Last summer, a bill that could have protected California’s rivers, streams, and wetlands for generations got quietly shelved in its last legislative committee. That bill – Senate Bill 601, the Right to Clean Water Act – never made it to Governor Newsom’s desk. SB 601 had one core mission: write California’s longstanding clean water protections into state law before the federal government could take them away. Those federal protections had been in place for 50 years – until the U.S. Supreme Court gutted them in its 2023 Sackett v. EPA ruling. That decision removed federal protection from thousands of California streams and wetlands that don’t flow water year-round, which, in our dry state, is most of them. Seasonal creeks in the foothills, the vernal pools of the Central Valley, and the coastal wetlands that filter our water and shelter wildlife: all gone from federal protection. SB 601 would put those protections back – this time under California law, where Trump and the courts can’t touch them.
A Devastating Federal Landscape for Clean Water
While SB 601 is stalled in its last committee, things have gotten significantly worse. Since last August, the federal government has launched a three-front assault on America’s clean water laws – and California is squarely in the crosshairs. In November 2025, the Trump Administration proposed new rules that don’t just accept the damage from the Sackett ruling – they actively make things worse. Under the Trump proposal, a stream will only get federal protection if it holds water throughout the entire wet season. The ruling will cause 96% of our wetlands and more than 90% of our streams to lose federal Clean Water Act protection entirely. That final rule is expected within months.
Congress is moving to lock in these rollbacks permanently. In December 2025, the U.S. House passed a bill called the PERMIT Act that would let the cost to polluters shape the rules meant to protect your water. The bill would also let outdated pollution permits run for ten years instead of five and make it much harder everyday for Californians to hold polluters accountable for poisoning our waters. It’s sitting in the Senate right now. And just two weeks ago, on April 30, another senator introduced legislation that would bar California from considering “wait, this pipeline threatens our drinking water supply” and prevent that project from moving forward.
The Impacts at Home
This isn’t just speculation about what might happen – it’s already happening. In January 2026, California’s State Water Board handed the Legislature a detailed report documenting the real-world damage from Sackett on California’s water protections. Nearly half of all water permits processed between 2023 and 2025 had to be issued as weaker state-level permits because the federal Clean Water Act no longer covered those water bodies. In other words: the streamlined, well-established federal process that California relied on for half a century is being replaced by a slower and less protective state process. In Southern California, it was even more extreme – nearly every permit adopted would have been a stronger federal permit before Sackett changed the rules. And that number is only going to climb as permittees get more accustomed to the new system.
It’s not just about which waters get protected on paper. It’s about whether California can actually enforce those protections when someone breaks the rules. Before Sackett, if a company polluted a stream that’s federally protected, California regulators could have stepped in immediately – even before the pollution hits the water. But for streams that are now state-only, they have to wait until the damage is already done. And the maximum fines are lower: $5,000 per day without inflation adjustments for state-only violations compared to $10,000 per day for federal ones with inflationary adjustments. These may sound like bureaucratic details, but they translate directly into whether a company decides to cut corners on its pollution controls. When the fine is small enough, polluting a creek becomes just the cost of doing business.
Polluters are already exploiting these new legal gaps. California’s water regulators are now seeing companies use the Sackett decision as a legal shield – arguing that the water body in question is no longer federally protected, so the rules don’t apply. More than a third of active wetland enforcement cases have now been tangled up by Sackett-related legal challenges. The Water Board report is unambiguous: as the new landscape sets in, these number will rise and the damage will get worse.
At the same moment the state’s Water Boards are being asked to do more, they may be asked to do it with less. California’s 2026 budget process has raised the prospect of staff cuts to the water agencies responsible for issuing permits, conducting inspections, and bringing enforcement actions. Less federal protection means more work for state agencies and potentially fewer people to do it. Without SB 601, California risks losing both the federal baseline protections and the administrative capacity needed to replace them.
Time for Action
Governor Newsom has built his national profile on standing up to the Trump Administration’s attacks on California’s environment. He’s made speeches. He’s filed lawsuits. He’s promised to fight. But speeches don’t protect our water. Lawsuits take years. What California needs right now is a law. After Sackett, after the PERMIT Act, after a Trump rule that would strip 96% of California’s wetlands of federal protection, and after a new bill in the Senate that would take away the state’s ability to protect its own waters from pipelines and dams – the moment for words has passed. It’s time for the Governor to act.
SB 601 has already passed the Senate and cleared all policy committees. The heavy lifting is done. California’s own Water Board has delivered a comprehensive, data-backed report to the Legislature confirming that the problem is real, it is growing, and it is not going to fix itself. Every week that passes without SB 601, more permits get issued with weaker protections, more enforcement cases get bogged down, and more polluters get to hide behind a legal loophole that didn’t exist two years ago.
Governor Newsom should personally champion SB 601 and get it to his desk. Call it what it is: the most important clean water legislation California has considered in decades. Sign it into law. Then tell the story – to Californians and to the country – of what it takes to be a leader for clean water.
The creeks where your kids play. The wetlands that filter your drinking water. The seasonal streams that find their way to our iconic beaches. These waters don’t care about the legal distinction between “federal” and “state” waters. Neither do the companies that want to fill them in, drain them, or pollute into them. Right now, the law has a gaping hole and SB 601 fills it.
It is time to get SB 601 across the finish line. Governor Newsom: sign SB 601. California’s water is waiting.
Executive Director Sean Bothwell leads CCKA’s initiatives to fight for swimmable, fishable, and drinkable waters for all Californians.
