SECTION 1.
The Legislature declares all the following:
(a)Water quality pollution is disproportionately affecting communities that are part of the environmental justice system. CalEnviroScreen’s California Communities Environmental Health Screening mapping tool identifies communities most adversely affected by a combination environmental stressors and socioeconomic disadvantages. The 2021 update to the tools reveals that 67 percent of the most polluted areas are white, while 90 percent of the most polluted areas are black, indigenous, and people of colour. Low-income, Black, Indigenous, or people of color communities are most affected by contaminated drinking water sources.
California’s persistent inequalities are further exacerbated by data from the Human Right to Water Framework, Data Tool 1.0, and other sources, such as California Data Tool 1.0.
(b) The 2021 Pollution and Prejudice storymap from the California Environmental Protection Agency, CalEPA, shows that historically redlined areas are more likely to have worse environmental conditions and be more vulnerable to the effects of pollution. People of color are more likely to live in the most environmentally degraded areas. They also have the highest racial wealth gaps due to redlining and other land-use policies that oppress them. Many of these communities lack access and infrastructure to provide green spaces, greenways, water treatment, groundwater recharge, and replenishment, as well as natural flood protection and water treatment.
(c) The State Water Resources Control Board released in 2021 the 2021 Drinking Water Needs Assessment. It identified approximately 345 water system that do not meet the goals for the human right to clean water. The needs assessment also identified 617 at-risk state water systems, 611 small water systems at risk, and 80,000 domestic wells at high risk. It also identified 13 federally controlled tribal water systems that had not met the goals for the human right of water and 22 at risk tribal water system.
(d) Historically, boards programs were established within a framework that perpetuated inequalities based on race. These inequalities continue to exist and the boards must address the role that racism played in creating inequalities in access and affordability to safe and clean water, as well as in the allocation of and protection from water resources.
(e) In California, race determines a person’s access to government services as well as the quality and affordability of those services. This includes safe drinking water as well as the treatment, collection, and reuse of wastewater. In fact, race is the strongest predictor to access water and sanitation.
(f)Race is strongly associated with higher pollution burdens at a community level. However, the policies, plans, and programs of the water boards have not explicitly addressed or considered racial disparities. The State Water Resources Control Board is a government agency that recognizes the need acknowledge racial injustice and to take action to correct it within the agency as well as the programs the regional quality control boards run for the communities served.
(g)Over a decade, regional water resources have improved.
Quality control boards have been focusing more on environmental injustices. These include: (1) creating Safe and Affordable Funding For Equity and Resilience (SAFER Program), a comprehensive approach to implementing California’s human right to drinking water. This ensures that the 1,000,000 Californians who are currently being served contaminated water have safe and affordable drinking water. (2) increasing engagement with California Native American Tribes and protecting tribal beneficial uses. (3) developing a comprehensive response for climate change, including addressing the disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities. (4) a project that will fund projects to remediate the environment.
(h) Regional water quality control boards recognize that there is a need to continue.
Racial inequity and environmental injustice must be addressed. California’s regional water quality control board must make connections between water resource protection and institutional racism. This will allow them to better serve the communities and foster diversity within the agency.
(i) The state is committed towards the protection of public waterbodies and their beneficial uses in all communities, particularly Black, Indigenous, people of color, who are disproportionately impacted by environmental pollution. This includes control of wastes discharged onto land and surface waters; restoration of impaired water sources and degraded wells; and promotion multibenefit water quality projects that increase access to parks, open space, greenways and other green infrastructure.
