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CALIFORNIA / TULARE COUNTY

East Porterville

Ran dryRestored February 2018
No photograph available
Population (2020)
5,549
Water cut
August 2014
Cause
groundwater
Where
36.06°N, 118.98°W

What happened, and when

Every dated water event the register holds for East Porterville, newest first, each with the sources that document it.

  1. Restored

    Restored

    The $48 million East Porterville Water Supply Project connected 755 homes to the City of Porterville system, in two phases completed in March 2017 and February 2018. Several hundred households outside the project stayed on private wells.

  2. Ran dryon the card

    Ran dry: what happened

    East Porterville's roughly 1,800 homes relied on shallow private wells fed by Tule River recharge. As the drought lowered the water table through 2014 the wells failed one by one: by late summer the county had logged 182 of about 1,400 households without water, and by November 784 wells had failed countywide, most of them here. Residents lived for years on county-delivered bottled water and non-potable tanks at a cost that reached about $650,000 a month.

    • State Water Resources Control Board: Resolution No. 2017-0015, East Porterville Emergency Water Supply Project, Phase 2 (April 4, 2017)
    • Associated Press (via WTOP): Drought leaves California homes without water (August 23, 2014)
    • KVPR: In East Porterville 'they were drinking water that looked yellow and red' (September 23, 2014)
    • Valley Voice: Office of Emergency Services reports 784 private well failures in Tulare County (November 6, 2014)
    • SJV Water: State still hasn't fixed Porterville drinking water crisis from the last drought (June 30, 2021)