After a 20-year fight, the community of East Orosi has won its battle to get clean and safe drinking water.
On April 22, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for a drinking water consolidation project that will connect its residents with the Orosi Public Utility District. When the project is completed late next year, people in East Orosi will no longer have to rely on tap water contaminated with nitrates, which cause cancer and other health problems.
The $13.5 million project, funded by the state’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, specifically by an Emergency Drinking Water Assistance Grant, is intended to be a long-term solution, providing up to 106 homes and more than 400 residents with safe drinking water.
The fight for clean water began in 2005, when residents formed the community-based organization Vecinos Unidos (Neighbors United). A preliminary engineering report determined that the most sustainable solution would be to connect East Orosi to the water system in neighboring Orosi.
Tulare County, the administrator of the water system serving East Orosi, and the California State Water Resources Control Board agreed with the report and mandatory consolidation orders were issued. In 2024, the Orosi Public Utility District also expressed its support for the plan.
“We believe clean, safe, and affordable drinking water is a basic human right, never a privilege,” said Susana De Anda, Community Water Center executive director.
“East Orosi has endured unsafe levels of contamination for far too long,” she said. “We’ve also dealt with years of administrative mismanagement and a failing water system, but the community did not accept that reality. Through their persistence and leadership, they fought hard to bring safe drinking water to East Orosi, and they fought hard in advocacy. This project means that families living in this community will no longer have to fear drinking tap water.”
“Today did not start today,” said Tulare County Supervisor Eddie Valero. “It started years ago in living rooms, in community meetings, in long conversations, in trips to Sacramento, in moments of frustration, and in moments of hope.”
Valero said that this moment belongs to the people of East Orosi, “their sacrifice, their persistence, and their refusal to accept that clean safe drinking water was something other communities had but not theirs.”
“The work that we’ve done here is a model and has helped make things easier for other communities that are also fighting for their own access to clean water,” State Water Board Chair E. Joaquin Esquivel said. “It’s because of the voices of communities like East Orosi that went to Sacramento and fought for this right, we’re able to be a model for not just ourselves here, but other states as well where they too are struggling for clean water.”
This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: After 20-year fight, East Orosi to have clean and safe water
Reporting by Steve Pastis, Visalia Times-Delta / Visalia Times-Delta
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
