Groundbreaking celebrates tiny Tulare County community’s connection to clean water
More than 100 residents in the tiny unincorporated town of West Goshen can weather the summer months knowing that by the end of it, the water flowing through their faucets will be safe for drinking, cooking and bathing thanks to a new connection to California Water Service.
Residents along with local and state officials marked that monumental step at a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday evening in West Goshen, west of Visalia and Highway 99 in Tulare County. The celebratory atmosphere included upbeat Mexican music, colorful flags, a taco dinner and snow cones.
California Water Service provides water to Visalia residents. It was able to connect West Goshen through an emergency consolidation project. West Goshen residents had relied for years on bottled water after they discovered groundwater from private wells was laced with uranium, nitrates and other contaminants.
The 60-day connection project will require a crew of eight to lay more than 8,000 feet of pipe. The two-phase project will connect a total of 58 residences. It is funded through several state grants.
Emotions at the event ran high for some, including resident Lucy Hernandez, who has advocated clean water for the last 16 years.
“This will make a big difference for our families,” Hernandez said as she fought back tears in front of a crowd of about 50 people. “It took our community coming together. It’s been a long process but it has been worth it. I think we are a good example for other communities.”
West Goshen residents have long struggled with a reliable drinking water supply. Their wells are shallow, at less than 250 feet deep, which makes them susceptible to drought and regional overpumping.
In 2021, residents formed West Goshen Water for Life to advocate for safe water. In 2022, nonprofit Community Water Center worked with residents and the engineering firm Dee Jaspar & Associates to complete an alternatives analysis study. After completion of the study, residents decided consolidation with California Water Service’s Visalia district was its best, long-term solution.
That same year, the Department of Water Resources awarded Tulare County a $3.45 million grant to connect West Goshen homes. An additional $544,000 in funding came from the state Water Resources Control Board’s SAFER (Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience) program, which allowed Community Water Center to provide technical assistance to the project.
Water Board chair Joaquin Esquivel drove from Sacramento for the groundbreaking. He said it was because of residents of communities like West Goshen that California passed the Human Right to Water Act in 2012.
“I want to congratulate all of us collectively on the ability to start to chip away at generational issues of access to clean water in the state,” he said. “We know we have inequities that have existed longer than they should have.”
To fund safe drinking water projects, the state adopted the SAFER fund in 2019, and since then, more than $1 billion in grants has been awarded to communities throughout the state, reducing the number of residents without access to clean water from 1.6 million to about 800,000, or about two percent of Californians.
“It takes willing partners,” Esquivel told SJV Water after the ceremony. “We can move faster on these projects when we are all willing to work together.”
