San Lucas gets a drinking water supply, after more than three years on bottled water.

Merry Christmas, San Lucas. 

The tiny agricultural community near King City had been without safe drinking water for three and a half years due to nitrate contamination. 

The Monterey County Health Department on Dec. 12 issued a notice lifting a requirement that residents don't drink the water. 

"All levels are considered safe for drinking water," according to the notice, circulated in Spanish and English. 

The Health Department initially issued a do-not-drink order on July 7, 2011 after tests on the well that supplied the town showed nitrate levels exceeded federal standards for health and safety.  

“We are requiring the use of bottled water or water from an approved source for drinking or cooking,” the Health Department's 2011 notice reads. “Research is being done to find another water source.”

That other source is a new well, drilled by grower John Romans. He farms vegetables on Mission Ranch just outside San Lucas, and the old well sat in the middle of his farm field. 

The Central Coast Water Quality Control Board found Mission Ranch to be the source of the excess nitrates, delivered via fertilizer. The board ordered Romans and landowner Wendell Naraghi to pay for bottled water for San Lucas residents, about $2,400 a month to supply 450 residents and the 70-student San Lucas school. 

Elected officials representing San Lucas weighed in on the new water supply last week. 

"Having access to safe drinking water is a basic human right and the new well will help us secure that reality for the residents of San Lucas," Assemblyman Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, said in a statement. 

County Supervisor Simon Salinas weighed in too: "Access to clean drinking water is vital to the health of a community.”