This Valley town went without water amid triple-digit heat. Here’s what happened

Residents of a tiny Tulare County community were without water for nearly 24 hours this week, after the only working well in East Orosi gave out amid triple-digit heat.

In the agricultural community of an estimated 624 people, where 99% of residents are Latino, community members had to ration their bottles of emergency water, endure the scorching heat since their home swamp coolers wouldn’t work and couldn’t shower or wash dishes. Even when the water returned, they couldn’t drink it because the community’s groundwater has been contaminated by nitrates for years.

East Orosi has two wells in the town’s western and eastern limits. The western well hasn’t been working since its pump gave out years ago, leaving the town dependent on the eastern well.

But the eastern well’s pump stopped working around 2 p.m. Tuesday, leaving East Orosi completely waterless. Water briefly returned between 4 a.m. and 9 a.m. Wednesday, but was off again for the remainder of the morning.

East Orosi residents received some emergency water supplies on Tuesday and cautiously used them through Wednesday, as they remained on the search for more.

The cause behind the eastern pump’s failure remained unknown as of Wednesday afternoon, but a power outage could have impacted the pump, according to Brian Osorio, community solutions advocate with the Community Water Center.

A new pump — originally intended for the western well — replaced the eastern well’s failing one by noon Wednesday, returning water supply to East Orosi’s homes. Yet once the water returned Wednesday afternoon, it remained contaminated and only usable for basic necessities like watering plants or washing dishes. Residents remain worried, Osorio said, “because they can’t even give the water to their dogs.”

Josefina Barrera has lived in East Orosi for seven years and said this is the third or fourth time that the water has stopped running since she’s lived in the small town. This time around, her husband and one of her sons had come home after a long day of working in a dairy and field. They couldn’t shower and had to sleep with their working day’s sweat and dirt.

“I couldn’t make dinner for us, and we’re many of us in the house,” she said of her eight-person family.

East Orosi resident Bertha Diaz Ochoa said her husband drove to his sister’s house in the nearby community of Orosi to get water so the family could bathe and wash their dishes. She lamented that they had to use expensive gasoline for the task, at a time when the Valley’s temperatures are soaring and limiting the number of hours that farmworkers can labor in the fields.

She added that older community residents and people with disabilities are unable to travel to local water distribution sites, don’t have the strength to wait in line under the broiling sun and can’t carry gallons of water back to their homes.

“This is the situation that we’re facing in East Orosi,” Diaz Ochoa said in Spanish.

East Orosi has long had challenges with its water.

Diaz Ochoa said she receives deliveries of several gallons of water twice a month, but during the hot summer months it’s often not enough. When the family goes to work, Diaz Ochoa said they leave the empty bottles outside of the home for refilling but, “sometimes they’ve been stolen and we’re left with fewer bottles.”

She said she is unsure if someone is actually stealing the bottles or if the water delivery service is leaving fewer bottles behind but, “many families have this same problem.”

A few years ago, state water officials ordered the mandatory consolidation of the Orosi and East Orosi water systems. Yet that hasn’t happened and East Orosi’s residents say they are are tired of their town’s poor quality, failing water system.

“For us, state, county and district agencies are the ones responsible for consolidating East Orosi and Orosi’s water systems,” Osorio of the Community Water Center said in Spanish. “Yet here in East Orosi, the district meeting hasn’t happened in months because they don’t have enough members to host it.”

“It’s very frustrating to see residents not have a basic necessity because water is life,” Osorio added. It’s very frustrating to see this community and its families, “not have this service, not have this right.”