Clean water soon could join a list of issues – smog, the minimum wage, gun control – as an area where California law goes further than similar laws in the rest of the country.
But here’s the rub: The most likely path for that to happen is if lawmakers approve a new bill, SB 601, that calls for California to permanently enshrine into state law the rules of what has been, until recently, the federal status quo – the Clean Water Act of 1972.
The bill’s basic premise is simple. All future water pollution laws in California will have to cover the same waterways – wetlands, creeks, streams rivers and lakes – that applied to the federal Clean Water Act as recently as the early years of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Farmers and ranchers, among others, might fight it, in part because they’ve been hit hard by rising water prices. Though officials at agricultural organizations said this week that they haven’t yet heard about SB-601 (which was introduced on Friday, Feb. 21 by state Sen. Ben Allen, D-El Segundo) they’ve sometimes opposed tighter water regulations on the premise that they boost consumer prices.
But supporters say the new bill is the opposite of costly. Instead, they argue that recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and the new White House suggest long-standing environmental goals are under threat, and that lax environmental rules are, in fact, more costly to consumers, property owners and most businesses. They say locking in the language of a 53-year-old federal law into future state law is the best way to keep California’s waters – and the ocean they spill into – clean enough to support everything from recreation and tourism to property values.
Water flows down Cascade Falls in Fairfax, Calif. on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. (Sherry LaVars/Marin Independent Journal)
“We just don’t want to see (water rules) backslide,” said Garry Brown, founder of Orange County Coastkeeper, a nonprofit that’s backing SB 601.
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“In the 28 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never heard anybody say they want to see the water become dirtier. Clean water has never been a partisan issue,” Brown said.
“But conditions have changed,” he added. “And, now, we’re afraid of what we’re seeing right now in Washington.
“This bill is just a reaction to what we think is going to happen.”
Allen, whose 24th state Senate district runs from Palos Verdes Estates up the coast to Malibu and northeast to Hollywood and Calabasas, suggested the bill is a bid to prevent drinking water from becoming a luxury item.
“We struggle already to have enough clean drinking water in this state. In the Central Valley we’re all paying a lot of money to provide water that people need to live day-to-day,” he said.
“But there are some whose business model includes polluting the water and sticking everybody else with the bill for cleaning it up,” Allen added. “I think the rules that have served us pretty well for decades will keep that in check.”
Because it doesn’t create new rules, SB 601 isn’t expected to add costs or red tape for the farmers and ranchers, water agencies, builders and manufacturers most often affected by clean water laws. And, because it is enshrining long-standing federal law into the state code, it’s hard to argue that the idea is particularly liberal or conservative. The Clean Water Act was signed by a Republican president, Richard Nixon, during an era when politicians across the political spectrum often favored environmental protection.
But supporters argue SB 601 will be needed because federal environmental laws – and, in some cases, the broader goals of cleaning the environment – are being gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court and President Donald Trump.
A 2023 decision by the Supreme Court, in Sackett vs. the EPA, already fundamentally changed the Clean Water Act.
For decades prior to the Sackett ruling, federal regulators used the Clean Water Act as the basis for setting pollution rules that protected the “waters of the United States.” That phrase, before Sackett, was interpreted to include all the interconnected wetlands, streams, rivers and lakes that comprise the nation’s freshwater supply and often feed into the closest ocean.
Daniel Davis, 12, and Tony Melendez, 10, from right, of Alameda, cool off at Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach in Alameda, Calif., on Monday, June 17, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
But the Sackett ruling, which centered on an Idaho couple’s quest to build a home near a wetland that was wet only part of the year, shrunk the world of waters covered by the Clean Water Act. The 5-4 decision said the Clean Water Act applies only to waters that have a “continuous surface connection to” other bodies of water.
The new definition, according to environmental advocates, leaves a huge swath of the nation’s 8.5 million acres of wetlands ripe for pollution. Barring local or state regulations that specifically prohibit them from doing so, landowners and businesses can dump stuff into much of those semi-wet wetlands, or build on them, without fear of punishment.
But the ruling doesn’t prevent states from trying to recreate protections of the Clean Water Act once viewed as settled law. And while the language of SB-601 references the Clean Water Act, it specifically defines California’s protected waters as “nexus” waters, which Allen suggests is aimed at protecting the state law from being overturned in court.
“The rules we’re talking about are the rules we all basically agreed on for a long time,” Allen said.
But supporters of SB 601 say the Supreme Court is only part of why they want the new law. The other issue, they say, is an era of lax environmental protection they view as likely during a second Trump administration.
For years, in three election cycles, a staple of Trump’s campaign speeches was to lead the audience in chants of “drill, baby, drill,” implying that he would do everything in his power to boost domestic oil production. That includes changing environmental laws to make drilling easier and more profitable.
But during his first term, Trump’s environmental moves ranged far beyond oil and gas. In early 2021, the New York Times published a list of dozens of environmental laws and regulations – touching on everything from clean air to plastics – that the first Trump administration pushed to eliminate or water down.
A similar process might again be underway.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to review the legal basis for much of the climate rules currently enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency. This month, the administration moved to drastically reduce the scope and nature of environmental impact reports that have been required under federal law since the early 1970s. It opens up the prospect that everything from infrastructure projects to hotel construction, among other things, could be built for less money but create more environmental damage.
Trump officials have defended those moves by saying the broader goal is to keep the environment clean but to focus agencies on the work at hand, not on issues they view as unnecessary.
Elephant seals occupy Drakes Beach at the Point Reyes National Seashore on Friday, Dec. 27, 2024. (Alan Dep/Marin Independent Journal)
But backers of SB 601 are wary, and worry that a second Trump era will result in far-reaching moves that could reduce all manner of environmental protection.
“We started writing it two years ago, and I can say with a straight face that (SB-601) is just supposed to protect California from the new rules of the Sackett decision,” said Sean Bothwell, executive director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, the political arm of the Coastkeeper network, who helped craft the bill for Allen.
“But it also protects us from what we see coming from the Trump administration,” Bothwell added. “We’re under threat.”
Brown, founder of the Orange County branch of Coastkeeper, suggested the bill would succeed if it can maintain the underlying goals of the Clean Water Act, which he believes has been a powerful force for cleaning or at least staving off water pollution in Southern California.
“Has the Clean Water Act always done its job? No. But it’s left us in a much better position than we would be without it,” Brown said.
“If you ask anybody in Southern California who has been here for 20, 25 years, they’ll tell you the water quality is better now that it was,” Brown added. “It’s been critical.”
