State Budget Still Needs to Prioritize Safe Drinking Water
For Immediate Release
January 12, 2026
Contact:
Maraid Jimenez, Community Water Center, (765) 729-1674, maraid.jimenez@communitywatercenter.org
Stephanie Ambriz, Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability, (442) 400-2534, sambriz@leadershipcounsel.org
Jennifer Clary, Clean Water Action, (707) 483-6352, jclary@cleanwater.org
State Budget Still Needs to Prioritize Safe Drinking Water
Full funding for SAFER is not guaranteed
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Governor Gavin Newsom released his final draft California state budget for 2026-2027. Unfortunately, this budget endangers the governor’s legacy of advancing the Human Right to Water that has been a priority of the Newsom administration.
While the proposal to appropriate an additional $173.2 million in capital funds from Proposition 4 is needed, we are concerned that the ability to apply those funds to California’s most at-risk households and communities will be compromised if we fail to fully fund the SAFER Program. SAFER provides funds for technical assistance, planning and feasibility studies that must be completed before capital funds can be accessed.
The SAFER program makes invaluable investments into small rural communities that need safe drinking water solutions to protect the health of their families. This is a strong effort in the face of a drinking water crisis that will need a $15 billion dollar investment over the next decade. Unfortunately, this year’s shortfall is not a short-term problem; the governor’s budget estimates a nearly $100 million shortfall in SAFER revenues over the next four years.
“Maintaining SAFER fully funded is important to resolving the needs that communities like mine face, communities with Latino farmworkers that have often been left behind,” says Valentin Cornejo, Community Resident from the Johnson, McGinnis, Live Oak Road Community in the Central Coast. “This program is a solution that we fought for to address contaminated drinking water so we need this promise to be kept without a single step back. Without clean water we cannot thrive as a community.”
The threat to SAFER is the result of recent Cap & Trade auctions that have produced lower revenue than anticipated for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). While SAFER has received funding from the GGRF since 2020, the original legislation creating the program and funding source included language mandating backfilling any shortfalls in funding through General Fund revenues. That protection was removed when the GGRF was renewed in the last week of the 2025 legislative session.
“Over 800,000 Californians lack safe drinking water, and over a million more are at risk of losing access,” says Jennifer Clary, California Director of Clean Water Action. “A thirty percent reduction in the SAFER fund severely limits our ability to create long-term solutions for these residents. In 2019 the Governor and Legislature created a backfill provision to ensure that revenues didn’t fall below the $130 million annual commitment. That provision needs to be reinstated.”
A key component of SAFER is its ability to finally address the long-standing issue of domestic well communities; these residents generally lack any kind of governance structure that would allow them to seek help. SAFER has invested in domestic well testing, replacement water provisions, and efforts to consolidate domestic wells with existing small water systems. Further, even though a recent LA Times article declared the drought at an end, approximately 860 households are still reliant on the state for the cost of hauled water and replacement wells, an expense that has traditionally been borne by the General Fund and that has now been shifted to the SAFER program.
“The SAFER program is now being asked to take on the provision of hauled water for drought-impacted households, an expense previously covered by the General Fund,” says Michael Claiborne, Directing Attorney with Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability. “This creates another $20 million hole in SAFER funding furthering the strain to a valuable resource.”
With such a strong need to fund solutions to the drinking water crisis we cannot afford to lose more investments through SAFER into small rural communities. We look forward to working with the Governor and the legislature towards a viable solution that guarantees funding to make the Human Right to Water for all Californians a reality.
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Community Water Center (CWC) works to ensure that all communities have reliable access to safe, clean, and affordable water. Founded in 2006, CWC is a not-for-profit environmental justice organization, whose mission is to act as a catalyst for community-driven water solutions through education, organizing, and advocacy.
Web: www.communitywatercenter.org.
Twitter: @CWaterC
Facebook: @CommunityWaterCenter
Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability works alongside the most impacted communities in the San Joaquin Valley and Eastern Coachella Valley to advocate for sound policy and eradicate injustice to secure equal access to opportunity regardless of wealth, race, income, and place. Leadership Counsel focuses on issues like housing, land use, transportation, safe and affordable drinking water and climate change impacts on communities. Twitter: LCJandA FB: @lcjacalifornia IG: @leadership_counsel Web: leadershipcounsel.org
Clean Water Action - Since our founding during the campaign to pass the landmark Clean Water Act in 1972, Clean Water Action has worked to win strong health and environmental protections by bringing issue expertise, solution-oriented thinking and people power to the table.
Our Mission is to protect our environment, health, economic well-being and community quality of life. Clean Water Action organizes strong grassroots groups and coalitions, and campaigns to elect environmental candidates and to solve environmental and community problems.
For more information, visit our website at www.cleanwater.org or follow us on Twitter @cleanh2oca and Facebook @CleanWaterActionCalifornia.
