. Despite residents pleading with Exeter city council, and the state offering them $10 million interest-free loan as an incentive, Exeter refuses to consolidate voluntarily.

A lack of trust between the parties appears to flow upstream: Tooleville does not trust Exeter to extend their services willingly, and Exeter does not trust the state to fulfill their promises to subsidize and maintain the expansion. There is also an underlying racial tension in the meetings between Tooleville’s Latinx, Spanish-speaking residents and the white council. One Tooleville resident read a prepared statement in Spanish, but nobody translated her message to the city. Then, a man from the city took the Tooleville residents outside and made empty promises to their representative. Between the meeting not having a translator and a man making off-the-record statements, there was ultimately no reason to hold the meeting in the first place.

Although the state’s plan is fairly new, it’s become clear that it is not effectively fulfilling the promise that people have a right to safe drinking water. After five years, only two systems have consolidated, and they were bordering. More funding or a new strategy will be needed to expedite the process, especially for the remote communities that remain a blindspot to the state.