The Brief

If you were to drink improperly recycled toilet water, it could really hurt you — but probably not in the way you’re thinking. Advanced purification technology so thoroughly cleans wastewater of feces and other contaminants that it also strips out natural minerals, which the treatment facility then has to add back in. If it didn’t, that purified water would imperil you by sucking those minerals out of your body as it moves through your internal plumbing.

So if it’s perfectly safe to consume recycled toilet water, why aren’t Americans living in parched western states drinking more of it? A new report from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Natural Resources Defense Council finds that seven western states that rely on the Colorado River are on average recycling just a quarter of their water, even as they fight each other and Indigenous tribes for access to the river amid worsening droughts. Populations are also booming in the Southwest, meaning there’s less water for more people.

The report finds that states are recycling wildly different proportions of their water. On the high end, Nevada reuses 85%, followed by Arizona at 52%. But other states lag far behind, including California (22%) and New Mexico (18%), with Colorado and Wyoming at less than 4% and Utah recycling next to nothing.

“Overall, we are not doing nearly enough to develop wastewater recycling in the seven states that are part of the Colorado River Basin,” said Noah Garrison, a water researcher at UCLA and co-author of the report. “We’re going to have a 2 million to 4 million acre-foot per year shortage in the amount of water that we’ve promised to be delivered from the Colorado River.” (An acre-foot is what it would take to cover an acre of land in a foot of water, equal to 326,000 gallons.)

The report found that if the states other than high-achieving Nevada and Arizona increased their wastewater reuse to 50 percent, they’d boost water availability by 1.3 million acre-feet every year. Experts think that it’s not a question of whether states need to reuse more toilet water but how quickly they can build the infrastructure as droughts worsen and populations swell.

At the same time, states need to redouble efforts to reduce their demand for water, experts say. The Southern Nevada Water Authority, for example, provides cash rebates for homeowners to replace their water-demanding lawns with natural landscaping, stocking them with native plants that flourish without sprinklers. Between conserving water and recycling more of it, western states have to renegotiate their relationship with the increasingly precious resource.

“It’s unbelievable to me that people don’t recognize that the answer is: You’re not going to get more water,” said John Helly, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who wasn’t involved in the report. “We’ve lulled ourselves into this sense of complacency about the criticality of water and it’s just starting to dawn on people that this is a serious problem.”

Yet the report notes that states vary significantly in their development and regulation of water recycling. For one, they treat wastewater to varying levels of purity. To get it ultra pure for drinking, human waste and other solids are removed before the water is treated with ozone to kill bacteria and viruses. Next the water is forced through fine membranes to catch other particles. A facility then hits the liquid with UV light, killing off any microbes that might remain, and adds back those missing minerals.

That process is expensive, however, as building a wastewater-treatment facility itself is costly, and it takes a lot of electricity to pump the water hard enough to get it through the filters. Alternatively, some water agencies will treat wastewater and pump the liquid underground into aquifers, where the earth filters it further. To use the water for golf courses and nonedible crops, they treat wastewater less extensively.

Absent guidance from the federal government, every state goes about this differently, with their own regulations for how clean water needs to be for potable or nonpotable use. Nevada, which receives an average of just 10 inches of rainfall a year, has an environmental division that issues permits for water reuse and oversees quality standards, along with a state fund that bankrolls projects. “It is a costly enterprise, and we really do need to see states and the federal government developing new funding streams or revenue streams in order to develop wastewater treatment,” Garrison said. “This is a readily available, permanent supply of water.”

Wastewater recycling can happen at a much smaller scale too. A company called Epic Cleantec, based in San Francisco, makes a miniature treatment facility that fits inside high-rises. It pumps recycled water back into the units for non-potable use like filling toilets. While it takes many years to build a large treatment facility, these smaller systems come online in a matter of months and can reuse up to 95% of a building’s water.

Epic Cleantec says its systems and municipal plants can work in tandem as a sort of distributed network of wastewater recycling. “In the same way that we do with energy, where it’s not just on-site rooftop solar and large energy plants, it’s both of them together creating a more resilient system,” said Aaron Tartakovsky, Epic Cleantec’s CEO and co-founder. “To use a water pun, I think there’s a lot of untapped potential here.”

If Rep. Mike Levin’s proposal moves forward, the spent nuclear fuel stashed on the beach at San Onofre will be stored and processed at one of several potential campuses in other states.

Levin, a Democratic congress member representing parts of San Diego and Orange County, discussed his plan from a point above the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station last week.

“Since I've been in Congress, getting this spent nuclear fuel off our coast has been one of my top priorities,” Levin said, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the steel and concrete canisters housing nuclear fuel rods. “I have been in this fight for eight years, fighting the status quo of inaction on spent nuclear fuel.”

He’s pushing to create facilities called Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses in communities that want to recycle some of the spent fuel and store remaining waste, in exchange for economic development opportunities.

The Department of Energy said the campuses could “attract significant investment, expand domestic manufacturing, and create thousands of new high-paying jobs in their respective regions.” Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Idaho have stepped up as potential hosts for the facilities.

Finland and Canada have embarked on similar efforts to locate nuclear waste facilities, with the consent and collaboration of local communities, according to a report by Levin’s office. Finland expects to permanently dispose of nuclear waste as soon as next year.

Levin said similar U.S. sites could begin operation by the late 2030s, and he’s pushing to make the San Onofre plant a priority for nuclear waste removal and storage.

San Onofre ceased operating in 2013, after a newly installed steam generator failed, leaving the plant inoperable. Officials began decommissioning the plant in 2020.

Since then, 700 million tons of building material have been hauled away from the site, and the spent fuel rods were moved from cooling pools to dry storage on the beach, Levin said.

But there isn’t a permanent repository for the spent nuclear fuel, following backlash to an earlier proposal to store the waste.

“The federal government still hasn't done what it pledged to do all the way back in 1998, and so communities like ours have been left holding the fuel,” Levin said.

The federal government previously designated the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository in Nevada as the permanent storage site for nuclear waste. But former president Barack Obama cancelled that plan in 2010, following fierce opposition from environmentalists, local groups and tribes.

Without a permanent storage repository, spent nuclear fuel has remained on site at San Onofre, where its location on the coast, near earthquake faults and next to Camp Pendleton make the waste vulnerable to natural disaster or national security threats.

To address those risks, Levin introduced the Spent Fuel Prioritization Act with co-authors including Rep. Darrell Issa, a San Diego Republican, and Rep.Young Kim, an Orange County Republican. It would move nuclear sites with high seismic hazards, large populations and national security risk, such as San Onofre, up the list for fuel removal and storage. The bill is waiting for consideration in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to Levin’s 2026 report on San Onofre.

Another challenge concerns transport of spent nuclear fuel. Levin said next year a specially designed train called the Atlas Railcar System will complete testing and move the first spent fuel rods from Virginia to Idaho. The Atlas is a 12-axle railcar equipped with sensors and monitoring systems, which can transport nearly half a million pounds of spent nuclear fuel, according to the Department of Energy. It took ten years and cost $33 million dollars to build.

Levin has also introduced bills to create a nuclear waste administration, to require nuclear waste canisters to last 100 years instead of the current 40 years, and to increase public engagement and improve safety inspection at decommissioning power plants.

“I will not declare victory on this until the last canister has left San Onofre,” he said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Election officials in both Los Angeles and Orange counties report the early vote is trending higher than the last midterm election in 2022 — on trend with expectations across the U.S.

Nationally, Democrats have outpaced Republicans returning early ballots by more than 10 points, according to tracking by the University of Florida Election Lab.

Here's what you should know about the local vote totals currently released:

• In Los Angeles County, about 24% of registered voters had cast ballot as of Monday.
• In Orange County, the current tally represents about 33% of registered voters.

Keep in mind that Nov. 10 will be the final day for votes postmarked by Nov. 3 to arrive at county elections offices, so the total number of votes cast won't be known until then.

How vote counts will be released

I thought it was election night?

That hasn't been true in quite some time. It takes a while to get results because after the initial tallies on election night, there are still many, many votes to count, and more mail-in ballots are usually arriving.

Here’s what we know so far.

L.A. County turnout

Los Angeles County has more than 5.9 million registered voters. As of Monday, Nov. 2:

• More than 1.42 million ballots have been processed.
• 90% voted by mail.
• 10% voted in person.

What's next:

• We'll know more on election night — and in the following days — about how many ballots remain to be counted.
• Has your ballot been tallied yet? You can track the status of your ballot here.

Observe live counting

Orange County turnout

Orange County has more than 1.9 million registered voters. As of midday Monday, Nov. 2:

• 629,610 ballots have been processed.
• 91.3% voted by mail.
• 8.5% voted in person.

What's next:

• We'll know more on election night — and in the following days — about how many ballots remain to be counted.
• Has your ballot been tallied yet? You can track the status of your ballot here.

Early voting in Orange County is surpassing the last midterm election so far.

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Orange County Registrar

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Expected total turnout

Political Data Inc. is tracking ballot returns across California and in some high-profile races.

As of Monday, Nov. 2, statewide turnout is 25%. Note: That is already higher than this time in the primary. Democrats outnumber Republicans statewide by almost double, and have returned more ballots so far (3 million compared to 1.6 million — representing 29% and 28% of each party's registered voters.

See the latest totals ▶

Why Election Day has turned into ballot-counting month

Because of the increasing use of vote-by-mail ballots, the tally has gotten longer, according to the California Voter Foundation. In an analysis, the organization found:

• In November 2004, more than 80% of votes were counted within two days of Election Day, with 32.6% voting by mail. 
• In June 2022, about 50% of ballots were counted within two days of Election Day, with more than 90% of people voting by mail. 
• In November 2024, 66% of votes were counted within the first two days of Election Day, with 81% of the vote by mail.
• In June 2026, 61% of votes were counted within the first two days of Election Day, with 89% of the vote by mail.

A closer look at ballot counting times in California, where an increasing number of vote-by-mail ballots has slowed ballot counts.

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Courtesy California Voter Foundation

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Election officials must physically open mail-in ballots and verify signatures.

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, recently wrote about the ripple effect of turning in mail-in ballots by hand or in drop boxes on Election Day. She wrote, for our partner newsroom CalMatters:

"We turn in ballots in envelopes on Election Day that take time and care to process and cannot be processed until after Election Day. Processing these ballots — which account for as much as a quarter of all ballots cast — creates a bottleneck I like to call 'the pig in the python effect.' It prevents counties from doing other tasks they need to do to certify the results."

That said, counting has been speeding up considerably. According to Alexander's organization, the overall share of ballots counted within seven days of the election jumped from 72% in 2022 to 93% in the June primary. L.A. County is moving to around-the-clock counting this cycle, in a move election officials say will help increase voter confidence in the results.

Colleges and universities will soon have to make it easier for students to request more financial aid, as well as be more transparent about how they estimate the cost of attendance.

A new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September requires colleges and universities to clearly display how students can request additional financial aid if they believe their awarded amount does not sufficiently cover their costs. Institutions must also publish how they calculate their costs of attendance, which is used to determine how much financial aid students receive.

Authored by Democratic Assemblymembers Celeste Rodriguez of the San Fernando Valley and Marc Berman of Menlo Park, Assembly Bill 2251 requires schools to implement the changes by the fall of 2027.

Existing law already requires campuses to publish cost estimates, which not only include tuition and fees, but also housing, transportation, food and other likely expenses. With the new requirements, advocates say that students will now have an easier time finding what to do when their costs exceed those estimates.

“California has a really strong record of looking at new ways to improve college affordability and AB 2251 is yet another example,” said Laura Szabo-Kubitz, senior policy advisor at The Institute of College Access and Success, an organization that advocates for college affordability. “It’s a step towards other advocacy efforts to bridge the affordability gap.”

Students can appeal their financial aid award

Junely Merwin, now a consultant for The Foster Youth Pre-College Collective, received a full-ride scholarship to attend Cal State Fullerton in 2015. But as a former foster youth and young mother, she needed additional aid to help cover childcare costs.

“My money really went down the drain to child care and just how expensive it was,” Merwin said. “Even with the full-ride scholarship, it was not enough.”

Seeking more financial support, Merwin came across her school’s process to revise her cost of attendance. However, the website was unclear and, when she reached out to the financial aid office with questions, she was passed along to multiple staff members.

After she was finally able to complete an appeal process, Merwin’s cost of attendance was adjusted to include her childcare expenses. This allowed her to accept more scholarship funds.

Over half of colleges and universities statewide use estimates that are lower than what students actually pay to attend college, with some underestimating it by over $10,000, according to 2024 research from John Burton Advocates for Youth, the lead sponsor of the law. The California organization advocates for unhoused and foster youth.

Students cannot receive more financial aid - including loans, grants and some scholarships - than the estimated cost of attendance calculated by the campus. This can lead them to work excessive hours and take fewer classes to make up the difference, according to research from The Institute for College Access and Success.

When students’ costs exceed those calculated by their college, they can apply for a cost of attendance adjustment. But students often don’t know that is an option.

The Financial Aid and Scholarship office at the Joyal Administration building at Fresno State in Fresno on Sept. 3, 2026.

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Larry Valenzuela

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CalMatters

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According to a March report from John Burton Advocates for Youth, almost half of colleges statewide fail to adequately inform students of the resources and options available to them when applying for aid adjustments.

Those adjustments can be especially helpful to low-income students and former foster youth, who often receive the maximum amount of aid but still need more, said the organization’s director of education, Jessica Petrass. Because of this, students often have to turn down additional aid they would otherwise be eligible for.

Representatives of campus programs that provide support for foster youth across the state’s three higher education systems do not find cost adjustment processes to be accessible, concluded a report by the John Burton youth advocacy organization. A majority of those surveyed said information on campus websites is insufficient and unclear.

“That is why I see AB 2251 as both a transparency and student access issue, because it is not enough to simply have a policy in place,” Merwin said. “Information needs to be communicated clearly, consistently, in a way that students can actually understand and use.”

Colleges must clearly explain adjustment process

Colleges vary greatly in how and where they explain how to request an adjustment to the cost of attendance and financial aid limit. While some schools plainly detail costs on their websites, others lead students through a maze of weblinks and documents.

Under the new law, campuses must publish clear details on how a student can submit an adjustment request, how long it might take and who they might need to speak to. This information will need to appear on the same page as the school’s cost of attendance details.

Student Jackie Cordero in front of the Educational Opportunity Programs office at UC Santa Cruz on Oct. 27, 2026.

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Jessica Parga

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CalMatters

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Jackie Cordero, a first-generation college student who attends UC Santa Cruz, is currently going through the process of requesting an adjustment to her cost of attendance. Cordero chose UC Santa Cruz because of the generous financial aid package she was offered. But after her father was injured and could no longer work, she was left to figure out how to pay for the expenses her financial aid didn’t cover.

Through her own research, and by contacting the financial aid office herself, she found that requesting more financial aid was an option. But it has not been easy. Cordero said that the documents her school asked for — detailing her father’s work termination and her mother’s income — didn’t exist in physical form. She's struggled to supplement that paperwork, and instead has had to write letters detailing her family's finances.

“There should probably be a little bit more help towards people who want to do a cost of attendance (adjustment),” she said. “I still am a little confused about the process and approaching (the financial aid office) can be a little difficult.”

Under federal law, students are not required to submit documentation for cost of attendance adjustments, but colleges almost always request them before granting additional awards.

Colleges vary on cost calculation sources

Across all three public higher education systems, staff at John Burton Advocates for Youth found that 83% of campuses do not reveal the breakdown of the total cost of each expense category – such as housing and transportation – on their websites. This information allows students to have a clearer understanding of whether their expenses exceed the calculated costs and if they might be eligible for a cost of attendance adjustment.

“At the end of the day, these budgets are an estimate … You're doing your best guess to get the best average to represent every student's unique circumstance,” Petrass said.

Most campuses do not cite the data sources behind their estimates. Only 17% of UCs, 26% of Cal States and 22% of community colleges explain how they come up with these estimates, according to the youth advocacy organization.

Each system calculates costs differently. UC schools use a survey conducted by its Office of the President. Cal State campuses and community colleges use a mix of data, including from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and survey estimates from the California Student Aid Commission.

What the new law doesn’t do

While the law guarantees a new standard of transparency for financial aid, it does not provide any new financial aid funding, nor does it guarantee that any student’s cost of attendance adjustments will be approved.

The California Student Aid Commission estimates the state may spend anywhere from $805,000 to $2.3 million more on Cal Grant awards due to adjustment applications that wouldn’t have otherwise been submitted. That assumes a 3% to 5% increase in the number of adjustments approved annually, according to the commission.

Even if a student’s appeal for a financial aid increase is accepted, many campus financial aid websites say additional aid typically comes in the form of loans. The law will also not change the often-complicated cost adjustment process, or the way colleges estimate their cost of attendance.

“I think there are still areas in which California could continue to change policy to better strengthen this process,” Petrass said. “I think there's opportunities to look at reducing documentation requirements for students as well to, again, just make it a more seamless process that aligns with the minimum federal requirements.”

Mariam Farag and Max Guerra are contributors with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

It happens in close races in almost every major election. Early California returns show Republicans winning or at least faring better than expected. Then, as votes are counted over the following days, the tallies shift in Democrats’ favor.

This “blue shift” or “red mirage” isn’t a result of California Democrats “finding votes” or rigging elections, as President Donald Trump and his supporters have repeatedly claimed.

Trump and his allies in the federal government are already laying the groundwork for questioning the election results as they embark on an unprecedented attack on California’s elections, setting up what could be a showdown over the fundamentals of American democracy.

Experts urge you not to be fooled by their claims of “rigged” elections based on early returns.

The shifts in early tallies, experts say, are merely the result of when and how Democrats and Republicans tend to vote and the length of time it takes California election officials to count millions of ballots.

Examples of the ‘blue shift’ and ‘red mirage’

The phenomenon has been described since at least 2013, but the terms gained traction around the contentious 2020 elections.

Six years ago, election night returns showed Trump leading Joe Biden in several key states, but as counties nationwide counted ballots over the coming days, Biden ended up winning in the states that put him over the top in the Electoral College.

In the final weeks of his first term, Trump made claims, which have been repeatedly debunked, that the race was stolen from him. Thousands of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in the deadly riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

California has seen its own red mirages in congressional and local races over the years. In 2018, for instance, four Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives appeared to be ahead on election night, but ended up losing to their Democratic opponents by the time all votes were counted.

In the primary this June, Spencer Pratt, a Republican former reality TV star, appeared to be beating progressive Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman in early returns in the race for LA mayor. Raman ended up pulling ahead and advanced to the general election to face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.

The shift led Trump to call the results “rigged” and others on the MAGA right to declare Democratic shenanigans were at work.

Experts and elections officials say you shouldn’t believe such claims.

Why vote counts shift

First, let’s state the obvious: California is the most populous state. There are 23 million registered voters in California; that’s more voters than the entire populations of the 16 least-populated states combined.

Los Angeles County — the most populated in the country — alone has nearly 6 million registered voters.

There are also lots of Republicans in California, even though Democrats greatly outnumber them.

Want to blow some minds at your next cocktail party? Ask your friends to name which county in the U.S. had the most Trump voters, by raw numbers, in the 2020 election. The answer: deep-blue Los Angeles County, where Biden overwhelmingly won.

So how does that translate into a red mirage?

In the June LA mayor’s race, the city’s Republicans turned their ballots in earlier than Democrats did.

There was so much last-minute uncertainty over the crowded field of Democratic gubernatorial candidates who appeared on the same ballot that many liberal voters waited an especially long time to return them.

That meant more Republican votes were reported in the first wave of election returns, a red mirage that disappeared as Democratic votes were fully tabulated.

That could very well happen in the various partisan races on the ballot in California, including those that could determine which party controls Congress.

And, as usual, the rest of the country may end up waiting weeks for California’s results to get an answer.

Yes, California takes a long time to count votes

There’s no getting around it: California’s vote counting process is slow, and that gives more time for doubts about the election results to fester.

“It is undermining voter confidence. It’s opening the door to election mis- and disinformation,” Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said in a briefing last week. “It’s leading to threats and criticism of our election staff. …. And it shortens the time required for an orderly transition of power.”

But there are reasons why California counts so slowly.

During the pandemic, California began mailing every registered voter a ballot. Mail-in ballots require far more time to process than in-person ballots. Many voters also hang on to their ballots until Election Day.

Adding to the counting delays, California gives voters a seven-day grace period for ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive and get counted.

California also has the longest period in the country to “cure” ballots that come in with problems such as mismatched signatures that require election officials to contact voters to fix them. This year, voters have until the day before Thanksgiving to cure their ballots, Alexander said.

The state only requires counties to count ballots for at least six hours a day, and they’re not required to count on weekends or holidays.

Alexander said many counties go beyond that, but it’s up to each election office. The decision is often dependent on whether the county has enough election workers, can pay them over time and has space for them to work, all of which depend on local budgets.

Recent changes to California law aim to speed up the count, and lawmakers this year provided $29 million for counties to buy more ballot-counting machines or hire more workers. Still, Alexander said some close races could remain undecided for weeks. Counties have 30 days to officially certify the results.

Ben Gips of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to fighting authoritarianism, urged California voters not to be misled by those who would use such delays to sow doubt about an election that is working as intended, if slowly.

“These delays really can add fuel to that strategy, and it can make it much easier to do that deception,” Gips said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.