By Jennifer Kim, Founder & CEO SEUNwater, 5/19/2021
The recent news in our home state of California is very exciting (both from a personal and business perspective). Governor Newsom announced that California has over 75 billion dollars in surplus funds. 5.1 billion of those funds are reserved for water resilience and 1.3 billion of that will specifically be used for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, with a focus on small and disadvantaged communities.
As I noted earlier, GREAT news. However, even before this announcement, there are often times where funds are available to many of the small disadvantaged communities with water issues. My experience in working with the people who ask for funding and with those who manage the funds is that there are always delays. That is, the funds DO exist and have always existed but are not being disbursed in a prompt manner.
I appreciate that water infrastructure is at the forefront of planning. I appreciate that the communities that SEUNwater currently and will continue to serve are being addressed. However, I am not convinced that improvements will be made in a timely manner. Even today, in these towns, children are advised not to use the drinking water due to high levels of nitrates. Bottled water is often sold out in stores and we are definitely heading into a long California drought period which will add to the current water issues that we struggle with today.
The “California Come Back Plan” is set to be negotiated on June 15th but my gut instinct is that many issues that currently exist in these small towns, especially in Central California, will not be top priority. You see, many of these towns were established in the late 1800’s. There has been ample time and opportunity for basic infrastructure improvements.
I think before we can rectify the decades and millenia of neglect, we must understand the “why” of how this happened in the first place. I unfortunately do not have an explanation or an answer to this but sincerely hope that our elected officials can take this under consideration. California is the 7th largest economy on this planet, there is not an acceptable explanation for children being unable to drink the water just 1 hour away from my home.
So the question is left, is 1 billion dollars enough to provide safe and clean drinking water for the entire state of California?
The answer is a definite “maybe.”
By utilizing the cost savings and efficiency in using the internet of water platforms and decentralized treatment systems, the outcome is hopeful. However, just as my company and team have made a commitment to help these many towns, our local government and those making decisions at the state level must also do the same.
The technology exists to serve the parts of California that desperately need improvement. This is a fact and has been for many years.
SEUNwater utilizes IoT, hashgraph and edge computing in order to deliver secure and instant water infrastructure even to the most marginalized communities. Our promise stands, we will deliver the technology and help those in need because there are many that are local to us who are in dire need.
Together, as an entire industry, we can stretch the 1 billion and truly make “California Come Back” better and stronger.
I hope you join us.
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