California bill aims to protect wetlands from Trump order

Legislators and environmentalists are considering how to safeguard California’s wetlands after the Trump administration announced its plans to rein in — once again — the nation’s 53-year-old law protecting waterways.

At stake are seasonal streams, ponds and pools, which are only inundated part of the time. In California, an estimated 80% of all linear miles of streams and rivers are ephemeral or intermittent.

The Trump administration’s plan to alter the Clean Water Act’s definition of wetlands to exclude such waterways could render vast areas of California essentially unprotected from developers and growers.

The plan proposed by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on March 12 comes as no surprise. Trump ordered the same move during his first term in the White House.

In 2017, Trump called many wetlands “puddles and ditches” and said the rules were “one of the worst examples of federal regulation and it has truly run amok.” The Biden administration in 2022 enacted new rules that reversed his decision.

During Trump’s first term, California officials said they would take action to protect the state’s wetlands from the president’s order. The State Water Resources Control Board in 2019 adopted new rules to strengthen protection of waters and establish a “single accepted definition of wetlands at the state level.”

Now a new bill introduced, Senate Bill 601, would build in more protection, amending the state Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act to copy existing federal protections. It would, among other provisions, require new permitting rules for pollutants from business operations or construction.

The bill’s author, state Sen. Ben Allen, a Santa Monica Democrat, said it would firm up waterway protections in a changing political climate.

“It is clear that federal priorities are shifting to leave many of our water ecosystems more vulnerable to dangerous pollutants and discharge,” he said.

Among California’s most vulnerable waterways are vernal pools — small ponds that fill up in spring and winter and support a diversity of wildlife, including rare salamanders and frogs and more than 200 species of plants. State biologists estimate that 90% or more of vernal pool habitat in California has been lost.

The new Trump administration decision is intended to align with a 2023 landmark Supreme Court ruling. The court ruled that a wetland, to gain federal protections under the Clean Water Act as “waters of the United States,” must bear a “continuous surface connection” to perennial navigable waters.

Zeldin said the EPA would collect feedback from growers and others and work with the Army Corps of Engineers.

“Given the U.S. Supreme Court’s watershed decision,” an EPA statement said, “it is time for EPA to finally address this issue once and for all in a way that provides American farmers, landowners, businesses, and states with clear and simplified direction.”

“We are not looking for this to be a ping-pong anymore,” Zeldin said. “What we are looking for is to simply follow the guidance” from the Supreme Court.

Shannon Douglass, president of the California Farm Bureau, said in a statement that “it is our hope that this opportunity to provide feedback to the agencies will result in durable implementation guidelines and certainty for California’s farmers and ranchers.”

“It is critical that family farmers and ranchers have a strong understanding of the boundaries of this regulation, including clear definitions,” she said.

To make the changes, the EPA must propose rules to revise the language, then invite public comments before enacting them.

Sean Bothwell, executive director of California Coastkeeper Alliance, said the changes would disregard the state’s climate conditions.

“That just doesn’t fit reality in California, especially Southern California,” Bothwell said. “This is a Supreme Court case, decided on the East Coast, where rivers and hydrology flow a lot more than here in California. I really feel like the decision didn’t take into account our Mediterranean climate.”

California’s hydrology — especially its wet winters and dry summers — makes the legal definition of a wetland particularly pertinent, and difficult to interpret. Of California’s 415,764 miles of linear streams, 79% are intermittent or ephemeral, according to a federal calculation, and would be prone to weakened protections, said Ashley Overhouse, water policy adviser at Defenders of Wildlife.

In Southern California’s arid landscape, washes and arroyos that fill immediately after storms and flow intermittently would become vulnerable to development and building activities, as well as agricultural and industrial discharges of pollution.

Overhouse said work by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help identify and delineate wetlands on proposed development sites was recently discontinued.

“This puts an added strain on the California State Water Resources Control Board as the only regulatory entity that is now responsible for knowing where these freshwater resources are as well as enforcing state water protections,” Overhouse said.