Josie Nieto lives in Seville, California,
an agricultural community of about 500 people –
most of them farmworkers.
Say right now, I can – I can carry
this. I can open it and dump
it to cook beans.
But when it's empty, this one's empty?
There ain't no way I'm getting one
out of there and bring it and put it
up here.
It's too heavy.
Overall, more than one million
people in California do not
have access to clean drinking water,
according to the EPA, even though
the United Nations and the state
itself have recognized it
to be a human right.
The epicenter of the crisis is in
the Central Valley.
It's so dangerous and widespread
that one study projects 15,000
new cancer cases could be linked
to the water supply.
We've had too many people dying of
cancer also, and it just doesn't make sense.
This is a town of 480 people.
Yes.
The majority?.
Yes
Toxic levels of nitrates, arsenic,
and other contaminants have forced
many residents to switch to bottled water.
Every week Josie
must drive to Wal-Mart to buy water.
something she can't afford to do
but can't live without.
This is what you have to do.
Oh my God.
This is what you literally have to do.
So you're just pouring out a bottle
You have to.
of spring water.
And look, your bottle of water is
almost gone. Yes.
And that's just from washing—
From washing 1 little apricot.
Using bottled water like this
is not sustainable for Josie
and other farm working families in Seville,
where the average income is just
How much does that cost?
I would say about $60 myself.
It would be like $100 between both
of us a month for water.
$100 a month for bottled water.
Yes.
$60 a month for tap water
For tap water.
That you can't drink.
No.
It's unsafe.
That's right.
Nowhere is the disparity between who
gets clean drinking water and who
doesn't more apparent than here:
the California Aqueduct
that carries water from the Sierra
Nevada Mountains
to Southern California,
bypassing the Central Valley altogether.
This is snow melt flowing right
through the Central Valley to
Southern California.
How do they feel knowing that
they're living right next to
clean water that they don't have access to?
They can't touch it.
People know, and there's a sense
of frustration because you see it
pass by, and you
know, it goes to Southern
California.
Susana De Anda is a founder of the Community Water Center,
and has been fighting on behalf of residents
here for over a decade.
This was the color of the water that
came out awhile ago in
Ducore, California.
Now we like to say that looks can be
very deceiving because it is
the most detrimental contaminants
that have no smell or a taste.
So it's actually— this water is
more detrimental to drink than this one.
Our drinking water sources are
plagued with a variety of
contaminants.
The biggest sources of pollutants are nitrates.
And nitrates are coming from three major sources:
Look around.
We grow food here.
The second source is animal manure.
We have more cows than humans in Tulare County.
Animal manure is the second biggest source of nitrate pollution.
And the third is leaky septic tanks.
Water contamination from agriculture, combined with decades of government neglect
and under-investment in infrastructure
makes it hard to hold any one industry,
government agency, or official accountable for the crisis.
By the time it gets to the top,
if you know not to drink it because you have bad water quality,
you don't drink it.
Or you get notifications not to drink it.
So by law they have to let people know.
Yes.
But it's not illegal for them to be pumping water
that's contaminated into your house.
But in the long run the water provider
should be fixing the problem.
It's very expensive to
bring in, bring in a treatment
facility for a community
of 200 people or 200
connections when the facility
is going to cost over millions of
dollars, then it's unaffordable to
bring it in for treatment.
Seville is 1 of 15 communities
in Tulare County
In fact in 1971,
county officials deemed these towns
too small and having
"little to no authentic future."
48 years later, Seville
and 14 other minority communities
are still labeled as "can't serve" districts.
How did this happen like this, that
that some people have it and
others don't?
The system has been set up this way
to allow some residents to have
basic necessities met
while others are left out.
Students at local schools
have not had clean tap water for years,
forcing them to rely on bottled water.
Some pay for it with grant money.
Others must tap into their own budget.
I see, I mean walking around, there
are water fountains.
That's why we continuously
tell the kids to drink
out of the bottled water.
And also encourage them
to drink water at home that's bottled.
20 minutes away in nearby Visalia,
it's a very different story.
This water is safe to drink?
This water is 100 percent safe to drink.
You drink it at home?
I drink it at home.
Yes.
I mean, is it possible to
grow this system and connect
this grid to a place like Seville?
Saying that we can just
connect somebody to our water system
and be able to supply them safe, reliable drinking water
like we do to our customers,
it takes water mains, it could take
additional wells.
Every month, Josie and other Tulare county residents
meet to discuss possible solutions
to the contaminated water crisis.
So we're working towards making sure
that we create a reliable source of funding
that's gonna be available for these systems
including private homeowners on private wells
to be able to tap into it to figure out,
you know, what kind of treatment they need.
They hope that this is finally the
year when their state government
will take action.
We go to Sacramento a lot to talk to
our representatives and they just
like— it's not important because
it's not happening in their communities.
It's happening to us.
California's new governor,
Gavin Newsom, has made it clear that clean
drinking water for all Californians
is a top priority.
A new bill that's up for a vote
would require funding water treatment
and infrastructure,
including in places like Seville.
At the moment, it looks like the funding
will come from the state's climate change program.
The state's EPA,which is responsible
for making sure all residents
have safe water, supports the legislation.
It's really about just putting money,
and not a huge amount of money
in the context of California,
just to pay for the operation and
maintenance of water treatment.
But it's gone on way too long
because I think that their voice
hasn't been heard.
The governor was proposing a $1 water tax
on every resident's bill.
But not everyone supports the idea.
I spoke to people in Beverly Hills
added to their tax a year,
who felt really frustrated they were going to have a dollar
added to their tax a year,
and like their property tax is
probably $100,000 a year.
You talked to people in Beverly Hills
that didn't want to spend an
extra dollar
to pay for other people's clean water?
Was that shocking to you?
Yeah, it's completely shocking to me.
I mean it just shows how
narrowly focused we've become
and we're not thinking about, wow
there are people that live not
100 miles from here that don't have access to drinking waters.
California might have a solid plan
in place for cleaning up its contaminated water.
But dozens of communities around the U.S.
continue to struggle
with water that does not meet clean water standards.
We have drinking water conditions
old infrastructure throughout the country,
in Florida, in Tejas, in Detroit.
It's everywhere,
and we need to really take this into major consideration.
Clean water is vital for our health and our lives.
When the world found out that Flint, Michigan
that they were telling their people
that the water was safe when it wasn't,
Yeah.
there was outrage.
It used to make me real angry, but
now I'm just kind of disappointed,
sad that we've been at it for a long time
and we haven't been able to fix this.
I want them to be able to go, get up,
and be able to drink water.
And not be worried about their
generation to not be able to drink water.