猫咪社区

On the dusty outskirts of Bakersfield, California, Rosa Perez and her family are living without a basic housing amenity鈥攃lean 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.

Two years ago, a neighbor knocked on the family鈥檚 door in the small town of Fuller Acres. The drinking water supply was contaminated, the neighbor said. Didn鈥檛 they get the notice?

They may have gotten it, but they couldn鈥檛 read it. Perez and her husband speak Spanish, and the notices the water company sent, alerting them to the carcinogen in their water, wsere in English. The couple immediately switched to using bottled water for themselves and their two school-age children. But Perez still worries what many years of consuming the tap water might have done to her family鈥檚 health.

鈥淲hat if my kids get sick?鈥� she said, sitting inside her modest three-bedroom home on a recent afternoon, a half-opened pack of bottled water behind her on a nearby chair.

Fuller Acres鈥� water contains 1,2,3-Trichloropropane, known as 1,2,3-TCP, a byproduct of agricultural soil fumigants used extensively across the Central Valley from the 1940s through the 1980s. Experts say the chemical is highly carcinogenic, even at low levels. Although there is no research on humans, studies have shown that mice who consumed or inhaled the chemical developed tumors in multiple organs, including the liver, stomach, and kidneys. California began regulating the chemical in 2017, setting the allowable limit for its presence in drinking water at the tiniest detectable amount, or 5 parts per trillion鈥攁 testament to its toxicity. Fuller Acres鈥� water has consistently tested at around 15 parts per trillion since 2018, when the state began requiring water companies to monitor for the chemical. It鈥檚 one of almost 400 public water systems in California with 1,2,3-TCP levels above the legal limit.

Water contamination, including with cancer-causing chemicals like 1,2,3-TCP, is a problem for millions of people across the United States, according to the . Low-income communities of color, such as Fuller Acres, are . Because of decades of environmental racism, these communities are often also exposed to polluted air, oil, and gas production or toxic-waste sites鈥攅xacerbating the potential impact of water contamination. Although California has set high standards for controlling some chemicals in water, including 1,2,3-TCP, actual enforcement and removal of contaminants is generally slow and frequently stymied by high treatment costs and antiquated water infrastructure. Meanwhile, polluters rarely have to answer for the health impacts their actions may have caused.

鈥淭his Notice Contains Very Important Information鈥�

In Fuller Acres, community members and advocates said water officials should be doing more to warn people about the presence of 1,2,3-TCP. Given the chemical鈥檚 long history of local use in agriculture and its tendency to seep into groundwater, residents in Fuller Acres and many other communities in the Central Valley have likely been ingesting the contaminant for decades, long before the state began regulating it. 

Almost 80% of residents in Fuller Acres are Latino, but the water company did not send out information about 1,2,3-TCP in Spanish. Instead, the notices had a sentence in Spanish at the top saying, 鈥淭his notice contains very important information about your drinking water. Please speak with someone who can translate it.鈥� Fuller Acres Mutual Water Company director Everett McGhee said the notices were based on templates provided by the state, and that he and the water billing manager do not speak Spanish or have the ability to translate the notices themselves.

Officials with the state water board鈥檚 Division of Drinking Water confirmed that the sentence in Spanish is all the district needs for these types of notices under current regulations.

But Bryan Osorio, a community solutions advocate with the nonprofit , said the state鈥檚 noticing requirements for Spanish speakers fall short of what residents need to understand their water situation. He works in other small, primarily Spanish-speaking communities in the Central Valley that have water contamination and frequently meets residents who don鈥檛 know there鈥檚 a problem with the water. Many are also unaware of other related issues, such as the availability of free well water testing and bottled water programs in some communities, because they don鈥檛 get notified in Spanish about those either. And many small districts are too stretched or lack the capacity to provide translation when it鈥檚 needed.

Not providing translated information shifts the burden onto residents, who often 鈥渄on鈥檛 know why they should (seek out translation) if they can鈥檛 understand what the main message is,鈥� Osario said.

To ensure people have equitable access to information about their water supply, the state should require districts to provide full translations of the notices in Spanish, he said. The state also needs to invest in outreach to non-English speakers in general.

鈥淚t鈥檚 just incredible to see how neglected, how overlooked communities of color and non-English-speaking communities are because of the lack of capacity at the local level and, in this case, the regional or state level with the minimal requirements,鈥� Osario said.

鈥淚 think it鈥檚 a matter of how we prioritize disadvantaged communities. Something that advocates have been pushing for years is, how do we make government more inclusive? How do we make agencies more inclusive to the communities that they鈥檙e trying to represent?鈥�

California requires translations of many other types of notices, such as health care documents, when the agencies sending them receive federal or state funds and a certain threshold of the recipients speak the same language. For example, for the state鈥檚 low-income health program, known as Medi-Cal, notices must be translated when at least 5% of recipients speak a language other than English, or if at least 3,000 people speak that language.

Human Consequences

Residents said they鈥檙e also frustrated with the slow pace of efforts to clean up the community鈥檚 water. The California State Water Resources Control Board has been sending Fuller Acres violation notices since 2018, and it gave the district a deadline of May 2021 to get the water into compliance. But the deadline came and went, and the water is still contaminated. The state can fine water districts for not meeting these deadlines, but Tricia Wathen, Central California section chief for the state water board鈥檚 Division of Drinking Water, said there are no plans to fine Fuller Acres, because the district is making an effort to resolve the problem.

A notice the water company sent to customers in July estimated it would be another three years before the problem is resolved. McGhee blamed state regulators for the slow progress. He said Fuller Acres has been trying to get a state construction permit to install filters and additional funding to help pay for the work, but the process is time-consuming. The state has also proposed that Fuller Acres consolidate water operations with the nearby town of Lamont, adding to the holdup, he said.

Wathen said these types of infrastructure projects are complicated and take time. 鈥淚 think a lot of times, people think, 鈥極h, well, let鈥檚 just put in treatment. It should take two months,鈥欌�� she said. 鈥淛ust to plan it, design it, go out to bid and do construction, that鈥檚 a year and a half, and that鈥檚 assuming you have the funding and everything else worked out.鈥�

The slowness has human consequences. While the state and local water board officials work on the problem on their computers and in meeting rooms, many residents of Fuller Acres are drinking the water, showering with it, and using it to cook meals for their families.

Was It the Water?

On a recent November afternoon, a group of neighbors gathered at the home of Alberto and Maria Dolores Martinez, two retired farmworkers who harvested grapes, to discuss their concerns about Fuller Acres鈥� water. In recent months, they鈥檇 been trying to pressure the Fuller Acres Mutual Water Company to get the water cleaned up and to inform people about the risks of drinking it. Speaking in Spanish, the group quickly tallied eight residents in the vicinity who were sick from cancer or had died of cancer. They included two neighbors in a house up the street, the wife of a friend, and someone鈥檚 mother. Most cases were stomach cancer.

鈥淚t worries me,鈥� Luis Gomez said. 鈥淲hat if I get sick?鈥�

鈥淚 worry all the time,鈥� Maria Martinez added. 鈥淪ometimes I worry even bathing in it.鈥�

Nicanor Guillen talked about how his wife had died of stomach cancer at 36 years old, leaving behind five school-age children. His oldest daughter also got cancer at age 11, he said. The daughter survived but spent most of high school getting treatment for a tumor in her leg.

Around 2011, a salesperson for water filters tested his tap water and informed him it was contaminated.

鈥淲e drank it for years,鈥� Guillen said in Spanish. 鈥淲e never got a letter to say we couldn鈥檛. We used it for everything. My mind immediately went to the death of my wife. I wondered if she got cancer because she was drinking the water. I felt bad. Maybe the enemy was right here in my house all along.鈥�

Emma de la Rosa, a community organizer with the nonprofit , said public health officials should take heed of residents鈥� health concerns, perhaps by conducting a study to find out if cancer rates in Fuller Acres are above the norm.

Levels of 1,2,3-TCP in Fuller Acres鈥� two water wells are about three times California鈥檚 allowable limit. At that amount, no one is going to get sick from drinking a glass or two, said Paul Tratnyek, a professor at the Institute of Environmental Health at Oregon Health & Science University and an expert on the chemical. The problem with 1,2,3-TCP is that it doesn鈥檛 break down, so once it鈥檚 in the groundwater, it stays there indefinitely. When people drink that water over time, even if the amount is very small, their risk of getting cancer increases, he said. That鈥檚 because the chemical is thought to slowly damage DNA.

Not everyone will fall ill after being regularly exposed to the chemical, Tratnyek said, but it does mean that 鈥渟ome people lost some family members when they shouldn鈥檛 have.鈥�

Fuller Acres Mutual Water Company notices tell people they can still drink the water鈥攖hat it鈥檚 only a problem if people drink it over 鈥渕any years.鈥� Notices don鈥檛 specify how many. Wathen, of the state water board, said 1,2,3-TCP can also be inhaled in shower water vapor, albeit at lower amounts. She advised people to have a window open or other type of ventilation while showering.

Getting 1,2,3-TCP out of drinking water is difficult and expensive. Communities throughout the Central Valley, including Fuller Acres, have sued Dow and Shell, the companies allegedly responsible for putting the chemical in fumigants and selling it to farmers. Although the companies deny any wrongdoing, they鈥檝e settled dozens of lawsuits over the matter, paying out millions to local water systems to install filtration systems, including an undisclosed amount to Fuller Acres in late 2019.

There have been no payouts or apologies to residents for their likely exposure to the carcinogen for decades and for what it may have done to their health.

Even with the settlements, many water systems, including Fuller Acres鈥�, don鈥檛 have enough funds to cover maintaining and operating treatment systems over the long haul, and the state does not fund the long-term costs. Many are also grappling with crumbling water infrastructure, an unrelated but also expensive problem that has complicated efforts to get 1,2,3-TCP treatment filters installed.

Consumer water filters that use activated carbon, such as Brita pitchers, may remove some of the 1,2,3-TCP in drinking water, but that hasn鈥檛 been quantified yet, said University of California, Merced, environmental systems researcher Hope Hauptman. Reverse osmosis units likely wouldn鈥檛, because volatile organic compounds pass through the membrane, she added.

Washen said the state does sometimes provide funding to districts to provide point-of-use filters to all customers as an interim measure if their water contains certain contaminants that don鈥檛 evaporate, such as arsenic. But completely removing the threat of 1,2,3-TCP would require a whole-house filtration system so it鈥檚 removed from shower water as well, and there is no state funding for that.

A Few Points Short of 鈥淗azardous鈥� for Everyone

Attributing cancer to a particular cause is notoriously difficult. Aside from the contaminated water, Fuller Acres鈥� approximately 600 residents are hemmed in by traffic, agriculture, and heavy industry. A giant oil refinery sits across the street from the community. Abandoned oil wells dot the landscape. Trucks blast fumes into people鈥檚 homes as they travel along State Route 184, which borders the community. Pesticides from nearby almond orchards and grape fields routinely drift into homes, residents said, and because many people are farmworkers, they鈥檙e also exposed to pesticides at work. A lack of sidewalks means dust and dirt accumulate along the sides of the road and get kicked up by the wind and into people鈥檚 lungs.

On the day the California Health Report visited the community in November, a heavy smog coated the landscape, rendering the skyline invisible beyond about a half-mile. The forecast for the day was 鈥渉aze.鈥� The air quality was 鈥渦nhealthy for sensitive groups,鈥� a few index points short of 鈥渉azardous鈥� for everyone. The air smelled of diesel and manure. Residents said it was a typical day.

The preponderance of contaminants in the Central Valley make it virtually impossible to tease apart the extent to which individual chemicals like 1,2,3-TCP are responsible for ill health effects, said Colleen Naughton, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at UC Merced. There鈥檚 also a lack of community-specific health data that鈥檚 accessible to the public. Many residents, some of whom are undocumented immigrants, also don鈥檛 have access to health care.

Still, Naughton and one of her graduate students recently tried to assess the cancer risk posed by another common Central Valley water contaminant鈥攏itrates. They found that people living in low-income communities with nitrates in the water suffered .

Naughton said she鈥檇 like to study the correlation between cancers and 1,2,3-TCP next, although funding for that type of complex research is limited. In the meantime, she and Hauptman have to adopt the same 1,2,3-TCP regulations as California. The chemical has been detected in groundwater in other states, including Florida, Hawai鈥榠, North Carolina, and New Mexico. There is currently no federal limit for 1,2,3-TCP in drinking water.

Hauptman said residents want and deserve to know what chemicals like 1,2,3-TCP are doing to their health. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the first thing people ask,鈥� she said.

It may be challenging to come up with a firm conclusion, but Hauptman thinks 鈥測ou could probably find patterns if you look at enough data points.鈥�

Allowing the links between water contaminants and health consequences to remain vague benefits polluters, Tratnyek said.

鈥淭here鈥檚 no way the community can really pin that down in a specific, smoking gun kind of sense,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd the chemical companies are very good at arguing that you can鈥檛 prove that.鈥�

鈥淭alk Is Easy鈥�

Many Fuller Acres residents see the 1,2,3-TCP problem as a symptom of a bigger problem. Again and again, residents expressed frustration at what they see as political disregard from officials for small, low-income farmworker communities like theirs, where the median household income is less than $33,000 a year and many residents are undocumented immigrants.

For example, local officials in 2019 from fully complying with a new state air quality rule, including the Kern Oil & Refining Co. across the road from Fuller Acres, which processes 25,000 barrels of crude oil a day. The state says it鈥檚 trying to address environmental inequities, including by identifying communities disproportionately impacted by pollution using a pioneering screening tool. In the case of the four refineries, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and environmental groups used that tool to successfully sue San Joaquin Valley air regulators, forcing them to rewrite the rules.

But when it comes to protecting low-income people from water contaminants, there doesn鈥檛 seem to be much urgency, Fuller Acres residents said. McGhee, though not personally concerned about 1,2,3-TCP being a health problem, said he鈥檚 frustrated that the state hasn鈥檛 provided the community with money to help clean up the water.

鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of money that the state says they have to give to these low-income communities, but we haven鈥檛 seen any of it,鈥� he said. 鈥淭alk is easy, but coming up with the cash is something else.鈥�

Pablo Trevino, a Fuller Acres Mutual Water Company鈥檚 board member, said the organization is doing its best to fix the 1,2,3-TCP problem. Thanks to the settlement, the company has enough money to install filtration and maintain it for 10 years, he said, although it鈥檚 unclear how the water district will pay for maintenance after that. He said the district is fighting the state鈥檚 proposal to consolidate with Lamont, because it fears that would raise rates for customers and take even longer than installing filtration itself.

Karen Nishimoto, a senior water engineer with California鈥檚 water board, said the state is working with the community to come up with a solution that is sustainable over the long term. The state can force consolidation if necessary, she said.

Organizer de la Rosa said state leaders need to improve their oversight of small, mutual water companies like Fuller Acres to ensure they properly inform community members about contaminants and the risks to their health and operate with transparency. Residents need to have the opportunity to participate in board meetings, elect board members they trust, and receive information about their water in Spanish.

Lawmakers need to figure out better ways to balance the interests of industry with protecting people鈥檚 health, said Angel Fernandez-Bou, an environmental engineer who collaborates with the Union of Concerned Scientists on clean water issues. Figuring out cleaner ways to farm, produce energy, and create jobs is particularly urgent in the era of climate change, which is exacerbating problems of pollution and access to clean water. According to clean water advocates, there are still dozens of potentially harmful contaminants making their way into water across the United States that are not being regulated or adequately studied.

鈥淚f we want to solve the problem, we should have everyone on board and invested to do what鈥檚 best for everyone, not just for a few people,鈥� Fernandez-Bou said.

Perez, meanwhile, worries that other community members still don鈥檛 know their water is contaminated, including those who couldn鈥檛 read the notice in English and didn鈥檛 have a neighbor knock on their door. And she feels for the farmworker families who can鈥檛 afford bottled water, even though they know the tap water could slowly be harming their health.

鈥淚t鈥檚 like we鈥檙e forgotten,鈥� she said.

This piece was produced by the and is part of a collaboration that includes the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism, Circle of Blue, Colorado Public Radio, Columbia Insight, The Counter, High Country News, New Mexico In Depth, and SJV Water. The project was made possible by a grant from the Water Foundation with additional support from INN. For earlier stories in the Tapped Out series, click .