Dying for a Glass of Clean Water in CA's San Joaquin Valley

Angel Hernandez, a community leader and organizer, looks with  distaste at a glass of cloudy tap water. Photo by David Bacon.

LANARE, CA - Angel Hernandez, a community leader and organizer, looks with distaste at a glass of cloudy tap water. Photo by David Bacon.

August 25, 2011

LANARE, Calif. -- When Mary Broad moved to Lanare in 1955, there were only four other families still living in this tiny, unincorporated community in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, halfway between old Highway 99 and Interstate 5 on the cracked blacktop of Mt. McKinley Avenue.

It wasn't always this way.

Lanare used to be a company town, taking its name from rancher and speculator L.A. Nares, one of the last of a string of speculators from the east coast who purchased the old Spanish land grants - in his case, the Rancho Laguna de Tache. From 1912 to 1925 the town had a post office and a station on the Laton and Western Railway.

Story by New America Media

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