Safe Drinking Water Plan for California

The 2025 Safe Drinking Water Plan

The State Water Board is updating the Safe Drinking Water Plan (Plan) as required in Health & Safety Code Section 116355. The Plan update contains both analytical as well as general information about California’s drinking water systems and related regulatory programs. The Plan compiles recent accomplishments and challenges and describes the framework in which public water systems operate to aid legislators and stakeholders to develop regulatory tools and other initiatives in support of safe and accessible drinking water for all Californians.

The Safe Drinking Water Plan generally covers the following topics:

  • Assessment of the overall quality of the state's drinking water.
  • Identification of specific water quality problems.
  • Analysis of the known and potential health risks.
  • Specific actions the State Water Board is undertaking, and
  • Recommendations to improve drinking water quality.

2025 Safe Drinking Water Plan

2025 Safe Drinking Water Plan

2025 Safe Drinking Water Plan (Draft)

The State Water Board will hold a public workshop at its regularly scheduled meeting no earlier than July 15, 2025. Public comments are due by noon on August 29, 2025.

Archives

1993 Safe Drinking Water Plan

In 1993, the California Department of Health Services (CDHS) (now the California Department of Public Health, CDPH) submitted to the Legislature the report, "Drinking Water into the 21st Century: Safe Drinking Water Plan for California" (1993 Plan).

For the update of the Plan, CDPH assembled a team of experts that conducted extensive reviews and analyses, resulting in a draft plan that included an overview of drinking water regulation, reviews and plans for drinking water quality/monitoring and threats, treatment technologies, funding aspects and financial assistance, and a focus on the challenges faced by small drinking water systems.

Statutory Requirements

Statutory Requirements

The topics to be addressed in the the Safe Drinking Water Plan are identified in Health & Safety Code Section 116355. They are:

  1. An analysis of the quality of California’s drinking water and identification of specific water quality problems.
  2. Types and levels of contaminants found in public drinking water systems that have less than 10,000 service connections. The discussion of these water systems shall include the following:
    • Estimated costs of requiring these systems to meet primary drinking water standards and public health goals.
    • Recommendations for actions that could be taken by the Legislature, the department, and these systems to improve water quality.
  3. A discussion and analysis of the known and potential health risks that may be associated with drinking water contamination in California.
  4. An evaluation of how existing water quality information systems currently maintained by local or state agencies can be more effectively used to protect drinking water.
  5. An evaluation of the research needed to develop inexpensive methods and instruments to ensure better screening and detection of waterborne chemicals, and inexpensive detection methods that could be used by small utilities and consumers to detect harmful microbial agents in drinking water.
  6. An analysis of the technical and economic viability and the health benefits of various treatment techniques that can be used to reduce levels of trihalomethanes, lead, nitrates, synthetic organic chemicals, micro-organisms, and other contaminants in drinking water.
  7. A discussion of alternative methods of financing the construction, installation, and operation of new treatment technologies, including, but not limited to user charges, state or local taxes, state planning and construction grants, loans, and loan guarantees.
  8. A discussion of sources of revenue presently available, and projected to be available, to public water systems to meet current and future expenses.
  9. An analysis of the current cost of drinking water paid by residential, business, and industrial consumers based on a statewide survey of large, medium, and small public water systems.
  10. Specific recommendations, including recommendations developed pursuant to paragraph (6), to improve the quality of drinking water in California and a detailed five-year implementation program.
  11. A review of the use of administrators pursuant to Section 116686 in the state, including, but not limited to, the number of communities that have achieved access to safe drinking water through use of an administrator, the costs and duties of the administrator and a comparison of costs, whether rate structures for communities served by an administrator have resulted in significantly higher rates and whether those rates are affordable, and whether the administrator program should be modified to better serve communities.
  12. A review of the consolidations pursuant to Section 116682 in the state, including, but not limited to, the number of communities that have achieved access to safe drinking water through consolidation, whether rate structures for communities are affordable following consolidation, barriers to consolidation, and whether the consolidation program should be modified to better serve communities.