California’s Severe Water Shortage Hits Low-Income Communities Hardest

Sep 29, 2021 at 1:45pm

Sasha Abramsky

Becky Spears’ household started struggling with water in the spring. 

Her family had moved into a three-bedroom bungalow on a plot of land outside the small town of Lindsay, between Fresno and Bakersfield, last November. By May 2021, Spears started to notice changes in and around her house: “Gurgling when I flushed the toilet. We’d turn on water for our grass, and within 15 minutes, there was no water.” 

She brought in a pump expert to examine the rural home’s 191-foot deep well. After inserting a line into it, he told Spears there was as little as 10 feet of water left in the well. It wasn’t enough to pump water anymore, he told her. 

“I never dreamed our well wasn’t deep enough,” she said.

She didn’t initially fully fathom what this meant for a household that also includes Spears’ husband, their teenage daughter and a woman with mental disabilities for whom she is the conservator.

An expert from a local water nonprofit came to examine the well and found that in the weeks since the problem had first been identified, it had run completely dry. Spears and her family could no longer access a single dribble from their home’s pipes. 

Continue reading the article from Chico News and Review here