California was built by taking water at unsustainable rates from faraway places, pumping it across the state at enormous energy cost, using it once, and flushing it into the ocean. The water sector alone consumes 19% of the state’s electricity and over 30% of its natural gas – making it a leading driver of the very climate crisis the state is now struggling to manage. Today, tens of millions of Californians face water insecurity. Their sources of water are being polluted and drained by decades of overuse and a climate that swings violently between drought and deluge. Over 80% of California’s native fish species are now threatened, endangered, or absent from parts of their historic range. Low-income households can spend over 5% of their income just to keep the tap running.
In April 2026, California Coastkeeper Alliance released California’s Blueprint to Climate-Ready Water Policy aimed squarely at state leaders – and the next governor – to fundamentally rethink how the state manages water. The platform is not aspirational – it is operational, naming specific legislation, regulatory policies, and funding vehicles to make change real.
The first and most urgent shift the Blueprint calls for is investing in local water resilience rather than continuing to rely on expensive, ecologically damaging water imports and new infrastructure like new dams and diversions. That means prioritizing wastewater recycling, stormwater capture, and water efficiency. It also calls for science-based instream flow requirements to protect historically over-diverted waterways including the Bay-Delta, the Colorado River, and Mono Lake – flows designed not just to manage water but to achieve actual recovery of endangered species.
Safe drinking water is another front where California is failing its residents. In farmworker communities throughout the Central Valley and Central Coast regions, agricultural runoff has contaminated groundwater with nitrates, leaving people unable to safely drink from their own taps. About 700,000 Californians rely on private wells that are unregulated and vulnerable to both contamination and drought. The Blueprint calls for enforceable agricultural discharge limits for nitrates and the creation of a Low-Income Rate Assistance program so that access to safe, affordable water is a guarantee.
California’s rivers are in similarly desperate shape. More than 1,400 dams have cut off over 90% of the historical spawning habitat that once supported robust salmon runs, and over 30,000 miles of the state’s waterways do not meet basic water quality standards. The Blueprint urges implementing instream flow requirements in priority watersheds, relocating levees to reconnect rivers to their floodplains, and launching a statewide “Forest-to-Flows” program to restore one million acres of headwater forests by 2035. The benefits cascade: healthier forests produce more late-season streamflow, reduced wildfire intensity, better fish habitat, and improved groundwater recharge – all at once.
Our Blueprint is also explicit about equity. California’s water failures disproportionately harm communities of color, low-income households, and Tribal nations whose water rights have never been properly recognized. The plan seeks to formally acknowledge that Tribes were the first to put water to beneficial use in California and establishing instream Tribal water rights accordingly, while also prioritizing Tribal-led stewardship and co-management of rivers and watersheds. On enforcement, the Blueprint advocates for making clean water permits actually enforceable and ensuring that when corporations are required to clean up contamination, the resources flow back to the communities that bore the harm.
Finally, California’s water governance itself needs modernization. The Blueprint demands reforming Water Board appointments to include environmental justice and Tribal representatives, enshrining California’s existing clean water protections into state law as a shield against federal rollbacks, and updating Proposition 218 to allow water agencies to establish low-income ratepayer programs and conservation pricing structures. The goal is a system that is transparent, accountable, and built for the climate reality Californians are already living. Read or download CCKA’s full Blueprint to Climate-Ready Water Policy here.
Executive Director Sean Bothwell leads CCKA’s initiatives to fight for swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters for all Californians.
