Trouble at the Tap: Does America’s Safe Drinking Water Act Have our Back?

California Megadrought

LAUREL FIRESTONE  Our organization, the Community Water Center, just celebrated its 10th Anniversary which prompted us to reflect back 10 years, when we were contacted by a group of mothers whose water was coming out brown. It smelled like sewage. They weren’t getting answers as to what was happening. They worried about what their kids got at school.

We met women like Magdelena, who was trying to care for her children and elderly mother, while figuring out how to get rides to go fill 5-gallon jugs to lug back to her house, and how to ensure there was safe drinking water for her kids and aging parents. This was almost ten years ago. Unfortunately, that’s still going on today. There’s over 4 times the number of people in Flint Michigan now than in California without safe drinking water on a regular basis. Many haven’t had safe water for over a decade at this point, and now going on two decades. 

In the drought, we saw this much exacerbated. There were thousands of households whose private, individual, domestic wells went dry. There was some good coverage of that, but still not enough. Often, with things like a drought, we focus on in-the-instant issues; but frankly, dirty water has been going on for many years and was just further exacerbated now. It will take many, very difficult decisions at local and state levels to fundamentally address any change. We talked to families with 6-month-old babies trying to figure out how to bathe, do laundry and be able to flush the toilet. They had to borrow buckets of water from their neighbors to flush the toilet and wash dishes.

People have lived for over 2 years without running water in their houses in nearly every county within California – and much of the U.S. This is not California’s problem alone; but we have disproportionately high-poverty communities and communities of color, especially here in the San Joaquin Valley. Most communities without safe drinking water – despite being regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act – are within the San Joaquin Valley, the agricultural region just south of here.

Our organization advocates and educates communities lacking access to safe, clean, and affordable drinking water. In 2012, California passed and signed the Human Right to Water – the first of its kind. It recognized that everyone deserves access to safe, clean, affordable drinking water; that this is a basic human right; that we’re not asking for something crazy; and that this must be built into all state-level decisions – whether regarding grants, regulating agriculture or studying water management and spending decisions.

We’ve seen some solid, fundamental changes in the past 10 years. We’ve seen agricultural nitrate regulations of groundwater for both dairies and irrigated agriculture. At least in the Central Valley, every dairy and all irrigated agriculture needs nitrate-management plans – given the contamination from nitrate and fertilizers that’s leaching into groundwater. New powers have been enacted to consolidate and address economies of scale. Due to the lack of safe drinking water for many years, very small systems don’t have the technical, managerial or financial capacity to institute and run very expensive treatments for things like arsenic and nitrate.

Reinforcing what’s been said by other speakers will continue to transform the way we provide drinking water. In this state and throughout the country, how we build an economy at scale to ensure more resilience in providing affordable and reliable drinking water supplies is part of creating shared solutions. 

This country has kept low-income communities and communities of color outside of cities outside of infrastructure. There was some very deliberate and explicit zoning that did that years ago. We have a long way to go to correct those patterns and to build systems that are truly equitable in providing safe, clean and affordable drinking water, even with continuing droughts and climate change. 

I want to mention that California just published a proposal to start regulating a contaminant named 1,2,3-TCP, tri-chloro-propane. When we talk with communities, even once they have treatment in place, they ask, “Is my water safe?”  The difficulty is that our drinking water system has public health goals and MCLs; but it has contaminants that haven’t gone through the regulatory process yet. The 1,2,3-TCP contaminant is one example of that. It is an extremely potent carcinogen, found in a huge number of public water supplies, especially agricultural and western areas of the state. This pesticide contaminant was manufactured by Shell and Dow; used in the ‘80s; and discontinued. Although it’s no longer used, it continues to contaminate our water supplies served to many customers lacking a drinking-water standard. So, people don’t have to be notified. There is no “safe level” set yet, even though we’ve known about this for years,. The State has established a public health standard but hasn’t taken the next step to develop an MCL. This is also true for many things at the federal level. 

The State is finally in the process of establishing an MCL [Maximum Contaminant Level] for 1,2,3-TCP. [Editor’s Note: 1,2,3-Tricholoproprane is a man-made, chlorinated hydrocarbon, used as mostly an industrial solvent, cleaner, and in the past used as a soil fumigant. It is considered a likely carcinogen for humans and a groundwater contaminant.]  Those of us who work with residents in places with contaminated water want them to be able to drink water knowing it is safe. Even for those of us who know about 1,2,3-TCP – such as me, doing research on what could be done – there are no certified filters for 1,2,3-TCP, because it’s not yet regulated!  Certification programs don’t certify until a limit has been set. Regulators first need a goal. 

There’s just so much that we don’t know and are not doing. Most people have safe drinking water from their tap. But, for so many people the system isn’t working – people who’ve been invisible, or people deliberately excluded from protected systems. We still have a long way to go! We’ve made a huge progress. We have unprecedented new laws to start to get a handle on things. But we must do a whole lot more to do.

NWNL EDITOR’S NOTE  If interested in the lengthy, follow-up Question and Answer period, please contact No Water No Life for un-edited transcription of the Q and A session that followed.