California Water News Daily Your Source For Water News in California
The County of Riverside and Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) have once again teamed up to come to the aid of local Coachella Valley residents. This time the County and CVWD have agreed to provide clean drinking water to the residents of the Oasis Mobile Home Park for the next 60 days and pick up the $2,500.00 a week tab.
Residents of the Oasis Mobile Home park discovered through an EPA investigation that they were living with ten times the allowable amount of arsenic in their drinking water. Once it was discovered that the water system was out of compliance, both federal and local public agencies including Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia’s office, the County of Riverside, and Supervisor Perez’s Office decided to task themselves to come up with a viable solution for the residents of the mobile home park.
Under the EPA’s Emergency Order, Park owners have been mandated to provide free bottled water to the 1,900 residents until the EPA finds the water system safe. With a measured rate of one gallon per person daily, many of the residents were still having great difficulty accessing the water available to them.
This new joint plan with the County provides for onsite access for all the residents. The service will include one operator that will bring a water trailer with a 1,000-gallon tank that will be stationed in front of the park. Residents will be able to draw water from the tank from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. These hours augment the Park’s bottled water distribution hours of 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. on the weekdays and 9 a.m. to noon on weekends.
In 2012, California enacted Human Right to Water legislation (AB 685), recognizing that “every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes.” The State Water Board adopted a resolution identifying that right as a top priority.
This legislation prompted the formation of the Disadvantaged Communities Infrastructure Task Force in 2016 to address the safe drinking water needs in the Coachella Valley for the long term health of its residents. The Disadvantaged Communities Infrastructure Task Force has come up with the Eastern Coachella Valley Water Supply Master Plan, which identified and mapped out all small, private water sources, their locations, structure and compliance issues and has ranked these water sources so that they may offer additional water options to deal with Coachella Valley rising water needs.
