East Porterville is a small community south-east of Fresno. It sits nestled against its bigger sister, Porterville, amid orange groves, alfalfa fields and a growing number of fields that go unplanted.
East Porterville might have gone unnoticed, if not for a woman named Donna Johnson who started asking questions about wells in the town. After doing some research she found that almost 100 wells in the town of 7,331 had gone dry.
Overnight East Porterville became a media hot spot for stories about the drought impact on California. A Google search for “towns without water” finds East Porterville at the top of the list.
On July 9, 2015, The Family Water Alliance and The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers sponsored a water truck to deliver water to several families in East Porterville. After a stop in Sacramento with elected officials Assemblyman Brian Dahle and Assemblyman Devon Mathis to pick up more water, the convoy made its way to Porterville.
More help came from a non-profit, the Porterville Area Coordinating Council (PACC), and the family of the executive Elva Beltran and her husband Fred.
PACC is just one of the many non-profits helping with the water crisis in East Porterville. The families receiving the water were part of a growing number of families that the Beltrans and the PACC deliver water to, because they do not meet the qualifications for county service.
No water means no water for lawns, and for many, it means no way to cool their homes. Most families use evaporative – “swamp” – coolers, and swamp coolers need gallons of water each day to operate. Lucky families have been able to purchase small window air conditioning units to make life more bearable.
In East Porterville the drought discussion is not about how green your lawn is, but how to get enough water to wash dishes and flush the toilet.
A lone chair sits under the only available shade, a tree that is also showing signs of drought fatigue.
Many people who live and work in the Central and Sacramento Valleys are finding out how much their communities are tied to water projects that some 60 years ago turned our brown state green and built a farming economy that is unequaled in the world. Now decisions made by nameless, faceless bureaucrats, who have no incentive for solutions or compromise, are drying up opportunity and hope.
Could your community be next? Shasta County communities’ service districts like Clear Creek, Bella Vista and Central Valley have seen their water deliveries cut, in some instances by almost half.
While Porterville’s water woes do not stem from the cuts due to the drought, or the need to save water to flush the delta, the cases are similar. Porterville is a typical rural community that lacks the money or the political power to move government to solve the problems they face.
While the media may be focused on Porterville, that focus rarely turns into political power, as the communities of Hayfork, Calif., and Forks, Wash., learned during the battle over the Northern Spotted Owl. Some 25 years later those communities still grapple with unemployment and impacts from changes in forest management policy.
There is hope for Porterville. The hope is to fund a water district that will drill several deep wells and connect the community with a pubic water district. The state has also declared that the dam on the Tule River can now be refilled after it passed earthquake safety inspections. Refilling the dam will allow winter rainwater to be captured and released during the summer, which could in turn recharge the aquifer.
For the rest of the state, the passage of the Water Bond in 2014 gives all of us an opportunity to retool our existing water system to meet the changing climate issues. The addition of Sites Reservoir in Colusa County and other storage projects throughout the state will ensure that when the next drought arrives, we will be prepared to meet the needs of our growing population.
Communities like Bella Vista, Redding and Happy Valley can become green again, if we use the bond money to expand above-ground storage as voters intended. Sites Reservoir will protect farmers, families and fish.
California does not have to become East Porterville.
For more information, please visit our web site, www.SaveCAbuildwaterstorage.com to find out how you can help.
Nadine Bailey was a homemaker and business owner with her husband until 1990 when a change in public policy for federal forestlands propelled her into the public eye. Her grassroots, heartfelt advocacy on behalf of forest families made her a sought-after speaker and grassroots leader. Speaking on behalf of forest families to President Clinton at the 1992 Northwest Forest Summit, she was credited with giving a human face to the issue of Owl vs. Loggers. Still in demand as a speaker, she now shares her story of how God can take the most unlikely people and give them the courage and wisdom they need to handle any circumstance, no matter how tragic. Nadine is a tireless advocate for those people who live and work in rural America. She lives with her husband Walter in Anderson, California. She has worked for State Senator Sam Aanestad, Assemblyman Dan Logue and for Assemblyman Brian Dahle as a field representative and a district director. She currently serves as the Chief Operations Officer for the Family Water Alliance in Maxwell, California. She and her husband have two children, Justin and Elizabeth, and one grandchild, Donald.
