Overcoming deficits in water and other local infrastructure in California's unincorporated communities: A regional research and advocacy initiative

In the Central Valley of California, several hundred thousand residents of more than 200 predominantly Latino low-income unincorporated communities face serious health and safety threats due to inadequate or nonexistent water and sewer systems, streets, sidewalks, parks and other infrastructure. The communities consistently show many of the most serious disparities in the state in health conditions that can be related to unsafe drinking water and to other inadequate infrastructure. Some of these underserved communities are rural, isolated settlements, while others are “islands” of unincorporated territory surrounded by rapidly expanding cities, but in each case their infrastructure deficits are created and compounded by their lack of political representation. Community leaders and their advocates have, for a number of years, organized and brought legal actions intended to improve public investment in these areas, and have now undertaken a broader initiative of research, capacity-building and policy change. These efforts are as localized as creating new neighborhood parks to encourage physical activity and as broad as developing state legislation to ensure that the water and infrastructure needs of unincorporated communities are taken into account in county general plans. This presentation, by leaders of the research component of this Valley-wide initiative, will describe the demographic and health conditions in the communities and the environment of political boundaries and financing districts which sustains the pattern of inadequate services. Then, the policy strategies that are being developed by the coalition of organizations will be described and analyzed.