Opinion: Where can Californians turn when their water is brown?
Imagine growing up in a home where tap water consistently runs a stomach-churning brown, sometimes with an odor. You hate to bathe in it, and you certainly aren’t going to drink it. You’re not in some remote hinterland, either. You’re in Los Angeles County. Brown tap water was a feature of my childhood. No one outside our poorly managed and financially challenged Sativa Water District in Compton and Willowbrook seemed to understand or care that we feared our own water. My mom purchased bottled water for drinking and cooking, shouldering the cost like an extra tax. Still, we had to climb into the murky stuff in the bathtub. Sometimes our clothes came out of the wash more stained than when they went in.
-Written by Oralia Avila, who works in customer services for Suburban Water Systems and lives in unincorporated Los Angeles County.Related water equity articles: