When Cynthia Ruiz turns on her kitchen faucet, she hears a slight squeak before cloudy fluid bursts out of the spout. The water in her Central Valley town of East Orosi is clean enough most of the time to wash dishes, flush toilets, and take showers, but it's not safe to swallow. Drinking water is trucked in twice a month.
KFF Health NewsOct 31 2024 When Cynthia Ruiz turns on her kitchen faucet, she hears a slight squeak before cloudy fluid bursts out of the spout. The water in her Central Valley town of East Orosi is clean enough most of the time to wash dishes, flush toilets, and take showers, but it's not safe to swallow. Drinking water is trucked in twice a month.
While most Californians have access to safe water, roughly 750,000 people as of late October are served by 383 failing water systems, many clustered in remote and sparsely populated areas. A June assessment by the California State Water Resources Control Board pegged the cost of repairing failing and at-risk public water systems at about $11.5 billion.
Supporters say Proposition 4, to enact the Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparedness, and Clean Air Bond Act of 2024, would jump-start upgrades by authorizing grants and loans for local governments to repair water systems contaminated with lead, arsenic, nitrates, or other chemicals tied to cancer, liver and kidney problems, and other serious health issues.
Related StoriesLawmakers in July added Proposition 4 to the ballot after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, facing a $47 billion deficit, cut $6.6 billion in climate spending from the state budget, according to Department of Finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer. The reductions followed $3.1 billion in climate cuts Newsom and lawmakers enacted in 2023.
According to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office, the state has routinely allocated state funds for climate-related programs, with about 15% coming from bonds. The office estimates it would cost taxpayers $400 million a year for the next 40 years to repay the bond — a total of $16 billion. "If we quantify the damages associated with the do-nothing policy, you’ll see that typically, at the end of the day, the bill plus the interest costs are going to be less than the cost if we do nothing," said Kurt Schwabe, an environmental economics and policy professor at the University of California-Riverside.
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