por David Bacon
New America Media
Residents of Lanare, California, have discovered dangerous concentrations of Arsenic in their water supply. (PHOTO BY DAVID BACON)
NOTA DEL EDITOR: Here we present the second of a two-part series about contaminated water in the community of Lanare.
— In 2002 Lanare residents got a $1.3 million grant from the Federal government to build a plant to remove the arsenic. But after it went on line five years later, it only ran for six months. After that, the community’s residents no longer had enough money for the chemicals and power to keep it going. Even shut down, however, they still have to come up with $54 every month to cover that loan, paying basically for water they can’t drink. Inside every home there’s a faucet with water you might risk using to wash dishes or clothes. But when Angel Hernandez or Isabel Solorio hold up a glass to the light, the water is cloudy. So in the corner are the stacks of water bottles for drinking and cooking.
In the summer heat, on the border between Fresno and Merced Counties, the temperature rises to over 100 degrees. Water is no luxury. It sustains life. Everyone has to drink enough to replace what their bodies lose, even those like Mary Broad, who sits in the shade of her porch most days.
Dozens of similar small communities, or colonias, spread out across the state have similar water problems. Activists in 17 unincorporated areas of next-door Tulare County formed AGUA, La Asociacion de la Gente Unida por el Agua (The Association of People United for Water).
In Lanare, Hernandez, Solorio and several other residents, including Juventino Gonzalez and Jesus Medina, organized a group to press the state to take responsibility for providing water, Comunidad Unida en Lanare (Community United in Lanare). As a first step, they asked the state to survey Lanare and surrounding communities, acknowledge that such a need exists, and make a plan to meet it. California Rural Legal Assistance filed suit on their behalf last year, saying California’s Safe Drinking Water Act requires the state to formulate a Safe Drinking Water Plan.
The state hasn’t come up with a Safe Drinking Water Plan since 1993. CRLA attorneys point out that if authorities had followed the law and come up with one,, it would have been obvious that this poor small community could not have afforded to operate an expensive arsenic treatment plant. Letting the state off the hook, however, a local Fresno County judge ruled that California’s budget crisis trumped its obligation to create such a plan.
The state budget crisis, however, hasn’t stopped nearby Riverdale, only four miles from Lanare, from proposing another arsenic removal plant. The Riverdale Public Utilities District hopes to use funds from Proposition 84, a $5.4 billion water bond. It was just awarded $500,000 for a preliminary study for a project that would break ground next year.
CRLA lawyer Phoebe Seaton wrote to the state health department, saying that, “Given finite and scarce state and federal resources, the need for a safe, reliable and affordable source of water for both Lanare and Riverdale, and the Department’s statutory duty to explore consolidation of water systems, the Department must consider the consolidation of Lanare’s and Riverdale’s water systems.”
Public health officials, however, say connecting Lanare to that Riverdale plant, or even expanding Lanare’s own idle plant, would be too expensive. The state has hired a private contractor to operate the Lanare plant, but the operation is in receivership, and it hasn’t produced water anyone can drink for four years. When the Public Health Department wouldn’t say whether Lanare was included in its plan, Comunidad Unida began working with Fresno’s Local Agency Formation Commission, which is charged with avoiding expensive duplication of municipal and county services, including water.
In a report due to be released on August 24, Executive Officer Jeff Witts notes that “residents are currently relying on failing septic tanksfor wastewater services, there are no streetlights, sidewalks, and there is no adequate storm water drainage. The levels of poverty in Lanare make it that much more important that residents have access to an affordable source of drinking water.” The LAFCo report concludes that “A shared arsenic treatment facility that serves both Riverdale and Lanare would provide operational efficiencies and economies of scale that would improve service, water quality and affordable access to clean water for both communities.” It even advocates a system to allow Lanare residents to abandon their failing septic tanks, and connect to the sewers of Riverdale.
Meanwhile, however, the water in Lanare still looks cloudy, and residents fear drinking it. And they still pay $54 a month for it. “The government has forgotten us – they live outside our reality,” says Juventino Gonzalez, who moved to Lanare 41 years ago, when it only had 12 families. “All that time we’ve been isolated from the larger communities around us, while our neighborhood gets filled with drugs and trash. Water’s just one problem, but if we can find an answer to it, maybe we can solve others too. We’re willing to try almost anything.”
