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 and found throughout the Southwest. 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 Wednesday comes as no surprise. Trump ordered the same move during his first stint 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 last month, 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 in a statement that 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.

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