By: Edwin A. Lombard III, Executive Director of Californians for Smarter Sustainability
Governor Newsom’s decision to convene a special legislative session early next month sent a clear signal to the Trump administration that California is prepared to protect its climate-related policies from federal encroachment. This presents an opportunity for California to lead the nation with innovative, thoughtful policy, and provides the governor a chance to play the pivotal role of political steward.
California voters expressed this forward way of thinking with the overwhelming passage of Proposition 4, the largest Climate Bond of its kind in the United States. State voters have taken bold action to protect the climate, and they are clamoring for their political leaders to follow suit.
As the legislature prepares to gather in Sacramento, lawmakers need to address how to safeguard the state’s environmental legacy. In order to achieve this goal, they should embrace a broader conversation on how to develop a sensible, transparent approach to environmental policymaking: one that incorporates economic incentives and a balance of the needs of the greater community of citizens while avoiding inflicting unintended consequences on vulnerable California residents.
This is an approach that historically, California has struggled with, more so in recent years. Yet, to address the pressing issues affecting California’s communities, including water quality challenges, lawmakers must make a course correction—and the special legislative session provides the opening.
California’s failing water infrastructure will be addressed by the Climate Bond, but legislators have to do more. Our water systems serve about 40 million residents, supporting diverse needs like drinking water, agriculture, and industry. Yet these systems continue to provide low-quality and unsafe water that has been degraded by agricultural runoff, urban pollution, and significantly, the state’s rapidly aging water infrastructure.
As it stands, approximately 400 water systems serving over 735,000 people fail to meet state safety requirements. Of those failing systems, around three-quarters have violated either state or federal guidelines for contaminants that are linked to cancer and other serious health problems. Many of those systems are clustered in rural farm areas such as Pixley, where residents’ water systems have elevated levels of cancer-causing chemicals.
Pixley resident Tequita Jefferson described weighing the risks of drinking water flowing through the taps in their homes as “You’re pretty much playing Russian Roulette,” adding “It scares me. All of it scares me. And then no one thinks about it. Here, we’re in a rural community, and people have a tendency to overlook us.”
Similarly, the state’s failing water systems can also be found in predominantly minority or low-income communities like East Los Angeles, which is home to many Hispanic residents whose water contains very high levels of “forever chemicals,” like PFAS.
Children in these communities face the same water quality issues at school as they do at home. A 2020 California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) Education Fund analysis of 2100 drinking fountains found that 1300 schools in the state tested positive for lead during the prior three year period. More recently, elevated lead levels were found in 200 drinking fountains and water faucets across multiple schools in Oakland.
Behind California’s “Golden State” image projected to the rest of the nation and around the world are residents, especially in our low-income and minority communities, who are struggling beneath a clear and present water quality crisis. Until recently, state and local elected officials have been slow to listen to community voices – if at all. Instead, lawmakers have prioritized pursuing other policies, like unnecessary bottle bans, that do nothing to address these communities’ needs and only exacerbate their water safety inequities when they have no place to turn for clean water.
The governor had an opportunity to let these communities know their voices were heard, and more importantly, that they mattered. Instead, he vetoed bipartisan legislation that would have developed a road map to improve the state’s water supply targets and infrastructure, prompting Californians to take matters into their own hands when they went to the polls earlier this month. Their overwhelming approval of two bond propositions on Election Day—Proposition 2, a $10 billion bond to repair and upgrade K-12 and elementary schools including removing lead from water; and Proposition 4, also a $10 billion climate bond allocating $1.9 billion specifically for drinking water improvements—are a clear sign that urgent action is needed to address our water quality crisis.
As lawmakers gather in just a few weeks, they should take stock of our communities’ unified voice on water quality concerns and other environmental policies that create unintended consequences. The special legislative session can serve as a springboard for strong policies that reflect our communities’ needs, revise existing laws to be more aligned with our concerns and ground-truths, and discard rules that are clearly doing more harm than good to state residents. That is certainly worth spending some extra time in Sacramento to achieve.
Edwin A. Lombard III is the Executive Director of Californians for Smarter Sustainability and the President and CEO of Edwin Lombard Management, Inc. Lombard previously led the California African American Chamber of Commerce and is a U.S. Navy veteran.
