Everyone in California — and everywhere else, for that matter — deserves clean drinking water.
But relying on charity to upgrade failing water systems in low-income California communities is not the way to meet a basic human need.
Yet that’s essentially what state Sen. Bill Monning is proposing in SB 845.
The bill would require water purveyors throughout the state to offer their customers the “opportunity” to pay a monthly fee of 95 cents per household.
Except Monning proposes to do it differently.
Instead of asking us whether we want to participate, he proposes the 95-cent fee automatically be added to customers’ bills, unless they choose to opt out.
How many people actually read the inserts that come with their bills, or even pay attention to the amount of their bill unless it’s unusually high?
Sen. Monning’s soda-shaming bill does not make us a ‘kooky’ nanny state On top of that, this would not be a one-and-done opt out; customers who don’t want to contribute would have to opt out every year.
In a Viewpoint written for the Sacramento Bee, a former chairman of the state Water Resources Control Board warned that the voluntary fee would be costly and inefficient to administer: “… it would require more than 3,000 local water systems to change their billing systems and hire new employees to manage collection of the contributions, all at significant expense.” As an alternative, he suggests adding water system improvements to the list of causes Californians can donate to on their state income tax form.
The Legislature should either find the money in the budget — or find the political courage to pass a tax.

City Official: “There’s no health threat.
There’s no reason to boil your water.” DUNDEE — Town officials say high contaminant levels in drinking water are nothing that residents should worry about.
For samples collected between January and March, the town of Dundee’s two water plants showed levels for trihalomethanes (TTHMs) to be over the maximum set by the state, according to a task order from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
According to the Florida Department of Health, cancer risks are calculated as lifetime risks associated with drinking two liters per day over 70 years.
Per the consent order, the issue must be fixed within two years.
“What we’re thinking is it’s a source water issue,” Ware said.
We won’t know that for sure until the research comes back.” Bernard, who previously worked in Haines City, said this problem isn’t new to the area — only to Dundee.
“It’s new to Dundee, but something we have to fix and something that can be fixed,” he said.
Once water is pumped from the Florida Aquifer through the town’s water system, it is treated with sodium hypochlorite, which forms the contaminants.
“The natural organics need the chlorine to form, but we need the chlorine to disinfect.” Mike Ferguson can be reached at Mike.Ferguson@theledger.com or 863-802-7545.

In the city of Detroit, public school students are facing a heat wave, and they are finding the water fountains near their classrooms are not working.
QUINN KLINEFELTER, BYLINE: At the Detroit School of Arts, student Dayana Williams is ready to start classwork.
She’s brought her notebook, her backpack, and she’s made a special point to bring her own bottled water.
There’s a new water cooler with bottled water down the hallway, but Williams says, after hearing reports that lead and copper was found in school bathrooms and water fountains, she’s taking no chances.
So I’m just going to have to deal with it.
KLINEFELTER: Officials say students can wash their hands with water the in school buildings, just not drink it.
Detroit Public Schools superintendent Nikolai Vitti says higher-than-normal amounts of lead and copper were found in the water at 34 of 50 of its schools, so Vitti ordered all the school buildings tested – more than a hundred of them – then turned off the drinking water while engineers try to figure out if the contamination is coming from old pipes or rusty faucets.
NIKOLAI VITTI: The solution is not a whack-a-mole effect of, well, let’s take out that water fountain or that sink.
KLINEFELTER: Detroiter Patricia Taylor says she has eight grandchildren in the public school system, and she says she’s been supplying them all with bottled water for years because she just doesn’t trust the pipes in aging Detroit school buildings.
For NPR News, I’m Quinn Klinefelter in Detroit.

Two hazardous chemicals, PFOS and PFOA, were commonly found in firefighting foams used at airports and military bases, before they were phased out between 2000 and 2006.
Chemicals used in coatings for products such as nonstick pans and stain repellent have become a lurking threat to drinking water supplies nationwide, prompting a call to better test for their presence in New York.
A group of county leaders, health officials and environmental directors, in a letter last week, asked the state health department and federal Environmental Protection Agency to require water testing for perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).
“It’s a contaminant that is existing in the environment, so we need a better way to identify the chemical and get rid of it,” Mr. Acquario said.
Brad J. Hutton, the deputy commissioner of the New York State Public Health Office, said the state advises that more than 2 parts per trillion is potentially dangerous and should be monitored by state or local governments.
The state also established a Drinking Water Task Force, which the letter is addressed to, essential to helping with cleaning up contamination and installing carbon-activated filters in water systems where PFOA or PFOS is found as a first step, Mr. Acquario said.
Through the task force, the state randomly selected several public water suppliers to begin testing for the PFOA and PFOS in their drinking water.
Public suppliers are required to test for nearly 100 contaminants, but more than 80,000 potential chemicals exist.
Mr. Acquario said if there is a serious contamination issue requiring a new municipal treatment system to be put in place, the cost is between $25 million and $35 million, with an additional $500,000 in labor costs.
The companies allegedly designed, manufactured, marketed and sold foams used for fire fighting and fire fighting training at Stewart Air National Guard Base, Stewart International Airport, Francis S. Gabreski Airport, former Plattsburgh Air Force Base and former Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome.

Deprived of basic facilities, people across the suburbs of Balochistan’s Dera Bugti district cannot remember when they last had access to clean drinking water.
Facing the worst shortage in over two decades while the authorities concerned bat no eye, residents of Habib Rani and Pattokh have been dependent on rivulets and puddles of muddy water for daily use.
In a video making rounds over the internet, the locals of the area can be seen fighting as they struggle to collect water from what appears to be a fresh water source.
Speaking to Pakistan Today, one of the protesters said that their representatives had failed them.
He also said that as many as five gas fields were operating in Dera Bugti, but locals, including him, neither had gas, water or electricity.
Azam also complained of lack of hospitals and schools in the area.
Inevitably, generations of families across the suburbs of the country’s largest province by area have been affected by water-borne diseases like diarrhoea, cholera and more.
It merits mention that in Balochistan, annual precipitation ranges from 50 to 500mm.
Locals have to walk miles to fetch one container of water to meet their daily needs.
He also expressed the hope that by nurturing relations with the federal government, the long-lasting issues of Balochistan could finally be resolved.

In fact, the danger officials wanted to warn them about wasn’t coming from the sky.
For the first time in Oregon’s history, toxins from a nearby algae bloom had made their way into a city’s tap water.
Today, Oregon for the first time has rules largely unheard of in the United States.
Wilhelm is interested in the circumstances that lead harmful blooms to overtake a body of water—and why that seems to be happening more and more.
"It’s a concern in many states—especially states that pull water from surface waters that are contaminated with these," says Dr. Tim Davis, who studies harmful algae blooms at Bolwing Green State University in Ohio.
Today, Rhode Island is considering new drinking water regulations for algae.
Wilhelm hopes the attention will lead to more awareness about the dangers of algae.
The lake feeds the Santiam River, from which the city pulls its drinking water.
"We noticed algae back in 2010 and said, ‘Hey we better start testing for it," says Peter Fernandez, Salem’s public works director.
Algae has persisted around Detroit Lake, but since the new system went live on July 4, Salem’s water has been free of algae toxins.

Deprived of basic facilities, people across the suburbs of Balochistan’s Dera Bugti district cannot remember when they last had access to clean drinking water.
Facing the worst shortage in over two decades while the authorities concerned bat no eye, residents of Habib Rani and Pattokh have been dependent on rivulets and puddles of muddy water for daily use.
In a video making rounds over the internet, the locals of the area can be seen fighting as they struggle to collect water from what appears to be a fresh water source.
Speaking to Pakistan Today, one of the protesters said that their representatives had failed them.
He also said that as many as five gas fields were operating in Dera Bugti, but locals, including him, neither had gas, water or electricity.
Azam also complained of lack of hospitals and schools in the area.
Inevitably, generations of families across the suburbs of the country’s largest province by area have been affected by water-borne diseases like diarrhoea, cholera and more.
It merits mention that in Balochistan, annual precipitation ranges from 50 to 500mm.
Locals have to walk miles to fetch one container of water to meet their daily needs.
He also expressed the hope that by nurturing relations with the federal government, the long-lasting issues of Balochistan could finally be resolved.

NOT a day goes by that our activities do not require water.
According to Water.org, out of over one hundred million Filipinos, nine million rely on unimproved, unsafe and unsustainable water sources and 19 million lack access to improved sanitation.
Shaping lives one glass at a time To address the pressing problem of access to clean water sector, Unilever Philippines made a commitment to provide safe drinking water to five million Filipinos by 2020 through the distribution of their Pureit water purifying systems.
More than their own hard work and dedication to such an advocacy, what truly drove Pureit’s success was the collaboration between Unilever and their microfinance partners.
These are financial products and services, such as deposits, loans, and payment services, that are offered by MFIs to the working class with small businesses, also known as the entrepreneurial poor.
According to the 2017 Financial Inclusion Study, out of the 23 percent Filipinos with a formal account, 8.1 percent of them are clients of microfinance organizations.
Because of their wide-reaching services and the relationships they have established with the communities they operate in, MFIs are the perfect partner for Unilever’s cause and the distribution of Pureit units.
One of the partner MFIs located there, KFI Center for Community Development Foundation (KCCDFI) of Zamboanga del Sur, is led by Mercy Faustino who first learned about Pureit in 2017.
Upon witnessing the suffering of residents from far-flung barangays who could only rely on wells, springs, and rivers as their water source, Faustino and her organization realized how much it would mean to bring water access to areas that lack water systems.
Faustino reported that majority of their clients were mothers whose lives had been changed because of the water security and convenience that Pureit has brought.

The City of Salem’s water issues this summer served as a learning experience and research opportunity for Willamette University students whose families live in the area.
“They were told, hey, do not do this, like don’t boil the water or only use the water for daily tasks like washing the dishes and doing laundry and don’t use the water for cooking, but they weren’t explaining why you shouldn’t be doing those things,” said Espinoza, an incoming senior this year.
But when their community’s drinking water was suddenly and unexpectedly compromised, they started looking for answers.
“We were looking at the raw data the City of Salem was providing to the community, and our professor actually made graphs and we could see why the City of Salem responded the way they did,” said Vasquez.
Along with the students’ independent research, biologists with the City of Salem used Willamette’s lab to develop their early sampling protocols, because the lab offered access to equipment the city didn’t have yet.
Months after the discovery of the cyanotoxins, the city still doesn’t have answers to why the bacteria were present this year, or how they made it through the city’s treatment facility.
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I am the proud co-author of bi-partisan legislation – along with Senator Bill Monning (D-Carmel), that finally provides a reliable funding source to ensure children and families across the state have access to safe and clean water from their faucets.
The legislation has been vetted through nearly two years of policy and budgetary hearings.
The proposal now provides greater economic security to agricultural and rural regions like ours while addressing nitrate impacts in drinking water.
In exchange for regulatory relief regarding nitrate contamination, the agricultural industry has agreed to very modest funding increases assessed on fertilizer and livestock.
In Sacramento, I represent one of the poorest Senate districts in the state, which includes thousands of constituents who lack access to safe and clean drinking water.
As a farmer, I understand how burdensome regulation and job-killing policies are increasing the cost of doing business in California.
This counter-productive approach makes agriculture – already one of the riskiest industries – even more difficult in which to succeed.
However, SB 844 allows California farmers and farmworkers to plan for costs that help make sure all Californians have safe and clean drinking water.
However, the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund has been thoroughly reviewed by all stakeholders.
Our communities, our farmers, and our farmworkers cannot afford another year of inaction.