SolarCity donates time for drought

Employ­ee vol­un­teers from SolarCi­ty came from as far as Stock­ton and Bak­ers­field to clean up and orga­nize the Porter­ville Area Coor­di­nat­ing Council’s (PACC) water station.

The group’s day began with a tour of drought-strick­en East Porter­ville on two city bus­es. Then the vol­un­teers gath­ered at the water sta­tion at the inter­sec­tion of Date Avenue and Plano Street to hear about the work PACC vol­un­teers have been doing, and to break into groups to orga­nize bot­tled water dona­tions, pull weeds and per­form oth­er tasks.

Elva Bel­tran, direc­tor of PACC, and her son Fred­dy Bel­tran Jr., a vol­un­teer, dis­cussed the drought-relief efforts, which have been under­way since August.

Bel­tran Jr. spoke of a fam­i­ly that paid $20,000 for a new well but then didn’t have any mon­ey left for the plumb­ing. Bel­tran Jr. and vol­un­teers con­nect­ed the family’s home to the well.

After the tour, sev­er­al mem­bers of the group expressed their shock at the suf­fer­ing the drought has caused.

“When I was dri­ving around in this, I was actu­al­ly think­ing this was a Third World [coun­try],” said Brady Ander­son of Stock­ton. “I was won­der­ing why is this not a fed­er­al dis­as­ter? That’s what real­ly gets me.”

Sonia Chavez, a Solar City account man­ag­er who lives in Porter­ville, is the per­son respon­si­ble for Thursday’s clean-up event. Chavez approached Elva Bel­tran ask­ing how her com­pa­ny could help.

“We want­ed to do some­thing for the com­mu­ni­ty,” Chavez said. “In my own back­yard we have a drought prob­lem and I want­ed to bring aware­ness to the community.”