Tap water is more strictly regulated than the bottled water being hoarded, officials say. Tap water is treated specifically to remove infectants like the new coronavirus, which “is a type of virus that is particularly susceptible to disinfection and standard treatment,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, leading a 10-state coalition, on Wednesday filed comments on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed amendments to nationwide standards for controlling and remediating lead in drinking water, also known as the Lead and Copper Rule. The EPA’s proposed revisions represent the first major amendments in a generation to the Lead and Copper Rule, which was first promulgated in 1991. Although some of the proposed revisions strengthen the 1991 rule, others weaken existing requirements and fail to adequately protect the public from lead in drinking water.
Water is life. It is essential to the survival of all living things and has been at the center of my work for over three decades as a public servant. I did not select this cause arbitrarily, but because our communities were suffering, and no one was speaking out about safe, clean water supplies for residents of the San Gabriel Valley and greater east Los Angeles County.
For years a million Californians have watched tainted, dirty water flow from their taps. These residents, overwhelmingly poor, Hispanic and living in small Central Valley towns, drive long distances to load up on bottled water for everyday basics. It’s shameful that in a state this rich, people still have to share shower water and schools have to plug up their drinking fountains. Thanks to overdue political attention, legislative horse trading and a dose of budget legerdemain, that situation is finally changing. Gov. Gavin Newsom showcased the final step with a bill signing in the aptly named hamlet of Tombstone in Fresno County.
California’s governor on Wednesday signed a law that will take up to $130 million of state money each year that was supposed to clean up the air and instead use it to clean up drinking water. Despite its status as the world’s fifth largest economy, California has struggled to provide the basic service of clean tap water to more than 1 million of its residents. The problem is most acute in the Central Valley, the heart of the state’s $20 billion agriculture industry, where large farms have polluted water sources for mostly rural communities.
The California Senate on Monday sent legislation to Gov Gavin Newsom’s desk that will spend $130 million a year over the next decade to improve drinking water for about a million people.
The California State Assembly has approved a bill that would spend up to $130 million a year to improve drinking water.
About a million people in California don’t have access to clean drinking water. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a tax on residential water bills to fix that. But lawmakers rejected it.
In Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first State of the State address, he urged every Californian to muster the political will to address a problem he called “a moral disgrace and … a medical emergency.” He was talking about California’s water. An estimated 1 million people across the state have unhealthy water pouring from their taps, with regions like the San Joaquin Valley especially impacted. Governor Newsom’s so-called “water tax” would have taxed residential water customers and certain agricultural industries to fund solutions to this problem for low-income communities. That plan didn’t make it through budget negotiations. The same budget talks produced a different solution: to spend $130 million a year from California’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund on the water infrastructure problem.
It’s a mistake nearly every farmer has made when something breaks down on the farm. You try to patch it up as best you can. And then you do it again. And then maybe again before you finally decide to stop throwing good money after bad and actually fix what’s wrong.
An inmate’s death in Stockton from Legionnaires’ disease marks the third time in four years the rare form of pneumonia has struck California’s state prisons – and has laid bare a history of contamination and other problems plaguing water supplies in the corrections system. Incidents of tainted water have spawned inmate lawsuits, expensive repairs, hefty bills for bottled water and fines, putting a multimillion-dollar burden on the taxpayer-funded corrections system, according to documents and court records reviewed by McClatchy. Now the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which oversees a network of 76 prisons, youth lockups and inmate firefighter camps, is dealing with a death.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
