Featured Video: Clean Water Is So Close for Tulare County's Tooleville

Tooleville, a rural community in the San Joaquin Valley of California, lacks reliable access to safe drinking water. For over 10 years Tooleville has been working on a consolidation campaign with the neighboring city of Exeter to access clean water through a connection to their system. Like many rural towns in the area, Tooleville’s groundwater has been contaminated with nitrates, pesticides, and hexavalent chromium. Given the city’s financial limitations, meeting drinking water compliance and customer satisfaction has been precarious.

While hexavalent chromium (chromium-6) was evaluated under the third round of Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring (UCMR 3), there is currently no federal drinking water regulation. A regulation does exist for total chromium which includes all forms of chromium. The total chromium standard of 0.1 mg/L assumes that the chromium sample is composed entirely of its most toxic form, chromium-6, to safeguard against the greatest potential risk. In 2017 California withdrew the state standard of 0.01 mg/L of hexavalent chromium. Chromium-6 exposure through drinking water has been linked to cancer and skin reactions in some research studies.  

For nitrates the EPA has set both the maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG) and maximum contaminant level (MCL) at 10 mg/L. Consuming water above this level can cause methemoglobinemia in babies and other health conditions.

Though the town has met federal limits for nitrates and total chromium, its 2017 consumer confidence report indicates compliance issues with total coliform. Within the last year, the city of Exeter has agreed to evaluate the capacity of its own water treatment system to access the possibility of providing water to Tooleville. This recent progress offers hope to many residents who have pushed for consolidation. 

As negotiations move forward, two options have been identified. Exeter could use a master meter to bill monthly water use while Tooleville continues to operate its own system. Alternatively, Exeter could consolidate Tooleville’s system entirely. Regardless of the option, Exeter will require new infrastructure to make the connection possible. For now Tooleville must wait for an evaluation to be completed. Once Exeter has a better understanding of their system capacity, the final decision will be left in the hands of the Exeter City Administrator and City Council.