In 2012, California passed AB 685, becoming the first state to recognize the human right to water. Despite this, as of 2024, more than 900,000 California residents get water from water systems that fail to provide them with safe, clean drinking water.
In 2024, the California State Water Resources Control Board published data showing that 379 of the 457 failing water systems were small water systems with 3,000 or less service connections (often translating to households), mostly located in California's rural agricultural regions in the Central Coast or San Joaquin Valley. Most of these systems rely on groundwater, which may be contaminated with arsenic, nitrate, or 1,2,3-TCP (trichloropropane).
San Lucas is a small unincorporated rural community in the Salinas Valley with a population of 324. San Lucas has been under a 'do not drink' order for over 10 years because of elevated levels of nitrate in their water supply. The community's wells are located on nearby farmland, where nitrate from crop fertilizer leeches into the groundwater that the well ultimately pulls from. Nitrate consumption has been linked to cancers and pregnancy complications, including "blue baby syndrome." The California Department of Public Health has told San Lucas residents that because nitrate is not absorbed through the skin, babies can be bathed in contaminated water. But most residents choose to use bottled water for bathing, or at least rinsing, young children because of skin irritation they experience.
San Lucas residents are incredibly burdened by the lack of access to clean drinking water. The state provides households with 15 gallons of water per week, but for most families these 15 gallons do not meet their household's needs. Imagine being a family of five or six, having to allocate 15 gallons among your family for drinking, cooking, and sometimes even bathing. To supplement the small amount of water given to them, residents drive to King City (10 miles away) to buy bottled water. Still the must pay a flat rate water bill for unsafe water.
California has attempted to address this problem through the creation of the Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience Program (SAFER). Established in 2019, SAFER allocates $130 million each year to provide a funding source for operation and maintenance costs, consolidation projects, replacement water, and funding for administrators. Since in creation, SAFER has provided $700 million in grants for small, disadvantaged communities in California. While SAFER was originally set to end in 2030, in 2025 the California legislature extended the yearly allocation of funds to 2045.
San Lucas has spent years trying to solve their water problem. The community has received a little over half a million dollars in technical assistance funding from the SAFER program. This money has funded a study of solutions, with alternatives including an 8 mile pipeline to King City, two different well-head treatment systems, or drilling a new well.
In June of 2025, the San Lucas County Water District (the small company providing water to San Lucas) voted to pursue alternative four: drill a new well. But drilling a new well comes with its own uncertainties.
As Paul Hamann previously discussed on this blog, many rural landowners of private domestic wells are facing the problem of wells drying up due to over-pumping. Private domestic wells provide water to between 1.5 and 2.5 million California residents, but are not regulated by the state. If you own a private domestic well, you are responsible for testing for contaminants to ensure that it is safe to drink.
While any new well drilled by San Lucas would still be a part of a water system regulated by the state, they undoubtedly will face the same uncertainties of ensuring that their well does not run dry. Seemingly even more pressing, how can San Lucas ensure that their new well does not face the same fate as the current wells? Surrounded by agricultural land, it seems like a tall task to find a location to drill a new well safe from nitrate contamination.
Whatever path San Lucas takes, there is no doubt that many communities need clean drinking water. Indeed, they needed it ten years ago. While the State Water Board may tout that 98% of California's have clean drinking water, we must not neglect the other 2% because of their location in rural areas.
2 comments:
I must admit that I was in shock when I read your blog. The fact that almost one million people in California lack consistent access to safe, clean drinking water is heartbreaking. This is also hard to reconcile with the idea that water is a human right in California. Even with programs such as SAFER, the legitimacy of the "right to water" will always be judged by its capacity to deliver in places such as San Lucas. Unless there is a guaranteed, sustainable pathway for failing water systems to reach compliance, the right to water functions less like a guarantee and more like a slogan for rural communities.
These are certainly shocking statistics. I wonder how the residents in these areas are feeling about the excess nitrate in their water assuming that at least some of them are employed on these farms. Maybe it is time to implement nitrate fixing cover crops. Who would help facilitate the change, if anyone? With wells drying and the current water being contaminated, are the residents shipping in clean drinking water or how are they accessing clean water now?
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