Porta-potties are popping up outside homes. Drinking water is being trucked in from faraway places. Girl Scouts are setting up collection points for residents to donate bottled water.
This is the reality of life in East Porterville – a central California town where the wells are beginning to run dry. Gripped by a severe drought, water sources for residents aren't replenishing, and that spells big problems for the future.
In the Central Valley town of roughly 7,000 residents, some 290 families say their wells are already out of water. The town mostly consists of poor, Hispanic residents – people who simply can't afford another setback. Elsewhere in Tulare County, many other homes are suffering dry wells, too, and the problem has expanded sporadically all over the Central Valley, though the data isn't quite as precise as in East Porterville.
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"When you have water running in your house, everything is OK," said East Porterville resident Yolanda Serrato. "Once you don't have water, oh my goodness."
With California locked in its third year of drought and groundwater levels dropping, residents and farmers have been forced to drill deeper and deeper to find water. Lawmakers in Sacramento passed legislation to regulate groundwater pumping, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law this past week.
Three days later, Brown signed an executive order that provides money to buy drinking water for residents statewide whose wells have dried up, while also directing key state officials to work with counties and local agencies to find solutions for the shortages.
“Families every night dream about water. Every day they're thinking about how they're going to deal with water.”
The State Water Resources Control Board had already allotted $500,000 to buy bottled water for East Porterville residents, said Bruce Burton of the board's Drinking Water Program.
Paul Boyer, community development program director
But many East Porterville residents, like Serrato, say all they want is to get a glass of water from the kitchen sink. Her well dried up nearly two months ago, she said, making life challenging for her husband and three children.
To bathe, they each have to fill a bucket from a 300-gallon tank in the front yard, carry it inside and pour water over their heads with a cup. They've lived in their home for 21 years, she said. "It's not that easy to say, `Let's go someplace else.' "
East Porterville sits along the Tule River, which starts high in the mountains and runs through the unincorporated town. Typically, river water permeates the sandy soil under the community, filling up wells as shallow as 30 feet deep. Not this year. Drought has caused the river to run dry, along with the wells.
Tulare County spokeswoman Denise England said East Porterville needs to get connected to the nearest water main in neighboring Porterville. That could cost more than $20 million and take up to five years, if the project didn't hit political snags, she said.
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England said counting the number of dry wells is difficult because people don't come forward fearing their children will be taken away if their home lacks a safe water source, or they believe that their home would be condemned, making them homeless.
AP Photo/The Porterville Recorder, Chieko Hara
Porta-potties are delivered the morning of Tuesday,
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