We’d like to thank Sen. Bill Monning for his authorship of Senate Bill 623 — the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund.
This bill provides a comprehensive solution for a million Californians who lack access to safe and affordable drinking water, including thousands of people, many of them children, in 27 water systems in Monterey County, alone.
This bill combines an agriculture-funded solution to nitrate contamination with a water user fee that will address chronic naturally occurring contamination issues, such as the hexavalent chromium that is a problem in Monterey County.
Simply put, this fund will correct an injustice that’s gone on far too long.
There’s no excuse in the world’s sixth-largest economy for more than a million people to be unable to rely on the water coming out of their faucets.
— Natalie Garcia, Community Water Center, Santa Cruz The Sentinel welcomes your letters to the editor.
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