Just a month after taking office in 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom visited a rural school in the Central Valley and happened to find himself in a more prescient setting than he had planned: a classroom. The whiteboard posed the following question: “Essential Question — How will you respond to the challenge?””

The governor is in Parlier to dramatically up his signature on his first bill, a stopgap measure that would provide tens of millions of dollars to buy bottled water for communities with contaminated wells. I chose Riverview Elementary School. “Can't we provide even basic drinking water to over 1 million Californians?” Newsom said, before posing for a photo at a location where the drinking fountain has been closed off for more than a year. “Pathetic.”

he vowed to find money to fund a permanent solution The problem is most prevalent in the Central Valley. “If I can't find a way to get that done, I don't deserve to be governor.”

A few months later, he and Congress actually found the money. $1.3 billion over 10 years To help hundreds of small water districts that rely on groundwater from wells that are dry or contaminated with agricultural and industrial waste.

Finding money turned out to be easy. Five years after his visit with the governor, Riverview students are still drinking bottled water.

Facing attitudes ranging from mistrust to low expectations of state government, Sacramento city officials have struggled to build partnerships in a community divided by class and race. For the first time, states have more money and more power to force change. What is missing is leadership that disrupts processes where unacceptable delays are accepted as inevitable.

The State Water Resources Control Board, which administers the $1.3 billion drinking water program, has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in planning, technical assistance and construction grants, and some progress has been made. But water districts are joining the list of failures as quickly as they are falling off it. Of her more than 3,000 water districts in California, Latest data This indicates that 386 systems have failed, 507 systems are at risk, and 403 additional systems are potentially at risk.

The state's inability to get ahead of the crisis is partly due to complexity exacerbated by intransigence, partly due to better data and stricter safety standards involving more systems, and partly due to drought and climate. This is due to fluctuations. But it is also due to its reliance on state institutions established for regulatory functions, which are now required to work with struggling and polarized communities to ensure pipeline construction. ing. The water commission was particularly outraged by the title of the recent case. State audit criticized lack of urgency; it's hard to see how any other word could be appropriate.

Red dots on the water board's maps, which track water systems that rely on unsafe or depleted wells, indicate areas that are unincorporated, have disproportionately low incomes, are home to people of color, or are affected by racial covenants or redlining. They are concentrated in areas that have historically been excluded from cities. Forced to live without public services, they dug wells, and when the wells ran dry, they dug deeper. The most practical solution for many of these communities is to integrate with local governments that have historically excluded them.

Tulare County is more hostile now than it was in the 1970s. When considered as 15 communities in the comprehensive plan. Because public services, including water, are unsustainable and it is recommended to withhold their provision, they will “enter a long-term natural process of decline” and disappear. There are still 13 people. One of them, Tourville, is a 77-home complex separated from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada by the Friant Kern Canal and flooded with water that residents cannot touch. The state pays for each household to receive her six five-gallon water jugs every two weeks.

For decades, the solution was obvious. He connects Tooleville with the Exeter city water supply, a distance of less than a mile. Exeter repeatedly refused. After state funds became available to cover the additional costs and the city seemed to have run out of excuses, the city council voted unanimously to cancel the talks. “We have our own problems” Exeter Mayor Mary Waterman Philpott told a roomful of Tourville residents., snorted at the idea of ​​the state paying for the one-mile extension. “I want Santa Claus to do something too.”

In the end, the state ordered them to integrate; an agreement was finally reached last year. Short-term fixes to connect Toolville homes to Exeter's water supply are expected to be in place by September, but the full project is estimated to take eight years.

In nearby Tombstone Village, a $3 million project that was scheduled to be completed in 2022 is now a $6 million project with an expected completion date of late 2026, but the land needed to run one mile has not yet grown. The project has been delayed due to difficulties in negotiations with the owner. Pipes for connecting to nearby systems.

As Newsom said about the water crisis in general, such a fact would be unacceptable in Beverly Hills. Among the many deep inequalities that plague California, the uncontroversial goal of clean drinking water should be relatively achievable.

The important question written on Palier's whiteboard remains as unanswered as the school's water supply solution. It's about how you deal with challenges.

Newsom is On record: “It's a shame that we live in a state where there are a million people who don't have access to clean, safe and affordable drinking water.” In 2019, he led his cabinet to central He took him to the Valley and gave an impression to his aides on the issue of importing drinking water. in his first state speechThe governor stressed that rectifying the crisis “requires political will from each and every one of us.”

Newsom needs to reconsider with renewed resolve, using both his power and his bully pulpit to analyze delays and impose urgency to ensure actions align with rhetoric. .

Miriam Powell is the author of The Crusades of Cesar Chavez: A Biography. She is researching the history of the University of California.