‘Brown Water for Brown People’: Making Sense of California’s Drinking Water Crisis

Summary: This article explains that many Californians do not have access to water. It focuses on the Latino farmer population. Many immigrants are unable to access clean water due to racial stereotypes and pesticides. The article focused mainly on the San Joaquin Valley and the struggles there. He interviewed and attorney who works on water rights issues, and the attorney stated, “Flint is everywhere here…It’s brown water for brown people”. This was a big issue for Del Real and he began to look further into the issue. He found that more than 300 water systems in California do not even meet public safety standards. This find was crucial for his article and the water rights issues at hand. 

Reaction: This article caught my attention because of the title. I knew that there would be race involved in this article, but I did not expect 300 water systems in CA to not meet public safety standards. This article goes beyond water rights, it expands into public health and the effect that big corporations can have on smaller communities. I would love to look into this more and understand the full effect on the San Joaquin Valley.

5 thoughts on “‘Brown Water for Brown People’: Making Sense of California’s Drinking Water Crisis

  1. This article drew my attention as well because I never knew the huge risks of the water. It is crazy how they always want to relate race to the problems in the world. If they looked at the bigger issues and the risk of the unhealthy water then we would be able to get a lot more done.

    • I know! This article struck my attention just off the title. I was so confused when I saw this and began to read more. It seems that California takes advantage of immigrants by supplying them with lower quality water. There needs to be a change.

  2. I also think it’s absurd that more than 300 water systems in California do not meet public safety standards, Ive seen this as a common theme in many of these articles: that standards for safety are not being met.

  3. I really like your summary in how farmer were being treated and how many of the water systems in california do not met the standard public safety. therefore, would you say that bigger corporations have more power in smaller communities or even low income communities and they try to explode them?

  4. What’s interesting to me is how we often want to point the blame somewhere else, ie flint also has bad water, while refusing to acknowledge our own communities’ failures. I never knew this about California and I would like to learn more.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *