Its an injustice: Shrinking state funds could slow fixes for Californians with toxic water

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In a neighborhood flanked by grapevines and orange groves on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, people cannot drink the water from their faucets because it’s contaminated.Residents in the area north of Porterville, many of them farmworkers, have been discussing a solution, which they expect will require running pipes to connect to the nearby city system.

But the clean water program that has been one of Gov.Gavin Newsom’s major initiatives, bringing solutions like these, is significantly cut in his latest proposed budget.

Residents here are worried this could slow the effort to bring them clean water.“I hope they help us,” said Paula Fernández, a resident who lugs gallon bottles of water for drinking and cooking.

“I hope this gets resolved because we need it.” Clean water advocacy groups say recent changes to California’s “cap-and-invest” climate program could mean less help in the coming years for hundreds of thousands of people who live with contaminated water.Newsom’s latest proposed budget estimates that the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund will provide about half of what it provided last year for the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund — $68 million compared with $130 million.The Senate’s latest budget proposal, however, would reinstate full funding.The Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund is a primary funding source for the state’s SAFER drinking water program, which pays for long-term solutions such as drilling wells or connecting pipes to a nearby community, as well as interim solutions such as paying for deliveries of bottled water and water tanker trucks to fill household tanks.“If we only get the $68 million, it significantly puts at risk sustained funding for these projects,” said Kelsey Hinton, policy director for the nonprofit Community Water Center.

“We are at risk of slowing down or stopping momentum on safe wa...