This page was created by Gwen Connor.
Who is Affected?
The majority of farm workers in California are Hispanic or Latino. Farm workers tend to make barely a living wage and a very high percentage of them are below the poverty line. The poverty line household income is about $31,000 dollars in the United States. Many farm workers make less than $9,000. They are also the most exposed to pesticides through their work, houses, water, and food. Sometimes while they work they will get sprayed directly with pesticides. Studies have been done showing that those who are Latino and rent their homes (which is more common among those with lower economic status) are more likely to have water contaminated with nitrates. Contamination in an unavoidable reality for those who work in agriculture.
Many people in the San Joaquin Valley have said that they did not know about the danger of contaminated water. Two studies that were done in the San Joaquin Valley showed that the people were widely unaware of how bad it was. And once they were aware they usually didn’t have the knowledge or resources to do anything about it. A survey found that people knew that their area had a history of being contaminated and opted to use bottled water for their cooking and consumption. It also found that the people were not aware of many/any of the long term effects. Water contamination was not one of their main concerns and they had more important things to worry about, such as poverty, education, and learning English. The other study talks about how communities that are already vulnerable to other injustices are also more vulnerable to environmental inequality. Those in the San Joaquin Valley who are more exposed to racism and povertyism are also more likely to have contaminated water and lack the proper resources to cope with all of their injustices.
Demographic studies have shown that the places with the most water system violations have a high population of people of color and are low income communities. A large proportion of these valley residents live near systems with clean water, they are just not connected to them. This will be touched upon more in the next section. Water quality has been found to be one of the top concerns for residents in the valley. They mentioned that they were distrustful of their tap water because of the lack of and misleading information given to them about the chemicals in their water. One person was lamenting that “We buy $100 of [bottled] water almost every week” . For a household that is already near or below poverty, this adds up to a substantial portion of their income that they could be using for other essential items.