MECCA, Calif. — When ever her sons rush indoors after playing under the broiling desert sun, Guadalupe Rosales worries. They rarely heed her constant warning: Don’t drink the water. It’s not safe. The 8- and 10-year-olds stick their mouths under a kitchen faucet and gulp anyway.
There is arsenic in the groundwater feeding their community well at St. Anthony Trailer Park, 40 miles south of Palm Springs. In ordinary times, the concentration of naturally occurring arsenic is low, and the water safe to drink. But during California’s unrelenting drought, as municipalities join farmers in sucking larger quantities of water from the ground, the concentration of arsenic is becoming more potent.
A recent laboratory test found that water in St. Anthony’s shallow well has twice the concentration of arsenic considered safe.
For many Californians, the state’s long drought has meant small inconveniences such as shorter showers and restrictions on watering lawns. But in two rural valleys, the Coachella southeast of Los Angeles and the San Joaquin to the north, farmworkers and other poor residents are feeling its impact in a far more serious and personal way.
Tulare County, in southern San Joaquin Valley, is a land without water, a real-life example of a future many Californians fear as scientists warn of a possible decadeslong megadrought.
State politicians, county officials and community activists have scrambled to place water tanks at about 1,200 homes, but that is only slightly more than half of the households that do not have water. Every day, the county puts 3,000 gallons of non-potable water in two tanks at different locations in Porterville so some of those residents can fill drums and buckets for basic uses such as flushing toilets.
“This whole thing with the tanks was intended to be an interim solution” but has continued for a year as the drought drags on, said Paul Boyer, director of community development for Self-Help Enterprises, a group that asks water agencies for as many gallons as they can spare.
“We need rain. We need snow in the mountains. We need to recharge groundwater,” Boyer said. “We’re coming up on the driest part of the year.”
