One day in 1979, Nettie Morrison, then 44 and living near Bakersfield, California, announced she was moving to a tiny, rural town called Allensworth, 40 miles north. Removing it costs money, and money is something a small, rural water system never has. “It’s just not possible for these rural communities to scale up enough to pay for the kind of water system they need.”Allensworth is not unique among rural communities in California. “All rural communities have in common a lack of infrastructure investment on a federal level,” Flowers says. Photograph: Jim Gensheimer“Allensworth is less about wastewater, and more about water” than rural communities in the South, Flowers acknowledges.

Source: The Guardian March 07, 2019 10:52 UTC