by Dan Bacher
Governor Jerry Brown yesterday signed historic legislation establishing a state policy that every Californian has a human right to safe, clean, affordable and accessible drinking water.
AB 685, authored by Assemblymember Mike Eng (D-Alhambra), also requires that all relevant state agencies consider the state policy when creating policies and regulations.
By signing this bill into law, California becomes the first state in the nation to declare safe, clean, affordable and accessible water a human right.
“Around 8.5 million people in Californians repeatedly experience excessive levels of toxicity in their drinking water every year,” said Assemblymember Eng. “As the representative of a district that sits on an aquifer that is the largest Superfund in the United States, I am very pleased that Governor Brown agreed that safe, clean, affordable and accessible drinking water is a basic human right and is willing to codify it into state policy.”
California’s failure to provide clean, safe drinking water to its residents captured the attention of the United Nations in a special report released in August 2010. Reporting on her mission to the United States, Catarina de Albuquerque, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, cited a host of alarming drinking water supply and sanitation conditions in California. (http://blogs.alternet.org/danbacher/2011/08/31/u-n-water-report-focuses-on-california-problems).
