I m scared of getting sick from the water ( I m scared of getting sick from the water ) — High Country News – Know the West hcn.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hcn.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
, and is republished here as part of a collaboration, Tapped Out: Power, justice and water in the West, in which eight Institute for Nonprofit News newsrooms California Health Report and High Country News; SJV Water and the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism; Circle of Blue; Columbia Insight; Ensia; and New Mexico In Depth spent more than three months reporting on water issues in the Western U.S. The result documents serious concerns including contamination, excessive groundwater pumping and environmental inequity. It was made possible by a grant from The Water Desk, with support from Ensia and INN’s Amplify News Project.
‘I’m scared of getting sick from the water’
Some rural California communities have waited nearly a decade for state regulators to repair their tainted drinking-water systems. Image credit: Martin do Nascimento for the California Health Report May 5, 2021
When Ramona Hernandez turns on her kitchen faucet in El Adobe, an unincorporated town just a few miles southeast of Bakersfield, the water that splashes out looks clean and inviting. But she doesn’t dare drink it.
“You worry about your health,” she said in Spanish as she sat in her tranquil front yard one morning early this spring, her elderly mother-in-law working in the garden behind her.