Clean water is a human right - not a privilege. We are excited to feature Black leaders in the Clean Water movement in honor of Black History Month! Hear from two incredible environmental leaders: Kjia Rivers, Policy Advocate at Community Water Center and Ngodoo Atume, Water Policy Analyst at Clean Water Action. Both are doing innovative and impactful work in the field of groundwater and nitrate management, while ensuring Environmental Justice communities most impacted have a voice and seat at the decision-making table.
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Clean water is a human right - not a privilege. We are excited to feature Black leaders in the Clean Water movement in honor of Black History Month! Hear from two incredible environmental leaders: Kjia Rivers, Policy Advocate at Community Water Center and Ngodoo Atume, Water Policy Analyst at Clean Water Action. Both are doing innovative and impactful work in the field of groundwater and nitrate management, while ensuring Environmental Justice communities most impacted have a voice and seat at the decision-making table.
Make a special gift to support our podcast today at www.cleanwater.org/donate
Looking around the industry or communities, I just saw a common thread where there's environmental justice issues or injustices, and then the communities that it's impacting. So we're talking about climate change, for instance, in California is interesting that all the issues Kjia narrated - the people facing the most are communities of color or low income communities, right? So you have climate change that is obviously impacting the whole world, but who is facing it more. They're mostly communities of color, black communities. And there, there's definitely connections between where there's income level and people able being able to really provide protection against climate change issues, be it water availability, be it water quality, or be it like the heat Kjia was talking about, or the wildfires. It's just a lot happening currently in the state of California. Andthe communities that face those impacts are mostly low-income communities. Hello everyone. Welcome to We All Live Downstream, a Clean Water Action podcast. In each episode, we will be interviewing leading environmental and their work in the field. We'll dive deep into topics from drinking water and climate change to environmental justice, plastic pollution, and toxic chemicals. I'm your host, Jenny Vickers, the National Communications Manager for Clean Water Action. So it's February - in recognition of Black History Month, we are excited to feature the stories of black leaders in the Clean Water Movement. Today, we are so thrilled to welcome Kjia Rivers policy advocate at Community Water Center, and Ngodoo Atume, Water policy Analyst at Clean Water Action. Originally from San Diego, Kjia joined Community Water Center in May of 2022 as a policy advocate working on drought nitrate and climate change related drinking water issues. Originally from Nigeria, Ngodoo is Clean Water Action's Policy Advocate in Oakland, California, focused on groundwater management and nitrate contamination control. Welcome to we All Live Downstream. I'm so happy to have you both here. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us. So before we get started, can you tell us a little bit more about your background, you know, where you live, where you're from, maybe a fun fact about yourself and what you do now? Well, hi everyone. I'm Kjia Rivers. Like Jenny said. I grew up in San Diego and I went to school at UCSP, where I studied environmental studies and political science. I also played volleyball on the collegiate team there for four years. And I'm really looking forward to this direct league that I'm joining. I haven't played volleyball in a couple years, so I might be a little rust, but I'm looking forward to it. Sounds fun Kjia. Hi everyone. I am originally from Nigeria. I actually have a Bachelor's in environmental engineering. So I like to say I've been doing water and environment all my life, and this is an area that I'm really interested in. I grew up around the river. It was called River Banway. And we would always go there and play. So I'm really interested in protecting rivers and water bodies. I currently work in Oakland and my work is focused around ensuring that policies are protecting communities, particularly communities of color. Happy to be here. Thank you both so much for taking the time to chat with us, especially in an important month like this. I mean, we celebrate black history every day here at Clean Water Action, but we are celebrating and uplifting leaders today here at this podcast. And especially leaders in the environmental and Clean Water movement. I wanna learn more about what does Black History Month mean to both of you. To me, Black History Month means uplifting black voices, black achievementsand black culture in general. As well asI believe the work that we're doing really encapsulates the message behind Black History Month, making sure that people of color communities have the resources that everyone should have in order to really live a nourishing life. Water is a human right, and it shouldn't be an option. It should be protected for all. So I think that's the black history one things to me. I would say that in addition to everything that's kind of saidI think Black History Month is a time where we do some recollection as a people. And just looking back to the history of African Americans in the United States. So I've really had to do a lot of reading about Black History Month and where I started and what it means, and just understanding that racism for black people has been there for very long. Blacks in America, Blacks in the Caribbeans, the ones in Africa, everywhere, and what has translated to environmental racism. And so issues of water or air quality or health is still very prominent in our Black communities here in the United States. So this is a time where we recognize that and, you know, if you're not aware of the history learnings and find you can support Black communities. Well, I'm so happy you're both here. I'm excited to hear from you, uplift your work and, and learn from you as well. You both work on agriculture in California, particularly as you mentionedfor those listening. Nitrate is a chemical found in fertilizers, manure, agriculture, runoff, dairy lagoons, and liquid waste discharge from septic tanks. There's other sources as well. You both could talk on that in a minute, but what sparked your interest in working on water? I know you mentioned water as a human right, is very important to you, butI just wanna know what sparked this and an in particular, nitrate management. Unsustainable use of the Earth's resources don't only affect the environment, but it also has severe impacts on communitiesspecifically communities of color, disadvantaged communities. Nitrate is just, it's really dangerous to consume. It can have multiple serious health impacts on, on people. I really think that what's been going on in terms of agricultural practices has had is having severe impacts on communities. Andnitrate contamination is really hard to detect the eye to the senses in general because it's colorless over less. It doesn't taste bad, it's tasteless. So really making sure that communities are drinking clean water because of the impacts that has and making sure that regulations are truly reducing nitrate that can be put into groundwater because nitrate lasts forever and groundwater, it's really important to take serious measures now and reducing it. So I think that this is a really urgent issue. It needs to be addressed rapidly and efficiently. And it's really all hands on deck. It can't just be one grower, it has to be a full collective effort. So I think that's why it's really importantespecially to drinking water. I'll go next. The question is what sparked my interest and nitrates? First in working on water, like, you know, you, you mentioned you grew up by the river already, but but you know, so that obviously sparked your interest because that's your memories of your childhood. But here, you know, in California there's so many issues with water but in particular yeah, nitrate management itself, like why you focused on that? Yeah. I think that's a great question. Like I said, I started it in school and I don't know if you all have had this, but there's this saying that the next world war, if there is to be, it's going to be about water. Because drought is across the world, there are different water issues. So it's just been a topic that is interesting to me on different aspects. I got to know about nitrates and the project I did in school. I mean, I knew about fertilizer, but I just didn't know the vast nature of nitrates and what it can do to communities. So I worked on a project in school where we had to study nitrates and I got really interested in it. And in California, California has one of the biggest agricultural industries in the world. So that means nitrate is everywhere. So working in California and working with a nonprofit like Clean Water Action that works with EJ communities, one thing that stood out to me early on was the impacts and the communities facing the impacts of nitrate. And it was predominantly communities of color that were facing the impacts of nitrate. So while the food, avocado gets exported all around the world, there are people facing those impacts. So there's a lot of energy currently in the state on nitrate control. And it's just interesting to me because I think like Kjia said is an urgent issue. It's something that has to be top of our priority as, you know, as an environmental organization, and also just people in California. And also I do think that nitrate contamination has gone on for too long in California and across the world, and we need to do something about it. So I'm just interested in being part of the change. I'm interested in being part of the organization and the group that brings relief and solutions to people. I also wanted to add that nitrate con contamination once a well becomes impacted by nitrate, there's really little that one can do to secure drinking water in that area, again for their home. Even drilling a new well, you could still run into the same issues. So that's why this is such an urgent issue - once a well's contaminated there's not much you can do, unfortunately. Yeah. So you both, I mean, obviously very passionate. You care about people, you care about health you care about lifting up people's voices and making sure that their voices are heard. And I think that makes for an amazing activist. But on top of that, I, I feel like you're focused on policy. So I feel like the two combined is very powerful. Can you talk about the main thing you're focused on right now in your work? In California, there's a programcreated by the Regional Water Board, the Central Evaluational Water Board called CV Salts. It's a program where agricultural discharges are put into different groups across the Central Valleywhere they're tasked with providing replacement drinking water to homes that are impacted with, with nitrate. So that's mostly what I'm focused on right now in terms of nitrate. Additionallythis year actually those groups, they're going to be creating plans which will control nitrate long term really make progress towards groundwater restoration in terms of nitrate and also finding nitrate impacted residents long-term drinking water solutions. So that's what I'm working on right now in terms of nitrate. I feel like Kjia she didn't tell us the full thing. She works on a whole lot of things when it comes to groundwater <laugh>. I work with Kjia on that, on the CV Salts program. We've been working on it for the past three years. And it's a program that I work with Community Water Center Leadership Plan to ensure the implementation. A very similar program that also nitrate focused. It's called the Irrigated Lands Regulatory Program. This was founded in 2006, so it's been there for a very long time and is a program to regulate the amount of nitrates that irrigated agriculture puts in their fields. So the really, the difference with that and CV Salts is that sea salts captures all discharges, so dairywastewater treatment, agriculture, but the irrigated lung regulatory program is just for irrigated agriculture. So we also work on that and really what we're doing is ensuring that the agencies are protecting communities. So our review or work with plans is focused on disadvantaged communities and drinking water users. So that's one program that I work on, and I think we'll get into this, but another program thatI work on is a Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. And that's like a general program in the states that is protecting groundwater quality, but also groundwater level. California has experienced a lot of droughts, so that's a program to regulate that and provide communities with drinking water, but also making sure it's clean drinking water. Thank you both. How did the two of you meet actually and start working like together? We've met because we both work on nitrate and our organizations are really good allies together. So yeah, we met on pretty early on when I started. Ngodoo kind of showed me the ropes. So I'm really grateful for that. That's really cool. Well thanks so much for that. Here at Clean Water Action, you know, a lot of the issues that we work on are, you know, clean water, climate change, Environmental Justice are some priorities of ours, and there's all interconnections. You have touched on this a little bit, but can you just talk about how everything is kind of interconnected in the work that you do? In terms of groundwater availability, climate change, and how that affects communities of colorcommunities of color experience climate change at disparate impactsand have disparate impacts. So climate change means more frequent and more intense droughtswhich cause groundwater levels to decline, meaning drywalls for communities and families, as well as the likelihood, increased likelihood that your well will become contaminated with groundwater contaminants, whether it be nitrate, arsenic it just lower groundwater levels means higher concentration. So it adds another layer to the drought that we're already experiencing. Then also the communities that we work closely with the capacity in order to build climate resilience is limited due to a lack of funding and investment in those types of programs and projects that will provide a safe place to go when there's extreme heat. And to ensure that drinking water resiliency is prioritized as drought is, drought becomes more and more common. And what about you, Godo? YeahI think in addition to everything Kjia said, and tho those are real issues that we face here in California, one interconnection that we've seen is early on in my career looking around the industry or communities, I just saw a common tread where there's environmental justice issues or injustices and then the communities that's impact in, so we're talking about climate change, for instance, in California is interesting that all the issues Kjia narrated the people facing in the most are communities of color or low income communities, right? So you have climate change that is obviously impacting the whole world or who is, who is, who's facing it more. They're mostly communities of color, Black communities. Andthere, there's definitely connections between where there's income level and people able being able to really provide protection against climate change issues. Be it water availability, be itwater quality, or be it like the heat sky was talking about, or the wildfires. There's just a lot happening currently in the state of California. Andthe communities that face those impacts are mostly, mostly low income communities. And this environmental injustices and tailoring that back to the agricultural industry that we're talking about earlier in California, lot of the agriculturalindustries or farms are in the Central Valley region of California. And that is where you mostly have low income communities. I'm talking about communities depending on less than 25,000 a year they're there. And then that's also a very hot region of the states. So impacts of drought impacts them the most than where in the coastal side of the state, if that makes sense. so there's just a clear connection there between environmental racism and injustices and the impacts of climate change. And then you have the policy side and, you know, I wanna say the lack of urgency to meet this issues. There's work being done to address the concerns, or sometimes it's really slow and, you know, people's lives are being impacted. So you mentioned this earlierabout the work that you're you know, focused on right now with groundwater. OIver the past decade, California has gone from being the state with the least groundwater regulation to adopting a law that serves as, as now a model. Can you talk a little bit about the work you're doing on implementing this law? Like you mentioned there's a severe drought, the worst drought on recordbut also how does this uphold the voices of mental justice communities? Like are there voices being heard, they're the ones getting impacted? Like how are, how is this law working with these communities and doing specifically? That's a great question. <laugh>, we can spend all day trying to answer that question. Sorry about that. <laugh>.<Laugh>. No, it's a good one. It's a good one. So going back to the history of California, interestingly with all, you know, the groundwater dependent communities has never had a law regulating groundwater use, which many other states had until 2014 whenthe Sustainable Groundwater Management Act passed. And this washistoric. It was a big deal for the states to pass that law. And the law basically said that groundwater use or extraction has to be regulated. So for the first time, we're monitoring and regulating all users of groundwater. AndI can define what all users of groundwater. So literally anybody that uses groundwater, the agriculture industry, communities, groundwater dependent ecosystem, wetlands, anyone dependent on groundwater, was going to be regulated with this law. So it's almost a decade now. So next year makes it 10 years since that law passed. And part of the law was that all beneficial users of groundwater be considered, and that includes communities, disadvantaged communities, the way the law calls it. So at Clean Water Action, we've done a lot of work on SGMA, we've done, we've done a lot on ensuring that the law is protecting communities. We've done a lot of work on ensuring that community voices are on the decision making tables. Andthis law has local control. So it's not regulated on a state level, it's regulated on a, it's actually regulated on the state level, but the control is on the local level. And I thought that was really great when it passed because local level gives the local communities an opportunity to really partake in how they're protecting their groundwater. So two things. One is that there's still a lot of work to do. I'm not gonna say it's a field law <laugh>, there's still a lot of work to do in protecting communities. We've done a lot of research and studies and we've found that less than 40% of disadvantaged communities are not protected by this law currently. Also, we found that stakeholder engagement when it came to disadvantaged communities has been lacking so far in the implementation of this law. So there's still a lot to do. And, you know, we're still working with agencies, legislatures to make sure that communities impacted on the decision making table. And I would end by saying that communities impacted are very interested in being part of it. There's this misconception that, you know, they don't understand the law. They won't be, they don't wanna be a part of the policy. They're really interested in being part of it. You know, they depend on wells, you know, Kaya talked about wells at the beginning. They depend on this wells for their drinking water, so they wanna be a part of it. You just need to be on that table making those decisions. And Kjia knows a little bit about groundwater as well, so I wanted to chime in. you can also talk about SB552 that you're working on. Yeah. Kaiya, do you wanna add anything? Sigma and drought are super interconnected. Like I said before, climate change, exasperates droughts, they come, it makes them more frequent, more intense but also groundwater over extraction, also exasperates drought as well. Over pumping causes, groundwater levels to cli to decline even more causing walls to go dry. So Sigma and drought. Successful sigma means less wells going dry. More communities having access to water being able to use water from their tap. I also work closely on SB552 which is a wall in California, which promotescohesive drought planning across the state. Both at the state level and county level. There's a technical assistance provider in the Central Valley that provides assistance to families that have wells that go dry or have contamination in their well. They provide them with replacement water, bottled water, haul waterand even support them and getting a new well drilled. But programs like that are very scarce across the state of California. And Central Valley isn't the only place where wells do go dry and that experience contamination issues. So this, this law could be really impactful in making sure that as drought persists, as climate change persists communities, families have access to water long term and they know where to go if something happens with their water supply. so I think it's really important. Yeah, it sounds like you're both doing just groundbreaking, incredibly important work. Thank you both for the work that you do. You've done a lot and you're, you will continue to do a lot, but I just wanna know so far in your careers and, and your workwhat is the biggest accomplishment that you're most proud of? Last year I created a presentation for the Department of Water Resources about SB552. The law I mentioned beforeabout how counties can ensure that they have adequate emergency response preparation as they become, as they start planning and implementing the law. because it's so important that residents know what to do if water shortage happens. they know who the call and they're not adding onto the stress that they have of not knowing who to call when they already don't have access to water. so I really hope that that presentation provided some insight on how counties can really be successful in implementing emergency response and making sure that families have access to water. That's really great. Congratulations. Ngodoo. What are you most proud of? So I have been in the industry for like six years. And so two things. The first thing I think I'm most proud of is working with communities. And when you see their thesis and, you know, you go into communities and they're happy because you've been able to bring in solutions to their problems, you know, that makes me really happy. And secondly, last year, 2021 I workeded on a report for the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act andit showed the lack of consideration of underrepresented farmers of color. So the results were staggering and we were able to use that report to advocate for funding from the state legislature, and we got 10 million for protection of underrepresented farmers of color. So that was a big win for us, and that's something I'm proud of. That's awesome. Yeah, if you wanna learn more about that, actually you can go to cleanwater.org and visit our California page under publications under publications. The report is there, you can go to our blog too. Ngodoo Atume has written a few blogs about sustainable Groundwater Management and the SGMA and Underrepresented Farmer's report is there as well. That's really great. Congratulations on that. Andso there's a lot of work. It sounds like, you know, there's so much work to do, so much work ahead of us, and the drought isn't going away, climate change isn't going away. What are some of the goals you have ahead and how do you hope to achieve them? I guess one overarching goal that I have is to make as much progress to ensure that everyone has access to safe drinking water. That's the overall goal. I guess more specifically, like, I would like to make sure that nitrate contamination there's a plan to really find a long-term solution, a long-term plan to reduce groundwater contamination through ILRP, like Ngodoo mentioned before, and through CV Salts, those programs could be really influential in how communities can get their water and help and reduce the worry of drinking unsafe water. So that's one of my really big goals. As well as like men I mentioned before with SB552I would like to support counties in creating county drought plans so that drought isn't a surprise and there's a plan on what to do when communities or individual homes lose water. So those are some of my goals and I would love to do that. Working closely with our community partners making in this implementation as well because it's directly impacting them. And when regulations are implemented with community voices, then they're more successful because community voices means that it's going to be meaningful to them. Community voices and implementation means that it's going to be meaningful. So that's what I'm looking forward to. These are some goals I have. That's awesome. Incredibly important. Ngodoo? She said all my goals. She said everything I was gonna say I think.. It's good to be aligned with someone, right? Right. To work together. <laugh>. Yeah. Completely aligned. The only thing I'll add is, you know, on the nitrates piece nitrates currently the CV Salts program and irrigated lance program we talked about has a timeline of 35 years. that by 35 years nitrate contamination will completely be eliminated. my goal is that we get this sooner than that. I want to continue working on policies that protect communities, policies that make sure people don't have to drink water that is contaminated with nitrates. So I, I wanna continue working with the agencies, continue the advocacy work I'm doing, and they have this interesting mark of nitrate contaminated regions in California. You'd see a lot of red dots showing where nitrate is impact. I want those red dots begun and people should have safe drinking water before 35 year timeline. So that's my goal. That's awesome. so we like to end our podcast with a call to action. You guys have both mentioned a lot of issues you're working on, but is, you know, there's someone listening right now that wants to get involved, they wanna take action, maybe they wanna get involved in this work in, in a very little way, maybe in a big way. if you can just mention a couple things maybe that people can do right now to help out in terms of California actions that the listeners can take. if you're located in the Central Valley, that's where CV Salts is implemented. so really reaching out to the groups that I called, the groups I mentioned before of discharges, they're so really looking into them seeing what they're doing and also spreading that information to folks that you may know that are also on domestic wells. like I said before, nitrate, you don't know if your water could be contaminated, you don't, you can't tell. so really getting your well tested and spreading that information that they are doing this for folks that have nitrate contamination and they can have free clean drinking water. also for drill like I said before SB 552 covers the entire state. so really get involved with your gel task force. That's what the law's also creating as they start implementing SB 552 so that everyone can be everyone's voices can be heard in this process. and it can be a collaborative process with different groups, different backgrounds, different demographics so that everyone's voices can be also used in implementation. It's a well-rounded plan. My call to action is that people engage with their local legislatures and local policy makers to ensure that drinking water use is being protected. So basically I'm calling on everyone to be able to advocate whatever state you're in for policies that protect climate change policies that address climate change, protect drinking water, and generally environmental issues. And also I wanna call on people to really, really call on policies that will protect black communities and communities of color in your state or wherever you are. So work with your local legislatures to protect to protect communities. Well, thank you so both so much. You know, even if you're not in California, like Ngodoo mentioned you can reach out to your legislatures. You know, drought is impacting other areas as well. and it may impact you in the future. So I always like to say there's always a ripple effect of the work you're doing, right? So you're helping to shape policies of the future right now, even if it's in California. Other states you're creating models to follow, you know, like Colorado or other states that might be experiencing drought. So just know that wherever you are you can make a difference. you can visit community water center.org to learn more about Community Water Center and you can learn and get involved, join their email list. You can go to clean water.org as well to learn more about if you wanna know specifically about California, you can go to the California page or just join our national email list and we'll email you updates about all this great work. So thank you again, Kjia and Ngodoo for being here and all the incredible work that you do. Thank you for sharing your story with us, especially for Black History Month. We celebrate all year long but we wanted to take this time out to hear your stories. So thank you so much. Thank the listeners for joining us. it's important to uplift important leaders during this month of celebration and also reflection. If you'd like to support Clean Water Action, you can visit our website and click on donate. Your support helps to keep our engines running. It allows us to continue to fight for healthier communities, clean water , and a more just world for all. Be sure to subscribe to Clean Water Action's podcast. We All Live Downstream. It's available on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, and all your favorite podcast streaming apps. And before we go today, Kjia and Ngodoo, I just wanna say thank you so much for taking the time. Is there anything else you wanna say before we say goodbye? Thank you for having me. It was a great time chatting with you both. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. This was great chatting with you and Kjia. I enjoyed this. Yeah, I appreciate you both so much and I can't wait to learn more about the work you do at Community Water Center and the work that you'll continue to do together. Really appreciate it. Bye everybody.