A Tale of Two Cities

Note: this situation is not the result of fabrication, the product of someone’s fevered imagination.

Rather, it is taken from the October 30, 2021 edition of the LOS ANGELES TIMES, a daily newspaper.

You can read the column here:

A California town refused to help its neighbors with water. So the state stepped in.

There once was a certain place, a town called Tooleville, named by Dust Bowl refugees for the Tule River. In that place the water was contaminated and unfit to drink.

Offending agents include hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen, and nitrates (linked to agriculture).

Drought and a lowered water table contributed to faltering wells.

The people of Tooleville paid $40/month for running water that could not be drunk, cooked with or used for brushing of teeth.

So the 340 people of Tooleville petitioned Exeter, a town of 10,500 less than a mile away, for access to its water, which could be drunk from tap.

For more than 20 years, Exeter has refused to share its water with Tooleville.

Clean, affordable drinking water is considered a basic human right in the state in which Tooleville is situated.