Picture a hot summer day in California farm country, say 112 degrees. In the tiny community of Tooleville, surrounded by olive trees and orange groves, there’s one thing you won’t see here that you’d see almost anywhere else in the sunny state—kids splashing in backyard pools.
“People don’t let their kids swim in pools here,” says resident Eunice Martinez. “They’re scared of what would happen if they accidentally swallow the water.”
Martinez, 44, and the other 350 people who live in Tooleville haven’t been able to drink their tap water since 2003, due to unsafe levels of nitrate contamination.
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