I work for one of the largest environmental labs in California. We enforce the EPA standards on drinking water. My first gigantic question is, due to the size of the As atom it is pretty easy to filter. They make filters for it, so I'm highly confused why the city is spending large amounts to drill new wells when you can just make a filter system for far cheaper(yes I see that they're putting in a small amount of filters). You can buy a personal filter for a couple hundred (which is far cheaper than spending hundreds a year on bottled water) and then test the water for about 30-40 dollars at a lab. It just seems this article defies logic. The story doesn't add up to me at all. There has to be more to it. When a community well out in the middle of nowhere gets a hit on something it's a big deal and a pretty proactive response is taken as far as I've seen. I'm thinking these wells got hits on something a lot worse than arsenic, being that it's in an agriculture area that wouldn't surprise me.

As far as the water problem goes in CA I can say there are MAJOR companies and large amounts of money working on that. I can tell you some things to expect in the future for sure. Desalination plants and Effluent to drinking water plants. Right now there are some desalination plants being worked on(expect more from what I've heard) and right now we don't have a waste water to drinking water plant(we do have plants that purify waste water and put it back in aquifers to be pulled out by other drinking water facilities). California will be alright, trust me, there's far too many interests out here for anything to happen to them. I'd expect maybe some long term water restrictions and maybe higher taxes to pay for the plants. Don't worry though fellow Californians, as much as the media likes to scare you. From someone who deals with this stuff on a day to day basis, we're going to be okay.