Photo retrieved from: www.alternet.org
“The struggle to find clean drinking water has become a way of life for the residents of East Orosi. But they’re not alone. Like a growing number of California’s poor people, they’re paying for water that’s not fit to drink.
One in 10 Californians in two major agricultural regions pays high rates for well water that’s laced with nitrates, pesticides and other pollutants. Most are low-income Latinos; many speak only Spanish.
Public health researcher Carolina Balazs suspected that nitrate-tainted water was an environmental justice problem, so she examined the contamination along with income and ethnicity in small public water systems in eight counties of the San Joaquin Valley.
She found that nearly 5,200 people had drinking water that exceeded federal nitrate standards, and half were Latino. Another 449,000, more than 40 percent Latino, had medium levels that ranged from just under the limit to half the maximum allowed.”
Read more: Alternet
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