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When I was working for The Bakersfield Californian, I wrote about the woes of a tiny water company whose last well ran dry. Residents of the cluster of mobile homes the company served told me about bathing with baby wipes and being unable to flush the toilet without using up precious reserves.

I remember being surprised that even in California, people lived without reliable access to water.

That was in 2012. The issues that plagued that community had been building for decades before then, and, as my colleague Jose Del Real reports in a new story, they’ve since become even more urgent. Jose explained why:

Nearly one million Californians are exposed to unsafe drinking water each year.

And while California’s drinking water problems span the length of the state, about half of California’s failing water systems are concentrated in the agricultural San Joaquin Valley.