SACRAMENTO, California — Sen. Ben Allen accepted amendments Wednesday to narrow the scope of his bill meant to protect state waters from Trump administration rollbacks.
What happened: The Senate Environmental Quality Committee said it would approve SB 601— which would create the term “nexus waters” to encompass all waters of the state that were under federal jurisdiction before the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Sackett v. EPA — after Allen agreed to amend it to clarify that it doesn’t apply to agricultural runoff or drinking water.
“We are taking amendments to be very clear that we’re only talking about point sources, not non-point source,” said Sean Bothwell, executive director at California Coastkeeper Alliance and author of the bill.
Allen also accepted the committee’s suggested amendments to further clarify the definition of “nexus” waters to ensure that they are only giving Clean Water Act protections to waters that had them prior to the Sackett decision.
