“I think it’s from the nitrate,” Chavez says.
According to a 2012 report from UC Davis, in 96 percent of cases where nitrate leaches into groundwater supplies, agricultural operations are at fault.
This is almost certainly how the Chavez family’s well became contaminated.
“It’s shameful,” says Jonathan Nelson, the policy director for the Community Water Center, an organization that has been advocating for people without safe drinking water in the San Joaquin Valley for many years.
Jerry Brown declared he was “committed to working with the Legislature and stakeholders” to bring clean, safe, affordable water to all Californians, and he stated much the same thing in this year’s budget address, delivered in January.
Here, the wells that supplied 750 people ran dry during the drought.
Chavez says he has asked to be connected to the same pipe network.
Another report from UC Davis released in March found that most of the people without safe drinking water live near public water systems.
The fund would be created mostly by a 95-cent-per-month addition to household water bills statewide, with 20 percent – $30 million – proposed to come from a tax imposed on agricultural fertilizers that contain nitrogen.
Monning, however, says the general fund, since it gets reallocated every year, is nowhere near reliable enough.