that outlined the scope of the problem and outlined a set of recommendations to solve the problem. The fi rst report, Communities That Rely on a Contaminated Groundwater Source for Drinking Water, found that 680 of 3,037 community water systems serving 21 million people use a con- taminated groundwater source affected by one or more principal contaminants, including nitrate. Community water systems can be as small as 15 service connections. They are regulated by CDPH, with the assistance of 33 counties.
Because of the unsafe water, some people end up paying twice for their water – once for a residential connection and again for the water purchased at vending machine or in buying bottled water.
According to the State Water Board, most of the 680 community water systems are in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, the Salinas Valley, and the Santa Maria Valley in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. The three counties with the most affected community water systems are Kern, Tulare and Madera. There are 1,659 active wells in which contamination was detected that are associated with these 680 commu- nity water systems.
CDPH in February addressed the needs of a community water system in Merced County through a $1 million pipeline project that connects the Los Banos Migrant Center to the city of Los Banos. The Migrant Center had been using one well for its water supply and that well had been cited with ex- ceedances of arsenic and other drinking water standards includ- ing nitrate.
Watch a video of Assemblymember Henry Perea announce the clean water legislative package
The money came from Prop. 84, but it is uncertain whether a new water bond would
contain funding for similar under- takings.
The State Water Board’s Rec- ommendations Addressing Nitrate in Groundwater, came from then-Sen. Don Perata’s SBX2 1 of 2008, which required the development of nitrate contamination pilot projects in the Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley. The report found that “solutions to nitrate-contaminated drinking water
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are achievable, but require additional funding and resources that are currently not available.”
Clean Water for Californians The nitrate in drinking water issue has sparked an unprecedented number of bills aimed at solving the problem. Dubbed the “Clean Water for Califor- nians” package, the batch of legisla- tion was introduced at a Feb. 20 State Capitol news conference attended by several lawmakers whose constituents are affected by nitrate contamination, including Assemblymember Henry Perea, D-Fresno.
The extent to which nitrate contamination affects drinking water sources in the Central Valley is “un- imaginable … unacceptable and it must stop,” Perea said. Perea’s AB 145 would transfer oversight of the state’s drinking water program from CDPH to the State Water Board. The bill says “the most effective way to create a consolidated and comprehensive strategy to ensure safe drinking water for all Califor- nians is consolidating all water quality programs into the one state agency whose primary mission relates to water quality.”
Read the letter from ACWA opposing AB145
Giving the State Water Board authority over drinking water would provide for a “greater focus” of fi nan- cial and staff support for the program, greater effi ciencies of scale and shared resources, a broader array of expertise concentrated on drinking water quality, coordina- tion between water source protection and drinking water
treatment programs, more account- ability for drinking water programs, im- proved understanding and coordination between water quality and water rights programs and consolidated reporting, water use and quality in one agency, the bill says. ACWA opposes AB 145 unless
it’s amended, saying in a Feb. 22 letter to Perea that the focus needs to be on “targeted solutions that truly address
Western Water
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