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My colleague based here in Los Angeles, Jose Del Real, has spent months reporting on how small farming communities in the Central Valley lack access to clean drinking water.
Here's his dispatch from Lanare, near Hanford:
Two things immediately struck Eulalia “Lala” Carbajal when she arrived in Lanare, Calif., in 1954, from Coahuila, Mexico.
There was no running water anywhere in the small farm settlement, 20 minutes southwest of Fresno. And almost everyone but her was African-American. Those two facts, she would come to realize, were deeply intertwined.
“When I arrived, there weren’t even any houses or anything. There was a family that lived here, but they lived in just a tent. I suffered,” said Ms. Carbajal, 85. “There was no water, nothing.”
She and her husband spent decades roaming in search of places to fill up giant jugs of water they carried back home in their car. She said she drank water from almost all over California because her husband was “andariego” — restless.
“I grew up in a city and look where I ended up,” she deadpanned, her eyes turned slightly upward, looking around at vast fields of farmland. Ms. Carbajal came to the United States as part of a mass diaspora of migrant Mexican laborers that transformed the Central Valley during the 20th century.
But what she did not know at the time was that her arrival also punctuated another mass migration that had brought tens of thousands of black American farm workers from the Cotton Belt and the Dust Bowl in search of a better life.
[Read more about the effects of segregation on today’s drinking water in California’s Central Valley.]
Against the backdrop of Jim Crow segregation, anti-black curfews and discriminatory banking practices, those black families had very limited options. Often, the only places they could settle were in isolated, waterless communities where businessmen were willing to sell land to black people.
The lack of potable water was not just bad luck: It was precisely that fact that made it possible for black and Mexican farm workers to purchase land in places like Lanare, said Michael Eissinger, a lecturer in history at Fresno City College.
Nobody else would live there except those who had no other choice. “That’s why these communities exist. They are the direct response to Jim Crow practices in the San Joaquin Valley going back to the 19th century,” Mr. Eissinger told me recently.
Today, the legacy of segregation and racism echoes in the vulnerable and isolated water infrastructure of these towns, which are now primarily Hispanic, a demographic transformation that kicked off in earnest in the 1990s.
Like virtually everyone in Lanare at the time, Ms. Carbajal and her husband purchased land from a local businessman named Eugene Tomasetti who sold parcels to black and Mexican farm workers in the 1950s. She recalls how each month she would trek to a bar nearby to make her payment to Mr. Tomasetti, who would give her signed receipts on napkins, cigarette rolls or any loose papers he could find.
Even after wells and pipes were drilled in Lanare in the 1970s, according to Ms. Carbajal and others who have worked and lived in the area, arsenic poisoned the water supply.
It wasn’t until this year that Lanare finally received clean drinking water with the assistance of a $3.8 million grant from the state to dig two new wells in the area.
It was a hard-fought victory for the Lanare activists, who have worked for decades to get clean water in the community. Elsewhere in the Valley, similar communities continue to struggle.
“A lot of what is happening didn’t just happen on its own,” said Veronica Garibay, a civil rights lawyer and co-director of the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, an advocacy organization based in Fresno.
[Read more of Jose’s work here.]
Here’s what else we’re following
We often link to sites that limit access for nonsubscribers. We appreciate your reading Times coverage, but we also encourage you to support local news if you can.
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As wildfires become costlier, homeowners in fire-prone areas have said it’s becoming difficult or impossible to get insurance. On Thursday, the state’s insurance commissioner took the unusual step of banning insurers from dropping policies. [The New York Times]
Also, here’s more about why homeowners are losing their insurance. [The New York Times]
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The House Committee on Ethics warned Representative Duncan Hunter, of the San Diego area, against voting because he pleaded guilty to a federal felony that has a maximum sentence of more than two years behind bars. [The San Diego Union-Tribune]
Here are answers to five questions about Mr. Hunter. [The New York Times]
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Here’s how Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, became billionaires and slowly stepped away from the company. They leave behind a long, complex legacy. [The New York Times]
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In its first study detailing unsafe incidents, Uber said it had reports of 3,045 sexual assaults in 2018. [The New York Times]
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Here’s a useful guide to spotting lies and fighting chaos online. [The Verge]
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Fishing groups have sued federal agencies over a plan to loosen restrictions on water deliveries to farmers. It’s another scrap in the ongoing fights over who gets to use water in California and why. [The San Francisco Chronicle]
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Also, will climate change mean less farming in the West? [Civil Eats]
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Each of the four men killed in a mass shooting that stunned Fresno, and in particular, the city’s Hmong community, was described as a major financial provider for their families. Here is information on memorial services and how to help them. [The Fresno Bee]
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Pasadena is suing itself in hopes of keeping an initiative off a ballot next year that would legalize currently illegal cannabis stores. In order to do it, a judge would need to make a decision by Christmas Eve. (Attention, Hallmark Channel?) [Pasadena Star-News]
And Finally …
It’s that time of year. It’s slightly too cold to sit outside, unless that’s the only place to sit. The first rains of the season have been here. The mountains are capped tantalizingly with snow.
Lights twinkle at you from the hills while you’re driving on the freeway at night.
Yes, it’s the holidays in California. And we want to hear (and see) what that means to you.
What songs do you listen to that help you get in the spirit, and why? (We may make a small holiday playlist as a companion to our California Soundtrack. And I will gladly accept any and all tracks from “The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album,” thanks.)
Do you head to the mountains? Decorate your yard with surfing Santas? Put out an elaborate mochi display for New Year’s Day? Send us photos!
Does your family participate in a neighborhood posada? Have a unique Hanukkah tradition? Tell us about it.
Email your responses to CAtoday@nytimes.com, and we’ll publish some of them in the coming weeks.
California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here.
Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter, @jillcowan.
California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.
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