East Orosi residents celebrate groundbreaking for long-awaited new water system

• Editor’s note: Monserrat Solis covers Kings County water issues for SJV Water through the California Local News Fellowship initiative. 

Residents of the tiny Tulare County town of East Orosi gathered Wednesday, April 22, for an event many thought might never happen – the official beginning of construction on a new, $13.5 million drinking water system.

“It’s been a long time coming, right?” East Orosi resident Carlos Sanchez told the crowd of the more than 20-year quest for clean water. “Years of fighting for water. A simple thing.

“Si, se pudo – yes, it was possible.” 

Bertha Diaz, a mother of three and grandmother of six, has been fighting since 2000 when she was told there was no clean water for residents.

“I never gave up,” Diaz said.

Groundwater in the community of about 400 is tainted with nitrate, which can be lethal to newborns, causing what’s known as “blue baby syndrome.” Some studies have also found a link between long-term nitrate exposure and some types of cancer.

Levels were so high, residents couldn’t use their own tap water for drinking, cooking or even brushing their teeth. For the past 14 years, they’ve relied on tanks filled with water hauled in from elsewhere and bottled water provided by the state Water Resources Control Board at a cost of more than $1.2 million.

Residents needed a better, more permanent solution. 

When Diaz first started to organize, she and her small children would walk through the neighborhood. Now her daughter, Miriam Sanchez, sits on the East Orosi Community Services District Board.

“I feel proud of each one of them, because they were the ones who gave me the strength to continue,” Diaz said of her children.

Sanchez, with two young children of her own now, also spoke at the event, thanking the community for never giving up.

“I’m really grateful,” she told SJV Water.

In 2018, in an effort to find a longer term solution for East Orosi, the Water Board ordered the larger nearby Orosi Public Utilities District, which doesn’t have contaminated water, to consolidate with East Orosi.

Then in 2022, Tulare County took over management of East Orosi’s domestic wells and then its  wastewater treatment system in 2025. 

This past February, the Water Board issued a new consolidation order with more teeth and enforceable timelines.

That, along with funding from the Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience (SAFER) program, has finally moved the community closer toward a day when they don’t have to fear the water in their own homes.

The $13.5 million new water system, expected to be completed in mid-2027, will include:

• Approximately 9,450 feet of 8-inch diameter distribution pipe;
• A new 360,000-gallon storage tank;
• Connections (meters and laterals) for 106 existing homes and two commercial connections; 
• Decommissioning and abandoning two nitrate-contaminated wells.

Water Board Chair Joaquin Esquivel attended Wednesday’s event and said East Orosi is a model for other communities fighting for clean water. 

“We’ve been able to go from 1.6 million Californians without access to clean water in 2019 to 550,000 today,” Esquivel said. “That’s because of the voices of communities like East Orosi.”