Legislators have just five days to help an estimated 1 million Californians access safe and affordable drinking water from their faucets.
Ceres and many of our company partners have strongly supported the creation of a Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund in California.
Some employees, some customers and some of their supply-chain farmers may very well reside in the communities facing clean water shortages.
Those communities number more than 300, according to the State Water Resources Control Board, and as many as 360,000 to 1 million people are affected.
But we need our policymakers to help create a pathway for safe drinking water for all.
When Ceres and a dozen company partners went to Sacramento last week to talk with legislators about the importance of legislation ensuring safe and affordable drinking water for all, stories from other advocates visiting Sacramento the same day and several legislative offices we met with furthered our resolve to make sure SB 844 and SB 845 are adopted.
Those stories drove home for us just how very important access to clean, safe drinking water is.
That’s why the legislative effort to make sure clean drinking water is available to all through the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund is so important to us.
So I was very pleased last week when state legislators revived Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund legislation with a compromise that would still provide the funds needed to ensure safe drinking water supplies for all – it asks residential water users to pay voluntarily 95 cents a month.
The proposed legislation in SB 844 and SB 845 is supported by a historic coalition of agricultural, environmental justice and business interests, among others.