A new study identifies those San Joaquin Valley residents without access to drinking water, but a solution may be close at hand.
Hundreds of thousands residents in the San Joaquin Valley lack access to clean drinking water. This is especially common in unincorporated communities categorized as disadvantaged, which are also overwhelmingly Hispanic.
When Jonathan London and his colleagues looked at where these communities are located, they found something surprising. London is a professor with the UC Davis Center for Regional Change and the lead author on the new report.
"We found that the majority of those, about 66 percent of those residents, actually live within one mile of a water system that could provide them safe drinking water," he says.
But London says connecting those water systems, a process called consolidation, is expensive, and there’s not always political support for disadvantaged unincorporated communities, or DUCs.
"In some cases the counties and incorporated cities have not wanted to include those DUCs within their investments," he says.
London suggests mandating consolidations under a law signed in 2015, or supporting a new bill that would create a statewide drinking water fund.
