The Brief

The California State Water Resources Control Board on Tuesday approved new regulations for direct potable reuse, AKA "toilet to tap," or highly treated sewage that’s piped directly from a water treatment plant to your home.

Some of the largest direct reuse programs in the state are being developed here in Southern California.

So, when will you be able to gulp down water that’s gone from flush to faucet?

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (R) prepares to taste wastewater that was treated at the Antioch Water Treatment Plant with former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (L) and Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe (C) on Aug. 11, 2022 in Antioch, California.

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A bit of background

While this might sound like a new development, these regulations have been in the works for more than a decade now. And whether you realize it, there’s a decent chance you’ve already been drinking small amounts of purified sewage water in California.

Indirect potable reuse has been allowed for quite some time. That’s when sewage water is treated, pumped into a reservoir or some other environmental buffer, mixed with natural sources of water and then pumped back out and treated again.

Orange County has had one of these recycled water systems in place since 2008.

“The reality is that anyone out there on the Mississippi River, anyone out there on the Colorado River, anyone out there taking drinking water downstream from a wastewater treatment plant discharge, which I promise you you’re all doing, is already drinking toilet to tap,” said E. Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, during the meeting Tuesday.

Recycled water programs have been ongoing since the 1980s, with the finished product frequently used to irrigate places like golf courses and public parks.

Our water problems have been getting worse each year as a result of higher temperatures and extreme drought conditions exacerbated by the climate crisis. We need to explore alternatives to imported water, which is why recycling is a key part of the state’s water supply strategy.

A view of the lime post treatment section of a water treatment facility run by the Orange County Water District.

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In the near future, toilet to tap could account for as much as 10% to 15% of our supply, according to Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the division of drinking water for the California State Water Resources Control Board.

Up to 90% of contaminated water streams can be reliably recycled, with the leftover discharge usually sent to the ocean.

The new regulations aren’t the final word on direct potable reuse. Guidance will continue to develop as systems are implemented. And there’s no requirement for localities to participate in wastewater reuse. Any projects that do go ahead should be open for public comment before they’re approved.

Is it safe?

“I would have no hesitation drinking the first glass out of the first potable reuse facility in California,” said Daniel McCurry, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at USC. “I think it’s going to be cleaner than most bottled water you could find.”

The new rules require a minimum of four separate treatment processes, ensuring redundancies in case one fails. And the process is monitored from beginning to end. If the water doesn’t pass the necessary requirements, it’s discarded.

A sample of purified water (L) flows next to wastewater following the microfiltration treatment process at the Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS), the world's largest wastewater recycling plant, in the Orange County Water District.

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Reverse osmosis, UV lights and carbon filters are all part of the filtration process. Helping to pull out and eliminate everything from pharmaceuticals to PFAS, to enteric viruses and protozoa like giardia and cryptosporidium, all of which can cause serious gastrointestinal issues — 99.999999999999999999% (that’s 18 nines after the decimal point) have to be removed. That's a higher degree of purification than is required for indirect potable reuse, which has been in place.

“These are probably the most protective potable reuse regulations that’ve ever been written,” McCurry said. “There’s probably some in the industry who feel like they're too strict, but it’s probably wise for us to err on the side of caution for now.”

City of L.A.

L.A.’s recycled water program is called Operation NEXT, the goal of which is to retrofit the Hyperion wastewater treatment plant so that instead of sending our treated water out into the ocean, we can pump it back into storage systems, including the aquifer beneath the San Fernando Valley.

“It’ll create a new drinking water supply for the city of L.A. leading to sustainability and the development of local supplies. All the things that we know we need here, specifically in Los Angeles, given the climate crisis," said Jesus Gonzalez, manager of recycled water at LADWP.

Besides a retrofit to purification technologies, L.A. will also have to build pipelines all of the way from Hyperion to conveyance facilities.

Gonzalez anticipates that the $20 billion investment should supply roughly a third of the city’s future water supply. That said, it could take another 15-plus years before it’s up and running.

Los Angeles County

L.A. County is partnering with the Metropolitan Water District on a program called Pure Water Southern California, which could be the largest facility of its type in the United States, according Deven Upadhyay, executive officer at the MWD.

They’re currently in the environmental planning stage, and the cost estimate for the first phase of the program is going to be about $6 billion.

“That’s a lot of money in the water world,” Upadhyay said.

We’ll have to wait and see how the new regulations are used, but at least some of the water will be pumped into groundwater basins for storage. Upadhyay didn’t specify how much of our water could be covered by the new system.

Orange County

Orange County has the world’s largest water recycling plant, and has been running their indirect potable reuse program since 2008.

They currently produce about 130 million gallons of recycled water every day, processing all of the available wastewater across the O.C. Sanitation District.

About 40% of what’s put back into the aquifer is coming from their O.C. treatment facility.

“We’re recycling everything we can recycle in terms of taking the treated wastewater, putting it through advanced treatment to a point where it’s beyond drinking water quality, and then putting it back into the underground aquifer,” said Mehul Patel, executive director of operations for the O.C. Water District.

Patel doesn’t anticipate these new regulations will affect the current system they have in place.

However, he said there’s a possibility that O.C. could see changes as a result of the regulations south of Irvine, where they don’t have a lot of naturally occurring water storage areas, leaving them reliant on imported water. They may benefit from a direct potable reuse plant there, though nothing is planned at the moment.

San Diego

By 2035, San Diego wants recycled water to account for half of their supply. Currently, they recycle about 8% of their wastewater, sending the rest out to the Pacific Ocean.

Phase 1 of their Pure Water San Diego project is currently under construction, and is expected to be completed by 2026, providing as much as 30 million gallons of recycled water a day. That water is slated to be sent to the Miramar Reservoir, where it’ll be mixed with other water in the system.

There are no current plans for San Diego to implement direct potable reuse, according to a statement from city spokesperson Ramon Galindo. That could change with Phase 2 of the project.

The U.S. war with Iran has pushed inflation to its highest level in almost three years.

Consumer prices in April were up 3.8% from a year ago, according to a report Tuesday from the Labor Department. That was the biggest annual increase since May 2023.

Prices rose 0.6% between March and April.

From gas prices to housing, here are three things to know about the rising cost of living.

Gas prices are a big driver

Gasoline prices have jumped sharply since the war began, snarling tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital corridor for energy shipments. The average price of regular gas is $4.50 a gallon, according to AAA. That's up 38 cents from a month ago. The jump in energy prices accounted for 40% of the monthly increase in the consumer price index in April.

Rising fuel costs are affecting other prices as well

When energy costs jump sharply, it can have spillover effects. Air fares, for example, jumped 2.8% last month and are more than 20% higher than they were a year ago, as airlines struggle with a spike in jet fuel prices.

The cost of diesel fuel has risen by $1.88 a gallon since the war began. If that lasts, it could put upward pressure on the price of everything that's delivered by truck or train.

Excluding volatile food and energy costs, "core" inflation was 2.8% in April.

Housing prices also contributed to higher inflation in April

Housing costs were also a driver of inflation, jumping 0.6% between March and April, but some of that is a statistical fluke resulting from the six-week government shutdown last fall. Government number-crunchers were temporarily idled in October, so were unable to collect housing prices that month. That's had the effect of artificially lowering the measure of housing inflation. Tuesday's report provides a kind of catch-up.

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The Los Angeles World Cup host committee has quietly posted its guidance on human rights after months of speculation over where the plan was and when it would be published.

Advocates had pushed the committee, an arm of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, to produce its plan. But now that it's out, they're not satisfied with what they're seeing.

The human rights guidance is required by FIFA and outlined on the host committee's website. It includes a list of online resources including where to file complaints with various local and state level agencies and a summary of local, state and federal laws protecting human and civil rights. The committee is also touting a partnership with L.A. County in which people can call 211 to report a concern during the tournament.

"Los Angeles is weeks away from hosting one of the largest sporting events in the world, and yet what has been posted is not a plan,” Stephanie Richard, director of the Sunita Jain Anti‑Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law School, said in a statement. “It is a list of laws and hotline numbers."

The human rights document also skirts fears around ICE and its potential presence at the tournament and surrounding celebrations. Todd Lyons, the agency's head, said earlier this year that ICE's investigatory branch will play a key role in security for the tournament.

But ICE and immigration enforcement aren't mentioned on the host committee's web page on human rights or in its outline of its approach to human rights. "Immigration status" only gets a mention in the list of existing anti-discrimination laws.

"It certainly could have been much stronger," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said of the plan. She added that her organization participated in a roundtable on the plan, and she was disappointed ICE and recent immigration sweeps weren't mentioned in the resulting document.

"In order for all of this to happen, immigrant workers are part of it," she said of the World Cup. "Your hotel workers, your service workers, stadium workers, drivers." 

LAist reached out to spokespeople for the host committee for comment via email, phone and text, but did not hear back in time for publication. FIFA's press team also did not respond to an email from LAist.

According to the host committee's website, the human rights plan is the result of coordination with the city and county of Los Angeles, the city of Inglewood, and 14 roundtable discussions held in the fall of 2025.

"As a non-profit organization, the Host Committee’s role is primarily and necessarily focused on aligning and collaborating with governmental and non-governmental organizations," the document sums up the committee's approach.

The plan also promises more actions, including "Know Your Rights" training for L.A. residents and visitors and "Know Your Responsibilities" training for businesses and vendors. The committee also says it will develop a "rapid response" strategy to respond to potential problems at the tournament.

Available details on those plans were scant. And with the tournament just 30 days away, labor unions and community groups are continuing to voice concerns about potential ICE presence at SoFi Stadium and other potential consequences of the tournament coming to town.

In 2019, Xiaoman Ding was diagnosed with a pituitary tumor in her brain that caused her debilitating headaches. At times, she couldn’t open her eyes or walk.

So while she was detained at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center after being arrested at an immigration courthouse in Santa Ana last June, she made repeated requests for medical treatment. Instead of getting the normal medications she took to manage her symptoms, she said she received Tylenol and ibuprofen.

By July, her pain became so “unbearable” she told a nurse at the detention center she wanted to take her own life. The facility placed her in solitary confinement for three days for monitoring.

“I never told anyone that I experienced suicidal thoughts again,” she said in court documents that form part of a federal lawsuit filed in January by a private law firm and immigrant right' group seeking to improve conditions at the facility. “I was afraid that I would be put into solitary confinement.”

The case continues to make its way through the court system. The next hearing is scheduled for late May.

In declarations accompanying the lawsuit, detainees shared their experiences in isolation. Many of them said they were placed in solitary confinement after asking for things that are essential for their dignity — or to fight their case in court. Others said the confinement made them reluctant to ask for help in the future.

How detention centers isolate detainees

About 2,000 immigrants are currently being held at the ICE detention center in Adelanto. The site is run by The GEO Group, a private prison operator.

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Across the country, immigrant detention centers like Adelanto are holding more people in solitary confinement than under previous administrations — including President Donald Trump’s first term. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data also shows that detainees are being isolated for longer periods of time, and experts say solitary confinement can worsen the conditions of people who need support.

People in custody can be placed in “segregation,” as it is dubbed at these centers, for numerous reasons. These can include disciplinary issues, as well as claims by facility officials that the move is needed to protect detainees who could be harmed if left among the general population. People in detention can also be put in segregation if they are on suicide watch, if they’re experiencing a “serious mental or medical illness” or for staging a hunger strike.

Detainee advocates say isolation is also being used to punish immigrants in civil detention.

The “threshold to use solitary is often quite low and arbitrary,” said Katherine Peeler, an assistant pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School and medical advisor with Physicians for Human Rights. The nonprofit publishes reports on solitary confinement at immigrant detention centers, rooted in public records, ICE data and testimony from detainees.

Some 2,000 immigrants are currently held at the Adelanto detention center, about 90 miles northeast of downtown L.A. in San Bernardino County. An LAist analysis of the most recent ICE data found that, ranked by percentage of the detainee population in segregation, this site is among the top 10 facilities in the United States.

How segregation can make medical issues worse

To get a sense of what immigrant detainees experience in segregation, Peeler asks the public to envision confinement.

“You are contained in a small cell, usually the size of a parking space,” she said. “Imagine being in a parking space and enclosing it all the way . . . You can't get out. You can't change the temperature.”

“The inability to control your environment, as well as the lack of contact with other humans, is known in medical literature to lead to great deals of anxiety, depression [and] extreme loneliness,” Peeler added. “People have been known to have hallucinations and agitation, [as well as] reduced cognitive functioning.”

The most recent Physicians for Human Rights report found that, between April 2024 and May 2025, ICE detention centers placed over 10,500 people in solitary confinement — often for more than 15 days. UN human rights experts consider solitary confinement placements that last that much or more to be torture, though the Supreme Court has held that isolation doesn’t violate the Constitution. ICE’s own policies call for “additional steps to ensure appropriate review and oversight of decisions to retain detainees in segregated housing for over 14 days.”

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At least four people have died after being held in custody at an ICE detention facility in Adelanto, California. A recent lawsuit alleges that living conditions there are inhumane, and some compare the facility to "concentration camps."

Rotten food, disease, isolation. What we know about conditions at the Adelanto ICE detention center

At least four people have died after being held in custody at an ICE detention facility in Adelanto, California. A recent lawsuit alleges that living conditions there are inhumane, and some compare the facility to "concentration camps."

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Disability Rights California, a federally mandated nonprofit that advocates for people with disabilities in the state, monitors conditions at immigrant detention centers.

Richard Diaz, a senior attorney at the nonprofit, was part of a team that conducted a site visit at Adelanto last summer. The team found a general lack of accommodations for people with disabilities. Diaz also spoke with a detainee who’d been placed in solitary confinement for over a month. “On top of that,” he told LAist, the detainee “had medical concerns and accommodation needs that weren't being met.”

Peeler noted that solitary confinement is also associated with sleep disruption, which “can lead to further mental health issues.”

Sleep disruption “is also really bad for one's stress response system,” she added. “You can have heightened levels of the stress hormone cortisol. This can lead to problems with hypertension or high blood pressure, and general underlying medical conditions being worsened.”

The federal government denies claims of substandard conditions at immigrant detention centers and declined LAist’s requests for interviews and comments. In statements issued after the recent deaths of detainees, ICE said it is “committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments."

In a statement, a spokesperson for the GEO Group, a private prison operator that runs the Adelanto detention center, said: “[O]ur support services are monitored by ICE, including by on-site agency personnel, and other organizations within the Department of Homeland Security to ensure compliance with ICE’s detention standards and contract requirements regarding the treatment and services ICE detainees receive. In the event issues are identified, we quickly resolve all of ICE’s concerns.”

“The support services GEO provides include around-the-clock access to medical care, in-person and virtual legal and family visitation, general and legal library access, translation services, dietician-approved meals, religious and specialty diets, recreational amenities, and opportunities to practice their religious beliefs,” the spokesperson added.

What detainees have to say

People held at Adelanto paint a different picture.

LAist reviewed the detainee declarations filed as part of the January federal lawsuit seeking to improve conditions at the facility. Aside from people experiencing mental health crises and medical issues, multiple detainees at Adelanto described being placed in segregation as a form of punishment.

Andrei Karamychev is a Russian immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1999. In his testimony, Karamychev said that, after arriving at Adelanto last summer, he did not hear anything about his case for two months, “despite asking repeatedly to get information.”

“Many other people in my unit were also upset about not being told the reason for their detention,” he said. “We worked together to get attention to this issue by all yelling together, demanding to see our ICE officers.”

Eventually, Karamychev said, “a bunch of guards showed up and began to take out the people that spoke up, one by one.”

Six of the detainees involved were put in solitary confinement. After a few days in isolation, Karamychev said, “a lieutenant came in to meet with me and told me that I was going to spend two months in solitary because I had fought the officers.”

“This was a lie. I told him that I did not fight the officers, [that] I had just demanded nonviolently to see an ICE officer about my case,” Karamychev said. In response, the lieutenant told him: "We choose our truth."

Karamychev further detailed his confinement: “In solitary, I was under lockdown for about 23.5 hours a day. We had 30 minutes each day outside of our cells. During those thirty minutes, we could go outside for yard time in a cage that is about 10 feet by 10 feet, walk to the microwave to reheat meals, or look at a book.”

“When you are brought out to the mini yard, you are locked out there until the guards decide to let you back in,” he added. “The yard smells like urine because people had to pee out there, and it was not cleaned up. It is difficult because you want to have fresh air, but it smells like urine.”

Julius Omene Fredrick, an immigrant from Nigeria, was taken to Adelanto in January 2025. He has an ongoing application for a U visa, which is intended to give temporary immigration status to crime victims who have cooperated with law enforcement.

According to Fredrick, his unit had six showers for 80 people.

“There are three showers on each side of the room, with a walkway in the middle,” he said. “There are no privacy screens or curtains.”

Fredrick said he asked Adelanto guards for curtains “to give us some privacy.” Instead, he was placed in solitary confinement for seven days.

On another occasion, Fredrick said he was put in isolation for six days after complaining about the lack of access to the law library. Adelanto only allows four people from each 80-person unit to attend the library per day, he said. By Fredrick’s estimation, the library can fit “20 to 15 people.”

“We need access to the library so we can work on our immigration cases,” he explained. “Many of us do not have lawyers, so it is a real problem.”

Saddam Samaan Daoud Samaan, an immigrant from Jordan who had been living in Minnesota for nearly two decades before he was detained, said he was also put in solitary confinement after advocating for more access to the law library.

Throughout the detention center, Adelanto staff have put up posters about “voluntary departure,” Samaan added.

“The posters say that some people will be eligible for over $2,000 and a free flight if they choose to self-deport,” he said. “They even have sign-up sheets where you can write your name down to tell ICE you want to ‘voluntarily depart.’ I've seen them in the dayroom, the chow hall, and the solitary confinement unit. And it works. Being here breaks people.”

When detainees first arrive at Adelanto, they usually tell Samaan “they have support from their family and [and] plan to stick it out here as long as it takes.”

“Then, a month later,” he added, “they decide to sign away their case and leave the U.S. rather than stay at Adelanto any longer.”