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NEWS & VIEWS ON ISSUES, LEGISLATION, AND REGULATIONS
The Long Winding Road to Safe and
Affordable Drinking Water
By Rosalie Thompson
IN RECENT YEARS, THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE AND
Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration have taken steps to improve
access to clean water for vulnerable communities in immediate
need of safe and reliable supplies, whether through an affordabil-ity
assistance pathway or a more universal approach to provide
funding to improve safe drinking water treatment and delivery.
To date, however, the California water community has struggled
to have a thoughtful and productive dialogue with the Legisla-ture,
the administration, and environmental justice communities
to identify a solution with broad consensus.
In 2012, former Assembly member Mike Eng (D-Monterey
Park) introduced Assembly Bill 685 (AB 685), which codified as
state policy access to safe, clean, and affordable water as a basic
human right. While the water community understood the intent
and importance of such a monumental policy, there was an im-mediate
underlying concern about potential costs being passed
to local water agencies that were responsibly providing clean
water at an affordable rate to their ratepayers. In response, AB
685 was amended to clarify that implementation of the policy
could not impact the rights or responsibilities of any public wa-ter
system while requiring that the policy be applied when any
state entity establishes or updates its policies, regulations, and
programs. Gov. Brown signed into law AB 685 into and it has
been referenced in subsequent legislative and regulatory efforts.
In 2014, former Assembly member Mariko Yamada (D-Da-vis)
introduced Assembly Bill 1434 (AB 1434), which initially
required the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to implement
rate assistance for low-income ratepayers. While the PUC only
has jurisdiction over investor-owned water agencies, it was an-ticipated
that the policy would eventually be applied to publicly
owned water agencies. Although both investor-owned and pub-licly
owned water agencies provide water services to their rate-payers,
they don’t operate in the same manner and abide by dif-ferent
regulatory and statutory provisions. As AB 1434 continued
to move through the legislative process, it was amended to re-quire
the Department of Community Services and Development
to conduct a study on how to establish and fund a low-income
rate assistance program for both investor-owned and publicly
owned water agencies. Because the ratemaking authority and
requirements between the investor-owned and publicly owned
