The Trump administration has pulled $20 million in funding for drinking-water improvements in rural California, in a move critics are slamming as “unjust.”
What’s happening?
Last year, the Biden administration awarded a $20 million grant to improve the quality of drinking water in rural Monterey County, California. Now, The Guardian reports, the Environmental Protection Agency has labeled that grant as a “wasteful DEI program” and cut the funding.
Monterey County is one of California’s key agricultural hubs. Most notably, it is one of the country’s top strawberry-producing counties, growing more than $1 billion worth of the sweet fruit in 2024.
But the high amount of pesticide use in those farms has badly contaminated local drinking water to the point that thousands of people can’t use their wells.
The EPA grant was intended to improve city and county infrastructure and to connect contaminated wells to those municipal water lines, which would have improved water quality for more than 5,000 people.
“It is devastating news for us,” Marcela, a farm worker, told The Guardian. “We urgently need water.”
Why is this important?
Clean drinking water is one of the most important things needed for human life. Unfortunately, it’s also difficult to come by in many parts of the world.
An estimated 2 billion people globally — roughly one-quarter of the world’s population — don’t have access to clean drinking water.
In the United States, more than 2 million people reportedly live without running water or basic indoor plumbing. And studies show that nearly half of all tap water in the U.S. may be contaminated with PFAS, known as “forever chemicals” because they accumulate in the body and may take hundreds of years to break down.
What’s being done to get clean water?
Marcela told The Guardian that the well on her property is broken, and even if it were fixed, the water would likely be too contaminated to use. Instead, her family spends hundreds of dollars every few weeks on 5-gallon bottles of water.
And while bottled water provides a clean drinking option to families in the area, it’s also often full of microplastics. And local water advocates say that many families in the area have used the tap water for drinking or cooking, not knowing that it was contaminated.
The Community Water Center, which was overseeing the EPA grant’s implementation, says it is now looking for other sources of funding to help bring clean water to the region.
“Drinking water is a human right,” the center’s Maraid Jimenez told The Guardian. “And it shouldn’t be a political topic that’s contested.”
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don’t miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
