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Welcome to the archives of Water Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on November 1, 2018, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on water resilience. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors and contributors.
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Water Deeply’s Toxic Taps series looks at the root causes of the safe drinking water crisis in California, how communities are organizing for change and what more needs to be done. We meet families who have had to choose between buying shoes for their children and buying bottled water.
In our last video in the ‘Toxic Taps’ series, we visit Southern California’s Imperial Valley, where thousands of rural residents rely on untreated water used to irrigate crops.
Many mobile home parks in the eastern Coachella Valley do not meet health and safety codes. In the latest ‘Toxic Taps’ video, we look at what’s being done to fix water and sanitation problems and improve living conditions.
A sprawl of mobile home parks house 10,000 people in Southern California’s Coachella Valley, but their drinking water is chronically contaminated. Now some solutions are in sight.
This year a court invalidated a regulation protecting Californians’ drinking water from contamination by chromium-6, a carcinogen. The latest ‘Toxic Taps’ video looks at why, what the public health implications are and what happens next.
In the Imperial Valley, nearly 3,000 homes are dependent on raw canal water for showering, washing and other household uses. State regulators sanction the arrangement, but others are concerned about health risks.
The state has a long-term plan to clean up nitrate-contaminated groundwater, but farmers say more research is still needed and environmental groups think the proposal isn’t strong enough.
In the fifth video in our “Toxic Taps” series, we talk with José Gurrola, the 23-year-old mayor of Arvin, California, about the town’s fight for clean water.
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.
In the fourth video in our “Toxic Taps” series, we explain what happens now that California has finally regulated a carcinogen, 1,2,3-trichloropropane, that has been contaminating groundwater for decades.
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.
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.
In the third video in our “Toxic Taps” series, we traveled to Sacramento, where San Joaquin Valley residents rallied to support Senate Bill 623, which would create a fund to clean toxic drinking water sources.
Agriculture and environmental justice advocates are supporting legislation to create a fund for clean drinking water projects. But disputes over key components of the bill could derail it.
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.
Small, cash-strapped water districts don’t have the financial, political or technological resources to treat some of the United States’ most contaminated drinking water.
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.
In the second video in our “Toxic Taps” series, we meet residents of San Joaquin Valley towns struggling with contaminated drinking water from community water systems and private wells.
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.
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.
In the first video of our “Toxic Taps” series, we hear from the people who are running small water systems in the San Joaquin Valley and the challenges they face treating contaminated water with limited resources.
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