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Old 12-20-2010, 12:19 PM
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Jeanfromfillmore Jeanfromfillmore is offline
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Default California: Becoming a 3rd World is closer than some might think

Drinking Water Crisis in California
It’s a process Becky Quintana goes through every time she makes a cup of coffee; reaching into the fridge for bottled water to fill up the coffee pot instead of tapping into water from the sink.
It’s not an issue of preference for Quintana, but necessity, as the water coming through her home is filled with unsafe levels of bacteria and nitrates. It’s a problem not just in her rural community of Seville, California but throughout the Central Valley. “This isn’t supposed to be happening in California, said Quintana, a lifelong resident of Seville. “California is one of the richest states in the nation, and the United States is one of the richest countries in the world, and we’re living like a third world country.”
Home to 350 residents, Seville is supported by the agriculture and dairy industries. Known as the breadbasket of America, the central valley is responsible for over sixty percent of California’s agriculture production. However, according to community activists it is these very industries that are harming the drinking water of the valley’s residents. “We live in one of the most agriculturally intensive areas in the world, yet there are no programs to protect our groundwater sources from pollution,” said Susana De Anda of the Community Water Center in Visalia. “It’s not a coincidence that many communities in the valley like Seville have lacked clean drinking water for decades.”
According to De Anda, chemical fertilizers and animal waste are the leading causes of the high levels of nitrates in Seville’s drinking water and these nitrates have the potential to cause serious health problems for those that drink them. “Nitrates are linked to the blue baby syndrome. If a child of six months of age or younger ingests nitrate contaminated drinking water, the blood system in the body cannot absorb oxygen and it can literally turn blue,” said De Anda. “Nitrates are linked to kidney disease and cancer and it’s something we don’t want in our water.”
Seville’s drinking water comes from a groundwater well with pipes well over a hundred years old. Corroded and rusty, these pipes feed the water to Seville’s 74 homes and run along a field irrigation ditch which residents say lends itself to water filled with sand, debris, and of course, nitrates. “It’s frustrating, you know, everyone should be able to turn on their water and not have to think, is anything wrong with my water?” said Quintana. “It’s a human right that everyone should have; we shouldn’t have to even think about what is in our water.”
At Seville’s only school, Stone Corral Elementary, water fountains have been disconnected and students drink from Sparkletts dispensers. Principal and Superintendent Christopher Kemper says the school has to draw money from its general fund in order to pay the expensive 400 to 500 monthly price tag of bottled water. “As you can imagine like buying Sparkletts or any water at home, it is very expensive,” he said. “And really we have no other alternative because we do pull from the community water. It really is a sad thing especially with the state of California, money is now scarce and we could use any money we could get for instructional things for the children.”
The cost of bottled water is not only affecting the elementary school but also places a financially burden on the residents of Seville, who are mostly farm labor workers. Quintana and others complain of double paying, first for contaminated well water from the tap, and then again for bottled water. “I mean most of the people that work here make minimum wage and then you have to pay your sixty dollars and then an additional forty to sixty dollars for bottled water, that’s like a hundred or a hundred and twenty dollars just to buy water,” she said. “What is really interesting is you just drive twenty minutes from here and there are people who don’t even know these conditions exist.”
State public health officials acknowledge nitrates can cause serious health problems but add those problems are not unique to Seville, “They are not alone, there are many hundreds if not thousands of communities across the state that have similar if not more severe problems,” said Dr. Kevin Reilly, Chief Deputy Director of Policy and Programs for the California Department of Public Health. “Water is at a premium in California. Much of California is a desert. We don’t have enough to go around for the entire population and that is a challenge for us to try and make use of the water we do have, and in some cases that is groundwater that has natural made and human made contaminants that we have to treat before people can drink the water.”
In 2008 the town of Seville applied for a one million dollar grant to help cover a portion of the cost to replace the decaying pipe system and Reilly says the state will be offering the community a funding agreement in the near future, “We’re hoping to enter into a funding agreement in the next months… but there are some challenges to ensure that we find the best source of water for this community,” he said. “I think this community has a basic expectation and should have a basic expectation to have safe air, safe water, safe food to consume.”
But while replacing the pipes will keep the soot and soil out of Seville’s water system, it doesn’t necessarily address the health concerns associated with nitrates, and many residents say they’ll continue to swallow the cost of buying bottled water while fighting for continued government intervention. “This is 2010. Enough is enough,” says De Anda. “We need to prioritize and get our basic human rights. We’re not asking for handouts. We’re asking for a basic service.”


Read more: http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2...#ixzz18glN4TPk
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