California State Water Resources Control Board
The State Water Board also provides financial assistance to local governments and non-profit agencies to help build or rejuvenate wastewater treatment plants, and protect, restore and monitor water quality, wetlands, and estuaries.
It also monitors surface water quality, oversees protection of wetlands and the ocean, is active in environmental education and environmental justice issues, identifies and oversees clean-up of contaminated sites, and promotes low-impact development (LID).
California has no statewide water right permit process for regulating the use of percolating groundwater.
Enforcement not only protects the public health and the environment, but also creates an "even playing field," ensuring that dischargers who comply with the law are not placed at a competitive disadvantage by those who do not.
The DFA provides loans and grants for constructing municipal sewage and water recycling facilities, remediation for underground storage tank releases, watershed protection projects, and for nonpoint source pollution control projects.
The money awarded is in the form of grants and ultra-low interest zero and one-percent loans for projects that include wastewater treatment plant construction, upgrade and infrastructure improvements as well as "green" projects such as wastewater recycling.
Esquivel was born and raised in California's Coachella Valley, the son of educators and grandson of farm workers.
His portfolios for Senator Boxer covered agriculture, Native Americans, water, oceans, and nutrition.
In July 2015 he was appointed to the California Natural Resources Agency where he also served in the Washington D. C. office of Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. as Assistant Secretary for Federal Water Policy.
Governor Brown appointed him to the State Water Resources Control Board in March 2017.
[14] Each year, the SWRCB documents harmful health-based violations in approximately 7% of their community water systems.
[15] Under their criteria, these water systems failed to meet safe standards either on groundwater contamination, outdated regulatory compliance, technical capacity, financial magnitude, or managerial scope.
[16] A 2019 report found cancer-causing contaminants such as 1,2,3-TCP in roughly 495 public water systems in California.
[17] A 2023 public health journal found that groundwater and small water systems contain the commonly found contaminants uranium, arsenic, and nitrate; which if consumed in larger quantities than outlined in the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criteria, pose health detriments.
[18] Water system failures, health-based violations, and increased non-compliance are most commonly found in low-income, communities of color.
[19] A state auditor's report identified over two thirds of California's defected water systems in economically challenged districts.
[20] Research finds that marginalized groups such as Hispanics, Asian Americans, African-Americans and individuals residing in California Tribal Nations have increased chance of being exposed to unsafe and unregulated drinking water.
[24] The bill's goals are equitable and reinforced measures for Tribal nations and low-resourced communities affected by disproportionate water quality violations.
[24] However, Tribal nations, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans have filed racial discrimination complaints and expressed public dissent over the SWRCB's alleged failure to protect these communities against pollutants in water systems.
[25] Tribal nations and minority groups have also accused the California State Water Resources Control Board of exclusion from public participation and policy-making.
[31] In 2014, during the drought, 28 small California communities cycled onto and off of a list of "critical water systems" that the Board had determined could run dry within 60 days.
