Californians have a right to safe water, yet many don’t have it. Is help on the way? | Opinion

Twelve years after California became the first state in the nation to declare a “human right to water,” achieving this basic societal goal of securing clean water for all 39 million state residents is more daunting than ever.

This is a moral imperative for one of the largest economies in the world. There is no good reason for clean, safe water to be elusive to an estimated 1.2 million Californians who get their water from failing water systems beset with financial problems and safety concerns.

But there is an undeniable reason: The state’s water system was in far worse shape than previously thought.

California needs to drill more than 55,000 new wells and fix nearly 400 failing public water systems.

The initial estimate in 2021 put the cost at about $4.6 billion. The new preliminary estimate is more than double that, at $10.6 billion.

For these and other reasons, a human right to water is more of a goal than a legal requirement that can be upheld in a California court. Yet its very existence has helped to keep one of California’s shameful resource problems in the spotlight rather than the shadows. And a lot of good work is happening to make this right quite real.

The more regulators at the State Water Resources Control Board have studied this problem, the more they and California understand what it will take for every tap and every well to provide safe, clean water.

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The problem is about far more than money. “If we got $10 billion today, we wouldn’t be able to figure this out,” said Kyle Jones, policy and legal director at the Community Water Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to this one issue. Some competent local government on the ground would have to do the necessary work. “There’s planning, there’s other kinds of work,” Jones said.

California has officially recognized this human right to water for 12 years when then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed the enabling legislation.“Every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes,” the legislation said.

Credit goes to the current governor, Gavin Newsom, and the state Legislature for making a sizable down payment toward addressing this issue. In 2019, Newsom redirected some funds annually paid by large greenhouse gas emitters to the Water Board to help fix the state’s small failing water systems. In essence, they took some money to address climate change and spent it on safe drinking water instead.

This funding stream will last for 10 years, until 2030, about $130 million each year.

“Certainly everybody knew it wasn’t going to solve all the problems,” said Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the water board’s division of drinking water. “It’s really been a learning process.”

The cost of connecting some failing systems into a larger one that is working has gone up, said Polhemus. And that original 2021 estimate didn’t even try to look beyond the public water systems and assess the failures of individual wells that are connected to no system. Drilling 55,458 new wells is estimated to cost $2.8 billion.

Who’s going to pay for all this? It depends.

Assistance to the public water systems is coming in the form of grants and loans through a patchwork of state and federal funds directed to the water board. This is what that $130 million a year is going toward. And so far, the Water Board has dispersed more than $700 million, at about twice the clip of previous years when it received some outside criticism. “I think the water board has been really successful and getting a lot of funding out the door,” Jones said.

For these new wells, particularly in the Central Valley, Jones is hoping that the agriculture industry will be a major funding source one way or another.

In the southern San Joaquin Valley, for example, proposed pumping levels in groundwater management plans could lead to nearly 12,000 wells going entirely or partially dry. If a local groundwater agency causes wells to fail, they should be collecting funds for the farmers who are causing the problem to pay for it. The regional water board has a separate program aimed at water pollution, again caused by farming in many cases from the excess application of fertilizers with nitrates. Wells tainted by pollution are candidates to be helped through this program.

“It shouldn’t fall entirely on the state to get this done,” Jones said. “I think in particular, we should be looking at more resources from the federal government on this.”

This is a rare problem in California water that has water users and environmental justice groups working in harmony together. Soren Nelson sits on a board advisory panel on behalf of the Association of California Water Agencies, which is seeking to solve as much of this problem with the funds available. “I think it’s about helping the problem in front of you,” he said. “Sometimes, (a failing water agency) is not always ready to receive the help.”

The water board is expected later this spring to estimate the financial gap between the funds available and the need, Polhemus said. Jones, meanwhile, is crossing his fingers that the state’s unresolved budget crisis will not cut off any funds, and what will happen in 2030 when that $130 million that now arrives annually from the state expires. That is “the dream that keeps me up at night,” he said.

Making the human right to water a reality in California is arguably the top financial priority for water in the state, from a perspective of fundamental fairness and decency. Yet in reality it is not, with flood control and climate change and drought and so many other needs competing for dollars. In Sacramento, too often those with the biggest need have the smallest voice.