Despite California having the first law in the United States declaring water to be a human right, the situation is growing worse as the state enters its fifth year of drought. And the situation is the worst for the most vulnerable, the largely Latino farm laborers and their families in the predominantly agricultural Central Valley of California.
In September 2012 Governor Brown signed AB 685 into law, declaring the right to clean drinking water to be an inalienable human right. Prior to this, in March 2011, United Nations representative Catarina de Albuquerque had visited Seville, California to evaluate the community’s water system. She found that many families in Tulare County spend more than 10 percent of their income on tap and bottled water because the tap water is contaminated with nitrates from agricultural fertilizers, septic systems and dairy farms.
Nitrates are known to cause serious injury to newborns by interfering with the ability of their red blood cells to carry oxygen, a condition called methemoglobinemia, or blue-baby syndrome. In addition, nitrates are implicated in various cancers. Nitrates are concentrated in declining underground water tables, the primary source of drinking water in California, as farmers drill deeper wells due to the drought.
To make matters worse in Tulare County, the board of supervisors recently voted to allow the unrestricted drilling of deep wells, despite the opposition of the AGUA Coalition (Asociación de Gente Unida por el Agua) and others. This is certain to aggravate the dire situation of farm worker communities such as Monson, whose wells have run dry, while across the street there are lush green orchards that many of them harvest.
According to the Environmental Justice Coalition for Clean Water, these communities pay the highest water rates in the state for drinking water and gray water that is used for showering, dish-washing, etc. If they complain, they are promptly silenced as happened in a Fresno County Supervisors meeting. A spokesperson for farm workers protesting rising water rates was told to “shut up and sit down” as Board Chairperson Buddy Mendes did not want to hear from “left-wing environmentalists” (Fresno Bee, April 14, 2015).
Increasingly, water is being pumped from underground water tables in California and around the country and sold by private bottling interests such as Saveway Bottling in Merced, California (Merced SunStar April 16, 2015). In Weed, California, in the foothills of Mount Shasta, the local lumber company has told the city to look for another water source, as bottling water for sale by Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring is very profitable (New York Times, October 2, 2016).
Clearly, water is not being dealt with as a human right in Tulare County, nor in the cities of Merced and Weed. We are all affected by unrestricted pumping and increased water contamination for short-term gain and profit. It is time to stand by the most vulnerable and demand an equitable water system that serves and protects all of us and our fragile environment.
For more in-depth analysis of California’s water situation read “The Politics of Water and the Drought in California” available at www.peoplestribune.org.
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