Nitrate, Arsenic, and the Long Wait for Safe Water in Central Fresno
Nearly 100 people crowded into a meeting room in central Fresno last year when state water officials hosted a public session on drinking water quality. Many had discovered notices at their community centers explaining how regulators had documented violations in the area's groundwater supplies. The California State Water Resources Control Board aimed to deliver a simple message that evening: Local water systems were struggling with nitrate and arsenic contamination, and officials were working to fix them. And what played out next was predictable to anyone who has attended one of these sessions. There were concerned questions (Would you drink this water every day? What are you going to do now?), unsatisfying answers (We are working with utilities on compliance schedules) and pleas for action that regulators said could not happen "overnight."
What made the situation in ZIP code 93701 remarkable, however, was a sobering truth that bubbled up amid the exasperated grumbles and earnest assurances. Once a community becomes a hot spot for groundwater contamination, it is nearly impossible to clean it up for good. In fact, such a success story is virtually unheard of in the San Joaquin Valley, where dairy operations, fertilizer runoff and naturally occurring geological deposits have combined to push nitrate and arsenic concentrations above federal limits in dozens of systems serving largely low-income, predominantly Latino communities.
EPA records show 2 health-based violations on the water systems serving this ZIP in the past five years. This ZIP water report logs an Environmental Justice Index of 74 out of 100 -- "very high" -- reflecting the overlap of water quality failures, low median income, and documented enforcement gaps in central Fresno.
{{illustration: "Central Fresno neighborhood street scene at dusk, modest homes with front yards, irrigation canal in background, muted warm tones"}}
Meanwhile, compliance records serve as a false promise to residents that findings will be used to keep them safe. Sometimes there is just the tracking and nothing happens to change the situation.
The roots of the problem run deep. In the San Joaquin Valley, decades of intensive agriculture have driven nitrate concentrations in shallow groundwater far above the EPA's maximum contaminant level of 10 milligrams per liter. Dairies, feedlots and fertilizer applications have leached nitrogen into the aquifer for generations, concentrating the problem in communities that lack political power and infrastructure funding. At the same time, naturally occurring arsenic -- which the EPA caps at 10 micrograms per liter -- concentrates in the valley's ancient alluvial deposits, and small groundwater-dependent utilities serving disadvantaged communities often lack the treatment infrastructure to remove it.
The Bakman Water Company, one of the five systems serving the area, draws from wells in that same aquifer and reaches 17,393 people. The surrounding smaller utilities that cover much of the older residential core of 93701 have built their operations on wells that regulators have documented, year after year, as at risk.
State authorities can require utilities to test and report their contamination levels, but they rely almost entirely on the utilities' own submissions. When a small system reports elevated nitrate or arsenic, the state logs the violation, notifies the operator and places the water system on a compliance schedule. Whether the operator has the money or technical capacity to fix the problem is a different matter entirely.
The state legislature attempted to address that gap directly in 2019. Senate Bill 200 established California's first dedicated fund for safe and affordable drinking water -- the SAFER program, administered by the State Water Resources Control Board. The law built on California's Human Right to Water, enshrined in statute since 2012, and set out to make it real for the roughly 300 communities already out of compliance. SAFER can fund consolidations and provide interim water supplies while longer-term fixes are engineered.
And yet, as the compliance record for the water systems serving 93701 shows, such action is not a given. In the face of entrenched agricultural interests, in a valley where water policy has long been shaped by growers rather than by residents of colonias and unincorporated communities, regulators have, again and again, stopped short of using every tool available to them.
During the public session, an older woman said she wished she had been told before she moved to the neighborhood years ago. A man who had worked in the fields his whole life asked the water board to require multilingual violation notices at the point of sale for every property in 93701. Thus far, the most visible response regulators had offered were filter vouchers and boil-water advisories -- which do nothing for the family whose landlord won't install a point-of-use device.
The inability to close the compliance gap in central Fresno is really an indictment of the rules that govern small water systems. Even if a utility followed every current rule, the conditions that produce violations would still be present. The aquifer does not comply on its own. The fertilizer already in the soil does not comply. The arsenic in the bedrock has no schedule.
The compliance forecast for 93701, based on four-plus years of violation history, puts the probability of a new violation within the next two years at 95 percent. That number does not come from a model that assumes failure. It comes from a record that has already demonstrated it.