Bringing arsenic-safe drinking water to rural California

According to the Rev. Dennis Hutson, people used to love the taste of Allensworth's water. "People used to say things like, 'Wow, this is the best water I've ever tasted!'" said Hutson, who owns a farm in the small Central Valley community. "There were even visitors who took gallon jugs of water home with them because they thought it tasted so good." Now, many residents of this historically Black community know that it is not safe to drink water from the wells in their town. Like many areas throughout California , the groundwater beneath Allensworth is tainted with dangerous levels of arsenic, a highly carcinogenic element that can seep into the water table from deposits in the soil and bedrock. While cities and larger municipalities can afford to remove arsenic from their water, many people living in small and rural communities are forced to choose between drinking contaminated tap water or purchasing bottled water - and those with private wells may not even know that their water is unsafe. In collaboration with Hutson and other Allensworth community leaders, engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, are currently field testing a simple and low-cost new arsenic treatment system that is designed to help small, rural communities like Allensworth access arsenic-safe drinking water.