# Community Engagement Core. Advancing California's Human Right to Water through the Water Equity Science Shop (WESS)

> **NIH NIH P42** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY · 2023 · $110,097

## Abstract

CORE B (COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CORE - CEC): SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
The Water Equity Science Shop (CEC-WESS) of the UC Berkeley Superfund Research Center seeks to
address drinking water quality problems in California that exist despite sophisticated statewide water
infrastructure and federal and state water quality laws. Industrial and agricultural activities in the state have led
to elevated levels of chemical contaminants in drinking water such as nitrate, arsenic, pesticides, and CrVI.
Among socioeconomically disadvantaged communities, degraded infrastructure, and a lack of resources to
treat contamination result in drinking water that does not meet regulatory standards for health and safety.
Residents served by water systems with fewer than 5 service connections and those using private wells face
even greater challenges, as these systems are not regulated under existing drinking water laws and little
monitoring exists to evaluate contamination problems. The fact that communities with elevated contaminants in
their drinking water are largely low income and disproportionately Latinx raises environmental justice concerns.
 The CEC-WESS will expand its impactful work to address these water equity challenges by leveraging the
biomedical and water quality engineering expertise of Berkeley Center to support the priorities of community-
based non-governmental organizations and agency stakeholders working to achieve the goals of CA’s Human
Right to Water law. The overall approach of the CEC-WESS draws on our prior success at undertaking
community-based participatory research that elucidates sustainable and socially-just strategies to improve
drinking water quality in partnership with community-based organizations throughout the research process. In
partnership with the Community Water Center (CWC), the CEC-WESS will significantly expand CWC’s
Drinking Water Tool (DWT), an interactive web-based tool, that identifies communities vulnerable to challenges
in meeting CA’s Human Right to Water. We will develop and integrate new data layers to identify drinking
water threats from PFAS sources (e.g., airports, landfills), agricultural pesticide applications, Superfund sites,
CAFOS and other sources (Aim 1). This enhanced DWT will be disseminated to agency stakeholders and
communities, and leveraged to identify candidate communities for enrollment in a household tap water study
conducted through Center Project 1. The CEC-WESS will also support agency efforts to track and evaluate
Human Right to Water efforts through creation of community-informed metrics of drinking water quality and
accessibility among domestic well communities (Aim 2). Finally, we will develop interactive data tools for water
justice organizations and domestic well communities including a free online tool, “What’s in My Well Water? to
help individual domestic well owners interpret their water testing results and learn how to reduce exposure to
harmful contaminants (Aim 3). Our proposed work will fill...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10690459
- **Project number:** 5P42ES004705-35
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY
- **Principal Investigator:** Rachel Adele Morello-Frosch
- **Activity code:** P42 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $110,097
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1997-04-01 → 2027-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10690459

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10690459, Community Engagement Core. Advancing California's Human Right to Water through the Water Equity Science Shop (WESS) (5P42ES004705-35). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10690459. Licensed CC0.

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