'Hi, do you have water?'

[SoCalDem]

http://www.latimes.com/local/great-reads/la-me-c1-east-porterville-20140918-story.html#page=2


'Hi, do you have water?' In a Central Calif. town, answer is often no.
By Diana Marcum

Column OneWater SupplyCalifornia Drought

The grandmother sat outside in her Sunday best next to a house with peeling paint, her canned iced tea resting on top of a washing machine that didn't work. She'd been without running water for four months.

Up an easy-to-miss dirt road, a 70-year-old woman moved 5-gallon jugs of water into her single-wide trailer. It was hard because she was weak from chemotherapy. Her water had stopped coming out of the tap three months ago. At the elementary school, a kitchen worker talked about all the children who were coming to school dirty.

This scattered Tulare County community may be the hardest-hit place in California's punishing drought. Of its 7,300 people, almost 1,000 have no running water. But few knew that until Donna Johnson, 72, started counting. Donna Johnson, 72, took it upon herself to collect donations of bottled water for area residents who no longer have running water.


Donna Johnson lugs bottled water for some of the hundreds around East Porterville whose wells have gone dry. She realized others might need help after her own well went dry in June. During a week when the temperature reached 106, Johnson drove her purple PT Cruiser past "Beware of dog" signs and up side roads that looked long-deserted. She found mobile homes hidden behind other buildings. She said to her newfound neighbors, "Hi. Do you have water?"

Again and again, the answer was no.

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snip

[pipoman]

1. What is the history here?

Was this a known dessert/semi arid before now?.

Tulare County in the San Joaquin valley is also known as "Garden of the Sun". Is this akin to building structures in known flood plains, then being shocked when the structures are wiped out by flooding?

[reddread]

2. yes, a parfait

being unsympathetic to today's victims of yesterdays mistakes is not
my idea of liberal.

[pipoman]

3. lol...yeah spell check doesn't work when the misspelled word is a word...

That said, there is nothing liberal about throwing tax money away, or pretending a desert isn't a desert, or expecting a dog not to act like a dog. ..

[Downwinder]

4. More like when a State has insufficient water resources,

who is going to lose out.

Tulare Lake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake

[cannondale]

5. yikes

I guess some think the millions in Phoenix, including children, would get what they deserve if the water supply stopped. Stupid children, why did you choose to be in a family on a known dessert?

[pipoman]

6. sounds like a schizophrenic interpretation of what was written...

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. interesting. amazing to hear of people in CA with no running water