Abstract
Statement of Problem Communities across California’s San Joaquin Valley (SJV) are experiencing a crisis in accessing safe, clean drinking water. This is due to various factors, including failing small community water systems, unregulated and untreated private domestic wells, and agricultural runoff resulting in unsafe contaminant levels of chemicals, byproducts, and naturally occurring substances. The lack of access to clean drinking water is a public health issue that threatens the health, safety, and well-being of residents of SJV. The risks associated with consuming contaminated drinking water are acute illnesses, chronic diseases such as organ failure, and various cancers. Although this water crisis exists throughout the SJV region, densely populated areas are organizing efforts to ameliorate their community from the water crisis by leveraging resources under Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and utilizing primary and secondary building blocks to build community capacity. Marginalized communities such as the low-income, rural, underprivileged, and tribal (LIRUT) regions in SJV, continue to be disproportionately affected by the water disparity. This is due largely to the population size and distance of LIRUT communities in SJV. The lack of capacity of LIRUT communities is an identified barrier that hinders the ability to ameliorate this public health water crisis. LIRUT communities are not equipped with the knowledge, skill, technical, managerial, and financial capacity to effectively plan and utilize resources and funding allocated for water infrastructure projects in LIRUT communities. This report will identify strategies to reduce the disparity in accessing safe, clean drinking water.
Analysis Across SJV, community members experience financial hardship when accessing safe drinking water and report purchasing bottled water for cooking and personal hygiene, compounded with paying for the delivery of household water that is not potable. LIRUT communities are at a significantly higher risk of exposure to high concentrations of chemicals such as arsenic, nitrate, and other emerging contaminates due to inadequate infrastructure and private domestic wells that are not monitored, treated, or maintained by governmental agencies or the owner due to exemption. Non-compliant small community water systems in more densely populated regions are being addressed by joining multiple small community water systems to create a larger water system that is more manageable and can be monitored and treated per the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory guidelines and enforced at the state and local levels. Access to safe, clean drinking water assures the public’s safety, and this right is protected under the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. Although joining small water systems is effective in more populated regions, challenges remain in LIRUT communities as distance between residents adversely impacts the ability to plan, build, and maintain reliable water infrastructures.
Intervention Proposal To provide immediate assistance and protect LIRUT households from contaminated and unsafe drinking water, the intervention proposed is the “Water Counts” pilot program aimed at improving access to drinking water among LIRUT communities. The Water Counts pilot program will provide LIRUT communities in SJV with water educational workshops, water quality test kits, and water filtration devices to make household water supply safe and usable before it meets the end user. The Water Counts pilot program is a 9-month intervention that provides LIRUT communities with educational workshops on safe drinking water and offers free water filtration devices to residents to remove excessive unsafe contaminates to improve water quality. The program will also assist in helping to identify and accessing primary and secondary building blocks essential for building community capacity.
Program participants will have the knowledge and tools needed to immediately improve access to safe, clean drinking water in their homes. This program is designed to take place in a school setting. It will involve partnering with K–12 school districts in SJV as well as non-profit organizations and state and federal agencies whose interest is to fight environmental justice, improve safe drinking water, and identify resources and grants available to fund community water projects. The Water Counts pilot program aims to promote health and safety in the community by focusing on ways for leaders, organizations, community members, and schools to collaborate to build healthy communities. For health promotion efforts, this program will use health education and environmental change strategies to meet the program’s objectives.
Methods and Evaluation The Water Counts pilot program will use a non-experimental design with non- randomized sampling in a controlled environment. The target audience participating in the pilot program are SJV’s LIRUT communities; with priority given to underprivileged and underdeveloped areas lacking infrastructure whose neighboring communities and water systems are spread miles apart. Key components in ameliorating this water disparity include establishing a partnership with state and federal environmental protection agencies and California’s water boards, securing funding, and community involvement, which also includes mapping community capacity. To meet the goals and objectives of the program, the Water Counts pilot program’s intervention will consist of a health education strategy and an environmental change strategy to help improve the water quality in the homes of SJV’s LIRUT communities. The health education strategy consists of micro-workshops as well as a pre-intervention survey and post-intervention survey to measure the change. The environmental change strategy entails removing the financial barriers by providing a free water filtration device and water quality test kits. The pilot program will conclude with an informative and summative “outcome” evaluation to report the success and effectiveness of the program.
Conclusion LIRUT communities need technical, managerial, or financial capacity to draw external resources into their communities to help address complex issues such as water infrastructure and treatment facilities. Without these components, this disparity will continue to exist. Equally, active community participation is imperative to ameliorate access to clean to safe clean drinking water. The Water Counts pilot program will provide the tools and skills necessary for individuals and community members to closely monitor their drinking water to ensure that it is safe for consumption until a sustainable long-term solution is implemented.