Officials are preparing for yet another critical water year in California as the state – along with most of the American west – remains mired in drought.
On the dusty outskirts of Bakersfield, Rosa Perez and her family are living without a basic housing amenity — clean water. Though they pay the water bill each month, what comes out of the taps is laced with a chemical that California admits could make the family of four more likely to develop cancer. Perez, 43, would rather spend some of her meager farmworker income on bottled water than see that come to pass.
Global school closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic affect up to 1.6 billion children and present an unprecedented risk to their education and wellbeing.
President Donald Trump has been an eager fighter in California’s water wars. As a presidential candidate, he vowed to bring more water to San Joaquin Valley farmers during a rally in Fresno.
The vibrancy with which the planet has rebounded to the global lockdowns (covering half the world’s population), has revealed how resilient wildlife is, and how quickly nature can recover if given a break.
As Californians shelter at home amid the COVID-19 outbreak, an estimated 1 million of them lack access to clean drinking water, largely in rural parts of the state.
Wastewater-based epidemiology might be an effective way to track the disease in a particular population since the deadly novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was found in the feces of those who tested positive.
Sanitizing is on everyone's mind these days because of the coronavirus pandemic, but don't flush those disinfecting wipes and paper towels down the toilet.
Young adults free of diabetes and cardiovascular disease developed heart damage after only five years of exposure to low-to-moderate levels of arsenic commonly found in groundwater.
Water is incredibly, astonishingly precious. Water allows us to stay hydrated and quench our thirst. Water allows us to clean our bodies and maintain proper hygiene.
California authorities are addressing the problem of lead in drinking water at public schools through a statewide program to test pipes and upgrade plumbing, but experts warn the threat goes well beyond schools
New laboratory test commissioned by EWG have for the first time found the toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS in the dirnking wáter of dozens of U.S. cities, including major metropolitian areas
New California testing guidelines that take effect this month are expected to reveal widespread groundwater contamination from the chemicals associated with Teflon.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency validated new testing methods Thursday to measure the presence of widespread contaminates called PFAS in the nation's drinking water.
States in the U.S. West that have agreed to begin taking less water next month from the drought-stricken Colorado River got praise and a push for more action Thursday from the nation’s top water official.
When it comes to access to safe potable water, “race is still the strongest determinant," according to a recent report that found that more than 2 million people in the U.S. and Puerto Rico don't have access to running water and basic indoor plumbing.
Most Americans don't think twice about drinking a glass of water. A report released Wednesday, though, found more than 270 harmful contaminants in local drinking water across the nation, including California.
It was a Sunday tradition at Bethany Slavic Missionary Church. After morning services, Florin Ciuriuc joined the line of worshipers waiting to fill their jugs with gallons of free drinking water from a well on the property, a practice church leaders had encouraged.
Nearly 300 wells and other sources of drinking water across California contain toxic chemicals linked to cancer, developmental issues in infants, and harm to the liver and immune system.
Race bears the strongest relationship to slow and ineffective enforcement of the federal drinking water law in communities across the nation, according to a new report released today.
Wells of nearly two dozen Southern California water agencies have reportable levels of PFAS, a chemical family increasingly linked to cancer, liver and kidney damage, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, low fertility, low birth weight and ulcerative colitis.
This summer, we reported that one out of five California schools found detectable levels of lead in drinking water, but we also told you, hundreds of schools still hadn’t reported the required lead test results.
The United States boasts some of the cleanest tap water in the world thanks to a slate of laws — notably the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 —sthat set standards for permissible levels of pollution.
A study from the nonprofit Environmental Working Group found that contaminants in US drinking water could lead to nearly 100,000 cases of cancer among people who drink it for a lifetime.
As North Carolina continues to recover from the devastation and flooding caused by Hurricane Florence, many residents lack access to clean drinking water.
Prior to Hurricane Florence’s arrival in the Carolinas, concerns were raised about the environmental and health risks of the storm. There was fear that torrential rain may flood power plants, industrial sites or animal-manure lagoons, causing toxic waste to threaten drinking water.
Freshwater is crucial for drinking, washing, growing food, producing energy and just about every other aspect of modern life. Yet more than 2 billion of Earth’s 7.6 billion inhabitants lack clean drinking water at home, available on demand.
Only 43 percent of school districts in the United States test for lead in drinking water used by students in 2016 or 2017, according to a federal government report released Tuesday.
Lead contamination in our schools is more pervasive than previously thought, according to water testing data from 20 states published in a national interactive map by Environment America and U.S. PIRG.
Droughts have been making headlines across the world in recent years, from the California water crisis to Cape Town’s severe water shortage, and research suggests 25 percent of the globe could eventually be left in permanent drought due to climate change. But what if you could simply pull water from the air?
Wildfires can contaminate nearby streams and watersheds through mobilization of sediments, nutrients and dissolved organic matter, straining the capabilities of downstream municipal treatment facilities, a new report co-authored by CU Boulder researchers shows.
Bottled water beats out soda as the best-selling U.S. beverage, but that popularity spotlights the environmental costs of so many plastic bottles being used once and then tossed aside.
Cristobal Chavez has every reason to believe that for 11 years, he and his family were drinking water containing four times the legal limit of nitrate, a possible carcinogen. He moved to his current residence – a 20-acre ranch in rural Tulare County, a few miles outside the town of Porterville, California, – in 2003. In 2014, he had his well tested, and a lab analysis revealed that the water was essentially undrinkable.
The Environmental Justice Working Group released a series of recommendations to support more fair and inclusive management of California’s public lands and waters. The recommendations call on the California State Lands Commission to honor the relationship of Indigenous Peoples to state lands, help accelerate a just transition to clean energy, and help reduce the impact transportation and commercial activities have on low-income communities and people of color.
All people should have access to clean, safe drinking water. A big obstacle in the U.S. is the infrastructure that carries the water. DYK: The U.S. received a “D” grade for its drinking water infrastructure based on the 2017 Infrastructure Report Card.
Half a million lead water pipes would have to be replaced in Michigan under the new drinking water rules scheduled to take effect in June. The project is expected to cost $2.5 billion.
After testing more than 250 bottles of water from nine countries including China, USA, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Mexico, Thailand, and Germany, researchers from State University of New York found tiny pieces of plastic in the water in 93 out of every 100 of the bottles. Effects on human health are unknown at this time.
The global use of antibiotics is growing, driven by a number of developing countries that face more antibiotic-resistant infections. University of Oxford’s Abhilasha Karkey explains the link between antibiotic use and having access to clean water.
The irony of our “blue planet” is that most water on Earth is unusable to humanity. Fresh water — which is essential for life and needed for agriculture, industry, and society — makes up less than 3 percent of the total water on Earth; and only 0.03 percent is easily accessible in lakes, rivers, and swamps. As the human population continues to grow, it puts an even greater strain on the amount of fresh water available per person.
While it's not the responsibility of plants to clean up the mess we humans seem to make of the planet, it is certainly kind of them to show us how it's done. The latest plant to offer an assist in environmental clean-up looks to be Warnstofia fluitans, otherwise known as floating hook moss.
A new report from the Environmental Working Group reveals that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is failing to enforce a key farm bill provision, with dire consequences for drinking water in the Midwest.
World Water Day, on 22 March every year, is about focusing attention on the importance of water. This year’s theme, ‘Nature for Water’, explores nature-based solutions (NBS) to the water challenges we face in the 21st century.
Some 3 in 10 people worldwide, or 2.1 billion, lack access to safe, readily available water at home, and 6 in 10, or 4.5 billion, lack safely managed sanitation, according to a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF.
Most of us take for granted our ability to turn on the tap and drink the water that flows from it. More than 1 million Californians, however, cannot take this basic human right for granted. Their water is not safe to drink and, in some cases, may not be safe for any household use. Instead they have to spend thousands of dollars a year on bottled water—dollars that residents of the impoverished communities most impacted by this problem don’t likely have. Flint, Michigan may have brought a national spotlight to water issues, but many low-income families have been living with the lack of safe water for years.
While President Trump and his California resistors dominate the spotlight, a little outfit without much pizazz is trying to draw state government’s attention to sickening drinking water in the San Joaquin Valley.
The Trump administration's new infrastructure plan aims to ease regulatory checks on US waterways. The administration says this will help fast-track more building projects and reduce permit delays. But some water experts are worried that it could put some of the country's most fragile drinking water systems at risk, and put the expensive burden of water cleanup onto cities.
Despite a lack of VC funds, there’s a steady flow of entrepreneurs. The entrepreneur started investing in water tech startups a few years ago. A small fraction of venture capital dollars currently goes into tech to manage or clean water.
More than 2.3 million Puerto Rican residents were served by water systems which drew at least one sample testing positive for total coliforms or E. coli after Maria devastated the island in September.
An innovative project would see seven Tulare County towns plagued by polluted wells sharing a water treatment plant, but political infighting stalled the proposal days before a funding deadline.
It will take decades to slow nitrate contamination in groundwater from industrial agriculture in parts of the state of California, so communities are taking matters into their own hands to get clean drinking water.
Decades after declaring 1,2,3-TCP a carcinogen, California is finally regulating the toxin. But the cost of remediation will be high and communities are turning toward litigation to pay for water treatment.
Decision time is approaching for the agencies that will have to pick up the nearly $17-billion tab for building two massive water tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the heart of the state’s water works.
East Porterville was the hardest-hit community during the drought, when nearly 1,000 people were without water. Efforts to find a long-term fix have been successful but came with a big price tag and some important lessons.
The Environmental Protection Agency has so far found perchlorate in 45 states, tainting water supplies of roughly 16 million Americans. Yet, there is no mandate that water utilities outside of California and Massachusetts test for the toxic chemical or let residents know when it’s in their tap water.
As parents, we know that our first duty is to keep our children safe. We must all do our part to make sure that drinking water at California schools is safe and healthy for our children.
Drought conditions continue for thousands of rural residents in the San Joaquin valley who rely on groundwater. And the race to dig deeper wells is a losing game for small communities and those on private wells.
Rita Sudman is longtime observer of the California water, and even led the Water Education Foundation. In 2016, she co-authored "Water: More or Less." In an interview with ABC10, Sudman talked about her book and the future of California's water policy.
More than 1 million people in the region have been exposed to unsafe drinking water in recent years from pesticides, arsenic, nitrate and uranium. And many communities also face multiple environmental health threats.
It’s too risky for tens of thousands of children in the San Joaquin Valley to drink water at their schools due to chronic contamination by chemicals, pesticides and other toxins.
Working to expand water supplies for California’s next drought, a coalition of 12 Bay Area water agencies took a significant step toward an $800 million expansion of Los Vaqueros Reservoir.
Do people only care about water during extreme drought, like California’s recent one? It turns out most Americans care a lot about water and have strong feelings on infrastructure spending and other water-related issues.
The epicenter of the state’s drinking water catastrophe is in the San Joaquin Valley, where 200,000 people have struggled to obtain clean, safe water for decades.
There is so much water in the state’s vast plumbing system that for weeks, the big government water projects have reduced exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Yet there is more room than ever in one of the state’s most capacious storage spaces: the San Joaquin Valley aquifer.
In the Central Valley of California, hundreds of wells that provide water to a million people are tainted with a chemical that some experts say is one of the most powerful cancer-causing agents in the world. The state is poised to take the first step Tuesday to regulate the substance — called 1,2,3, TCP — but test data compiled by an activist group show it's also been detected by utilities across the country.
California would be the second state, after Hawaii, to establish a threshold for the former pesticide ingredient and industrial solvent known as TCP (1,2,3-trichloropropane) in drinking water.
California has much more potential to store water underground in aquifers than in surface reservoirs. The state should be focused on this opportunity for future years, writes scientist Mohammad Safeeq.
“We’ve done a lot for this global environment, but we’ve done very little for the needs of these communities,” said Garcia, a Mexican-American who heads the Assembly Natural Resources Committee.
Tulare Lake is gone (although it makes a partial reappearance during very wet years like this one), but what the California Department of Water Resources now dubs the Tulare Lake Hydrologic Region is the most productive agricultural region in the state -- making it, by extension, the most productive agricultural region in the U.S. and probably the world.
The degree of pollution of rivers resulting from human activities is assessed using different biotic indices. The latter reflect the ecological status of a river based on the quantity and diversity of organisms selected as bioindicators, due to their ecological preferences and tolerance to pollution.
Millions of homes across the state are connected to water sources contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical called 1,2,3-Trichloropropane (TCP) and until recently, few Californians knew about it, let alone had any way to fight it.
A significant amount of the limited freshwater resources in the world are contaminated by pollutants from industry, farming, energy generation, and other human activities.
A new poll finds Americans are more concerned about their drinking water than they are about any other environmental issue. Drinking-water scares like the lead contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, appear to have had a lingering impact on Americans’ concerns with their drinking-water supplies.
As Los Angeles continues to receive more rainfall, many are advocating for the construction of storm water capture projects to maintain the region's water supply.
This article helps Californians identify their source(s) of drinking water, learn more about how drinking water is treated, and learn how to help prevent pollution of our groundwater and surface water supplies.
California is expected to set a strict state-level maximum contaminant level for a probable human carcinogen ― 28 years after the state’s Water Resources Control Board first detected the chemical in its drinking water system.
If sediment in California's dams were cleared and recycled, the state could expand water storage capacity and provide sand for beaches and spawning beds for steelhead trout.
Oroville Dam not only faces a spillage crisis, but a seismic one as well. Scientists say the filling of the reservoir could produce a damaging earthquake in a generation.