Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/City of Fresno discolored water investigation


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Procedural close. I'm closing this discussion because it has evolved into a discussion of how to edit this article (and other ones) and not about whether this article should be Kept, Redirected, Merged or Deleted. I don't think a further relist will bring editors back to a proper AFD discussion so I'm just going to close this as Undecided. No penalty against a future AFD but the next one should focus on policy and notability factors and not get off-track and into the weeds on the subject of the article. Liz Read! Talk! 05:40, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

City of Fresno discolored water investigation

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

For notability under WP:EVENT, it needs to have a large geographical scope. This has only been reported by media within the immediate region. It seems to fail notability requirements. Nweil (talk) 00:08, 11 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Comment I mean, lots of places have discolored water at one point or another, although the "Flint Michigan water crisis" has an article. This seems to have ongoing legal issues for the last 10 years. Might be notable. Oaktree b (talk) 01:40, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Leaning keep WP:GEOSCOPE is a heuristic: it does say that, but with a lot of "usually" and "not necessarily" qualifiers. This seems probably notable enough by all the other criteria.
 * (Flint water crisis, for easy clickability. It is a much longer article than this, but I also remember it being much more publicized.) &#x2130; mi1y&#x29fc;T&middot;C&#x29fd; 04:17, 11 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 07:16, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Comment from AFD proposer I actually just noticed that the lawsuit was dismissed: or  or . Simply including that fact here for reference. Nweil (talk) 23:11, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 01:54, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Weak delete It happened, but doesn't seem to have had much lasting coverage in media. Feel like it should be notable, but it's not backed up by sourcing. Oaktree b (talk) 16:42, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.

Published By: National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) https://www.jstor.org/stable/44537854 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elinruby (talk • contribs)
 * Merge to Central Valley groundwater pollution and/or Environmental issues in Fresno, California. I think we weren't seeing notability because it's actually a large, important, and long-standing problem, of which this one incident in one neighborhood was only part. And none of the sources call it "discolored water investigation". The larger series of events is definitely notable, and in close proximity to Fresno. The aquifer of the entire valley has suffered from pollution for years if not decades. These sources look pertinent, and although several of them are governmental, they may suggest some alternate search terms.
 * Unsafe Drinking Water Is Bad Enough: But What If You're The One Tasked With Fixing It?, Kerry Klein, KVPR, May 15, 2019
 * California's Groundwater Live: Well Infrastructure, California Department of Water Resources]
 * Kern County Water Agency
 * Ground water in the Fresno area, California
 * SUSTAINABLE GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT ACT (SGMA)
 * A case study simulation of DBCP groundwater contamination in Fresno County, California 2. Transport in the saturated subsurface, Keith Loague, Robert H. Abrams, Stanley N. Davis, Anh Nguyen, Iris T. Stewart, Available online 15 June 1998.
 * State warns more Valley groundwater agencies that their plans don’t meet standards, DANIELLE BERGSTROM, LOIS HENRY, SJV WATER AND JESSE VAD, SJV WATER DECEMBER 09, 2021 Fresno Bee
 * Persistence of Brine Pollution in Fresno, California Aquifer: 26 Years Later Jan A. Krancher, Clayton R. Auernheimer, Glenn Bisel Jr. and Kenneth D. Schmidt Journal of Environmental Health Vol. 43, No. 6 (May/June, 1981), pp. 314-318 (5 pages)
 * Unclear to me why corrosion of pipes inside houses would be an "environmental" issue? The groundwater was never considered the issue here? Nweil (talk) 17:15, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Fresno's municipal water system uses ground water. It's something that would be blindingly obvious in California but not be spelled out until the coverage got to explainers in the national media. Also, a lot of hyperlocal coverage of pollution that uses another location name but is still quite close. Visalia comes to mind but there are others. As I recall it's the same aquifer. As for pipes -- I have no paid attention to whether the corroded pipes were inside or outside the house, but it doesn't really matter. The city water supply is not supposed to eat through plumbing. It's just that one way that lead can get into drinking water is if the pipes are older (thus made of lead) and the water is acidic. That is what happened in Flint. I just did a copy edit on Environmental issues in Fresno, California; it isn't comprehensive because that scope is too limited also, since the it's a Central Valley problem really, and I haven't looked at that article yet. But there is already a paragraph there about the discolored water. It would be trivial to add the rest of this material into that section. Elinruby (talk) 01:16, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Visalia for example is 44 miles from Fresno. Orosi is 30. Elinruby (talk) 01:35, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Maybe you should refer to the lawsuit documentation. The affected homeowners are claiming that their problems started when the surface water treatment plant came online in 2004. So not groundwater, it's water from the San Joaquin River. Also, with regards to lead, the Fresno water never exceeded EPA standard maximum levels. Nweil (talk) 05:07, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Its difficult for me to say there is any "environmental issue" happening when this type of thing is regulated by somewhat overlapping jurisdictions of multiple agencies (Department of Public Health, State Water Resources Control Board and the US Environmental Protection Agency) and none of them issued a violation to the city for anything related to this. Its pretty clear to me that this page was created as part of the class action lawsuit coming to a head (created in early September of last year and the hearings started a few weeks later). The person who created the page has really only worked on this page and I have concerns about WP:COI. If anything it should be merged into a currently nonexistent City of Fresno Department of Public Works page since its way more about the operation of the water system than anything else. Nweil (talk) 05:17, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I thought you said the cause was pipes inside houses. Look, I can look at the lawsuit documentation. But if your concern is the lawsuit, then I would assume you want to deny them a separate article (?) I'm suggesting a merge to another article, which would do that. I disagree with a couple of the other things you said, but let's stay focused Elinruby (talk) 07:01, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * followup after more reading Hmm the question of what and how to merge would remain. The City of Fresno seems eager to minimize any liability it might have and therefore isn't a reliable independent source. The concern about COI in this article looks well-founded though.


 * Sorting through the facts as best I can at the moment: The City of Fresno relies on groundwater and needs to solve that. The northeast water treatment plant (now closed for reasons that aren't clear) produced a mixture of surface water and groundwater. If the surface water was from the San Joaquin -- not verified but likely, based on geography -- its notoriety for pollution would be irrelevant, as most of the runoff pollution would take place downstream of there. On the other hand, if that plant was using groundwater all, it would be drawing from the edge of a highly polluted and depleted aquifer where it meets the Sierras. So I don't know whether to absolutely discount this lawsuit, and given the city's lack of transparency and somewhat specious explanations, I don't think I should. The primary importance of where pipes need to be replaced is whether the expense would be the city's, for example.


 * Yet the article as it stands relies heavily on a paywalled Fresno Bee article about a conversation on NextDoor. The Bee is definitely reliable, but whether everything said in that NextDoor conversation was accurate is another matter. The name I dislike was used by the city, who should know better. Residents weren't worried about the color but whether the water was "tainted." As an aside, red water might simply be caused by iron rust, so the color itself was not a problem if that is all it was. However, according to anybody involved, there were traces of more than iron in quite a few of the samples. (I think that I read that the standard for a water system is that less than 10% of samples should contain lead, and I think that was true. That might be why  said lead was not an issue. I actually only mentioned Flint because somebody did further up, as an example of a notable water issue.) There are parallels, but I don't think this episode should have a separate article.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Linguist111 (talk) 05:54, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I think the proper weight for this incident is something like this: The city of Fresno attempted to mitigate its reliance on groundwater, a sound policy decision. However complaints and a lawsuit arose. (If we can determine the validity of the complaints, so much the better, but if not we stop there.) Pretty much this is already in Environmental issues in Fresno, California, although the wording should be checked to make sure that we don't seem to be validate it, since we don't know if it is valid or not, and the record-keeping and compliance problems should be mentioned. I am willing to do that checking. After that I would have no objection to deleting. As an aside I didn't see any mention of testing for nitrates, which I would expect. Did I miss something? Elinruby (talk) 19:13, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * A rewrite would be needed, as the paragraph that is there is rather misleading. I can't do it at the moment and should perhaps pause to assess consensus. But that's my proposal. Elinruby (talk) 19:40, 21 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I think Environmental issues in Fresno, California has a lot of issues as well but I updated it with regards to the water pollution section. Feel free to review Nweil (talk) 18:03, 23 January 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Yes, Environmental issues in Fresno, California has a lot of problems. I am thinking for example of deleting the uncited ambiguous sentence about radon out of the lead, unless you have a better idea. Your rewrite on the water pollution section is a definite improvement. Two things jumped out: I think we should mention that the lawsuit was dismissed on technical grounds. The homeowners couldn't prove who did the work on the meter installations, as I understand it. Just to prevent from giving the impression that their complaints were groundless. On the other hand, I thought the quotes were rather long and boring, maybe to the point of undue. I'll try to be more specific after pondering it a while. Elinruby (talk) 07:37, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * ps Central Valley groundwater pollution is worse Elinruby (talk)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.