SACRAMENTO, California — A bill to enshrine Biden-era water quality rules in California law to backstop potential rollbacks under the Trump administration passed the California Senate on Wednesday by a one-vote margin.
What happened: The Senate voted 22-12 to approve SB 601, a bill meant to protect state waterways from federal rollbacks following the court’s 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision, after its author, Sen. Ben Allen, said he would remove the ability for private citizens to sue businesses for violations.
“The current Clean Water Act is enforceable by a private right of action,” he said on the Senate floor. “We’ve committed to working with the opposition on a different enforcement system, and it would include public prosecutors.”
Allen also said that he would work with the opposition — which includes agricultural interests and water agencies — to further narrow the definition of protected waters to align with concurrences from Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh in the Sackett decision.
