Water flows in East Porterville for the first time in three years

For residents of East Porterville clean, potable water running through their pipes and out the spigots has been a memory, a dream and a frustration for the past three years. But, beginning last Friday, that has begun to change for residents, one household at a time.

During the 2011-12 legislative year, the California legislature made it a “policy of the state that every human being has the right to safe, clean, affordable, and accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking, and sanitary purposes.” In 2013 hundreds of wells in mostly rural east Porterville began to run dry.

Since then, residents have relied on state-sponsored deliveries of bottled water plus huge green tanks with non-potable water installed in front yards. Residents have adapted their lifestyles because they had no choice. Infrequent bathing and sponge baths became the norm. Gardens and trees died off. And non-potable water was hauled in buckets and jugs from sources outside of the town until the green tank was installed.

But, to the immense joy and relief of East Porterville residents, Guillermina Avila Ramirez, 55, and her husband Leonicio Ramirez, 62, and 20-year-old daughter, Tania, water flowed from the spigots within their home on Friday amid joy and laughter.

“We’re so happy,” said Tania. It “seems a little bit more normal.” The family quickly filled pitchers and began drinking the water.

An unincorporated part of Tulare County, East Porterville is a community of modest homes. Some three-quarters of the residents are Latino and more than 25 percent fall below the poverty line. Many of the residents are employed by the nearby farms picking grapes and other produce.

The Ramirezes’ home is the first to be connected to the nearby Porterville city water main under a state program bringing relief to struggling residents of East Porterville whose wells went dry in California’s four-plus year, and on-going, drought. The state Department of Water Resources is paying for the hookup program to as many as 1,800 homes. The Ramirez home is one of about 500 homes that will be connected by the end of this year; the remaining 1,300 will be connected in 2017.

In order to partake of the free hook-up process residents must agree to eventually annex their property to Porterville. Porterville will provide their eastern neighbors with water and bill the resident. When connected to the Porterville water system their state water deliveries will stop, their tanks will be hauled away and their wells will be capped.

However, on Friday the Ramirezes’ property saw a number of elected officials and government employees joining with them in a celebration of sorts.

“I had chills when they turned the water on,” declared Bill Croyle, a deputy director with the Department of Water Resources. “They should never have to worry about this ever again.”

“This is the long-term solution,” said Eric Lamoureux, acting deputy director of the state Office of Emergency Services. “And today is really a great day for East Portville. It’s a great day for all of our partners that have been working so hard on this. We’ve never experienced conditions in California this severe.”

Assemblyman Devon Mathis, R-Visalia, noted that many homes in East Porterville and the central San Joaquin Valley have been without reliable water for too long. “I haven’t seen stuff this bad since I was in Iraq,” he said who is a former Army National Guard sergeant.

But it was the Ramirezes’ daughter, Tania, who summed it up best saying, “It was kind of scary to know there was no water.” She continued saying, but “Today, we’re finally going to take comfortable showers and do things normally like everyone else.”