August 29, 2024 - Sacramento, CA – Last year, the United States Supreme Court decimated protections for the nation’s wetlands. Assemblymember Laura Friedman’s (D-Burbank) landmark bill, AB 2875, which protects California’s vital natural resources from the rollback of federal protections. Yesterday, the bill passed the California Legislature with a vote of 76-0.

Wetlands are vast but delicate webs of interdependent species and complicated geology akin to rainforests or coral reefs. California was once flush with wetlands, the brimming tidal lands, riparian habitats, and seasonal vernal pools once covered more than 4 million acres throughout the state. Wetlands, while crucial habitat for California’s native species, have been nearly eradicated in the Golden State. A mere 10% of California’s wetlands including 5% of its tidal wetlands, still exist, choice waterfront property that developers dream of selling for top dollar.

Corporations and developers have long fought federal environmental protections and have been systematically using conservative justices to slowly chip away at once robust protections. In a 2023 United States Supreme Court decision, Sackett v EPA, the Supreme Court rewrote the definition of wetland, severely limiting them to “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water, indistinguishable from protected oceans, lakes, rivers and streams due to a continuous surface connection.”

Today, we know how devastating the Supreme Court ruling was. Wetlands are not just rivers, lakes, and oceans. Wetlands may be seasonally dry streambeds or pools that flow again in winter and spring, emptying into our creeks, rivers, and lakes. A June study published in the Journal of Science says that 60% of the water located in “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water indistinguishable from oceans, lakes, rivers, or streams” is by supplied seasonally dry ephemeral streams that the Supreme Court stripped of protections.

“The result of the Supreme Court’s decision is that we can now no longer protect 60% of the water that our children will swim in, that we will all bathe in and drink,” said Assemblymember Friedman. Other states’ analyses are finding the same risk. Indiana, North Caroling, Tennessee, and Missouri all have bills moving through their legislatures to roll back wetland safeguards after the Sackett decision. Missouri’s Committee on Legislative Research and Oversight found that removing state protections to align with the Sackett decision would endanger 59% of the state’s groundwater, incurring untold costs to clean up the pollution and damage that bill could cause.

Assemblymember Friedman is not alone in her alarm about the devastating impacts of the Supreme Court’s Sackett decision. Even with deficits eating away at state spending and state programs, Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2024 budget proposal includes funding to maintain protections for the same formerly federally protected wetlands for which Assemblymember Friedman seeks to codify protections.

Even before the Sackett decision, historical filling and development projects had reduced California’s wetlands to a mere 10 percent of their original extent. The loss of coastal wetlands is even more alarming - 95 percent of formerly abundant lagoons and marshes along California’s 1,100-mile coastline have been destroyed.

As these wetlands disappear, more wetland-dependent fish and wildlife slide closer to extinction and migratory birds are crowded into shrinking habitat areas that cause devastating outbreaks of disease and fail to provide the food necessary for these birds to make their long journeys between their summer and winter homes.

“With the loss of 3 billion birds in the past 50 years–in part due to dwindling wetlands and significant development of natural spaces– Audubon science shows that two-thirds of North American bird species are at risk of extinction from climate change. Action is needed to protect the water bodies and habitat that birds need to survive,” said Julie Hill-Gabriel, Audubon’s Vice President for Water Conservation.

Wetlands are a critically important cornerstone of our ecosystem, not just for our native plants and animals, but also for to the protections they afford our communities in a time of a rapidly changing climate. They operate as natural flood control channels, protecting neighboring communities from harm. They’re also vitally important to avoiding increasing emissions that would result from drained soils, preventing an increase in carbon stocks at a time when the planet can ill afford to increase emissions.

In 1993, Governor Pete Wilson issued Executive Order W-59-93, establishing a state policy of no net loss and long-term gain of wetlands. Since then, however, California has continued to lose more wetland acres than it replaces through restoration or mitigation.

Before conservative justices began chipping away at it, the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) was considered to be the most powerful tool for safeguarding water quality, wetlands, and riparian habitat. After the Sackett decision, Congress could, in theory, amend the CWA to override the Supreme Court, but with split government and narrow margins in both chambers, that is unlikely, leaving the issue to the states.

“While a patchwork quilt of policies will do untold damage in some states, I am determined that California will hold the line. California will protect the wetlands that the federal government and the US Army Corps of Engineers, no longer can,” said Assemblymember Laura Friedman.

AB 2875 now moves to the Governor’s desk.

Laura Friedman represents 44th Assembly District, which includes the cities of Burbank, Glendale, and Los Angeles, as well as the communities of La Crescenta, Lake View Terrace, Montrose, North Hollywood, Shadow Hills, Sherman Oaks, Sunland-Tujunga, Studio City, Toluca Lake, and Valley Village. 
Source: Assemblymember Laura Friedman