Water bottles ease woes

Families welcome supply

REBECCA PLEVIN/Vida en el Valle

(Published Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 02:18PM)

MONSON -- Once her husband is paid on Saturdays for his labor in the San Joaquín Valley fields, Judy Hernández takes a portion of his paycheck and buys three cases of bottled water for their family of five.

She has no choice. In Monson, an unincorporated Tulare County community of about 52 homes located near Dinuba, residents rely on private wells that are heavily contaminated with nitrates.

So Hernández was thankful last Friday morning when she received four boxes, each filled with six plastic gallons of water, through a water distribution organized by the Community Water Center, the Tulare County food bank FoodLink and Feeding América.

With the money she saved, she said, "we could buy other things, like food."

Hernández and her family were one of over 200 Tulare County households that benefitted from the water distribution last Friday morning. Residents of East Orosi and Seville -- small, rural communities that also have a history of water contamination -- also received a basic supply of bottled water that day.

Through August, distributions are expected to occur in at least 15 more communities with unsafe drinking water in Tulare County.

The 24 gallons of water each family is receiving through the donation is a very short-term solution to a long-term problem, said María Herrera, community outreach coordinator for the Community Water Center.

For residents of these communities -- who have lived for years with contaminated drinking water -- the donated bottled water might last just one, or two, or four weeks, she said.

Herrera acknowledged that the distribution events help to raise awareness of the lack of safe drinking water in many of the Valley's rural, lower-income communities, and serve as opportunities to distribute to residents information about nitrates and water filtration systems.

In the San Joaquín Valley, more than 326,700 people were served water with levels of contamination over legal limits in 2006, according to the Community Water Center.

Still, as she watched families pull their cars and trucks into the parking lot of the Monson Market, and load them with boxes of water, Herrera said the water distribution was a bittersweet event. "I shouldn't have to be doing this in California," she said. "It's kind of unreal."

A few hours later, Ana Velasquez waited in line for her boxes of water outside of Stone Corral Elementary School in Seville, a Tulare County community of about 300 people, located northeast of Visalia. The water in Seville is contaminated with nitrates and bacteria, and is often filthy with dirt and sand.

Every three days, Velasquez -- who was recently laid off from her job as a custodian at a Head Start program -- spends about $5 buying three or four gallons of water for herself and her three children. During the hot summer, she and her children consume, and therefore purchase, even more water.

Many families in the Valley spend up to 10 percent of their income on the combined costs of bottled and tap water, though the Environmental Protection Agency recommends that no more than one percent of a family's income go toward water.

"This is a huge help," Velasquez said in Spanish. After the last box of bottled water had been claimed in Seville, Laurel Firestone, co-executive director of the Community Water Center, said she was glad the water distribution could benefit the communities most in need.