Though residents can shower and clean with the water, it is undrinkable. For McKinney and his wife, that translates to spending an average $160 on bottled water every month.

“We’re blessed to be able to afford it, and some of our neighbors are, too,” he says, taking a break from painting his house on a rare afternoon off from work. “But there are poor people out there who can’t.”

McKinney sits on the board of Pratt Mutual, the nonprofit group that operates Matheny Tract’s water system. Since the system’s arsenic levels exceed EPA limits, Pratt Mutual is legally obligated to resolve the issue. In 2009, facing deteriorating pipes, little money, and a lack of government oversight, Pratt Mutual decided to seek a water-system consolidation with the city of Tulare.

This was logical, as it is for many low-income county subdivisions that sit on the fringes of bigger towns in the San Joaquin Valley. When one water system merges into another, more people pay to a single entity. That should mean the cost of water is lower for customers, and that there’s more revenue to maintain infrastructure. Managerial and technical headaches are eliminated for the smaller community. Risk of contamination is lowered.

Consolidation also makes sense from a geographical standpoint: When precious water supplies and infrastructure are available mere blocks away, why refuse to extend it to people in need?

Caught between city and county governments, many of the San Joaquin Valley’s poor, unincorporated communities lack the most basic services. Government neglect, disenfranchisement, and poor land-use planning have helped shape these disparities. A number of these towns have recently seen their wells go dry because of the drought. But for many more, water issues—especially contamination—are nothing new.

Because of the unprecedented drought, the gulfs in service between neighboring communities may finally begin to shrink. In June, California lawmakers passed a bill enabling the State Water Resources Control Board to mandate certain water systems to merge. The legislation was both a reaction to the plight of dried-out communities and a result of years of work on the part of clean drinking-water advocates.

Drought consolidation, as the bill is known, is flanked by the governor’s $1 billion drought emergency bond package, as well as state drinking-water revolving funds. Both funding sources can assist disadvantaged communities facing severe water problems—even those that haven’t been directly brought on by the drought.

But as with so much in the San Joaquin Valley’s poorest towns, consolidation has proven harder than it should be. Though there’s at least one success story, many cities want neither to annex nor extend services to low-income subdivisions, because the return on investment is so low. For too many thirsty people, old squabbles, inequitable planning, and deep-rooted prejudices put a fundamental need—water—even further out of reach.