1 million Californians use tainted water. Will state pass a clean-water tax?

Resident José Hernández uses large containers to collect rainwater for his garden at the San Jerardo Cooperative where he lives. Water that comes through the local water system is expensive, he says. (Santiago Mejia / San Francisco Chronicle)

SAN JERARDO, Monterey County — José Hernández has two plastic barrels in his front yard, filled to the brim with water collected during the recent rains. Half a dozen buckets, a trash can and a cooking pot sit close by, nearly overflowing.

It should be enough for Hernández to tend to his garden for the next few weeks — and slight relief for a water bill that sets him back $130 to $170 each month. A retired farmworker, Hernández, 64, supports his wife and two daughters primarily on a $950 monthly Social Security check.

In San Jerardo, a farmworker cooperative in Salinas, water is a precious — and expensive — commodity. The 250 or so residents have long been plagued by water contaminated by agricultural runoff from the surrounding cauliflower, broccoli and strawberry fields. Their bills more than quadrupled nine years ago when the county dug a new well for San Jerardo, pumping clean water from two miles away.

Hundreds of communities, and more than 1 million Californians, facing a similar struggle for safe and affordable water are now at the center of a budget fight at the state Capitol over how to fix the problem. After several failed attempts, there is momentum this legislative session to establish a fund for small water agencies unable to provide customers with clean drinking water because of the high treatment costs.

But several hurdles remain before the June 15 deadline for the Legislature to pass a budget — most precariously, a resistance among lawmakers to tax millions of residential water users and others while California enjoys a surplus of more than $21 billion.

Activists and Gov. Gavin Newsom have pushed to establish a dedicated clean-water fee on customers and agribusiness that would not be at risk of cuts if the economy sours. Many lawmakers, however, prefer that the money come from the state’s general fund, not another tax.

“If this was a problem in Beverly Hills, people would be outraged,” said Kelsey Hinton, communications manager for the Community Water Center, which works on drinking water access in California and has been sponsoring legislation to establish a clean water fund since 2016.

“It’s not that solutions to this problem don’t exist. It’s about historically where the resources and attention in our state have gone for these issues.” Read more >>>