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.

(

Justin Sullivan

/

Getty Images

)

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.

(

Mario Tama

/

Getty Images

)

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.

(

Mario Tama

/

Getty Images

)

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.

East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell on Thursday became the latest Democrat to throw his hat in the ring for the 2026 governor’s race — announcing his campaign shortly before a scheduled appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

“Our state, this great state, needs a fighter and a protector,” Swalwell told Kimmel. “Someone who will bring prices down, lift wages up.”

Swalwell has been a high-profile critic of President Donald Trump, taking a leading role in Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021 and maintaining a regular presence on cable TV. The former Alameda County prosecutor has raised money and campaigned for Democrats across the country, and he could tap those relationships as he enters what promises to be an expensive campaign for the state’s top job.

“I’ve been in these fights as a city councilmember up in Dublin, my hometown, as a prosecutor in Oakland, and taking on the most corrupt president ever in the U.S. Congress,” Swalwell said. “But I’m ready to bring this fight home.”

Swalwell lashed out at Trump for his administration’s cuts to cancer research grants, accusing him of targeting Democratic-led states such as California.

“It’s a little personal to me…I lost my best friend two months ago, my mom passed and she passed from cancer,” he said. “People in California expect that you’re going to invest in cancer research, not cut it.”

The race to succeed termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom remains wide open less than seven months before the June primary. Former Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla both passed on running, and the special election over Proposition 50 diverted attention and fundraising away from the campaign for governor.

A poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies this month found 44% of voters remain undecided.

Swalwell’s views on state policy are largely undefined, and he enters the race with far less experience in the state Capitol than fellow Democratic hopefuls Xavier Becerra, the former attorney general, and Antonio Villaraigosa, who served as Assembly speaker before he was mayor of Los Angeles.

But Swalwell’s clashes with Trump and Republicans in Washington could resonate with Democratic voters looking for California leaders to spearhead a resistance to the White House.

When the House voted to impeach Trump in 2021 for inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Swalwell was tapped by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to help present the case to the Senate as an impeachment manager.

After Trump was acquitted, Swalwell sued him in civil court, arguing that the president fomented an attack that violated his civil rights and caused emotional distress. That lawsuit is ongoing in the U.S. District Court in Washington.

Last week, a top housing official in the Trump administration called for a criminal probe into Swalwell, alleging the congressman may have made false or misleading statements on mortgage documents to secure better loan terms. The accusations are similar to criminal referrals made against other Trump critics, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff of California.

Swalwell has denied wrongdoing and framed the move as political retaliation, telling Kimmel the charge was “nonsense.”

“If he thinks for one second that me, Schiff… Tish James are going to hide under the bed or shrink or just go quiet, we’re not,” Swalwell said.

Born in Iowa and raised in a Republican household, Swalwell has long joked that he appears on Fox News so his parents can see him. He was the first member of his family to attend college and spent years as a prosecutor in the Alameda County district attorney’s office. Two of Swalwell’s brothers served as deputies in the county sheriff’s office.

Swalwell burst onto the political scene in 2012, when he defeated longtime incumbent Rep. Pete Stark. In Congress, Swalwell parlayed a savvy use of social media and regular appearances on cable news into a national following and a significant financial war chest. In 2018, he campaigned across the country for Democratic congressional candidates as the party won back control of the House.

A year later, Swalwell launched a long-shot presidential campaign centered on reducing gun violence, but he failed to gain traction and ended his bid after just three months.

Swalwell’s path to the governor’s office could rely on support from Bay Area voters. He and state Superintendent Tony Thurmond, a former Assembly member from Richmond, are the only candidates who have won office in the region.

Historically, Northern California has been the bedrock of high-propensity Democratic voters, although the region has supported the state’s two Los Angeles-based U.S. senators, Padilla and Schiff, in recent elections.

Your trash, or the place where it ends up, is one of the most serious contributors to global warming. After livestock, landfills are the second-largest source of methane emissions in California, responsible for more than 20% of the state’s output.

That’s why the California Air Resources Board took action Thursday to monitor and capture landfill gases.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is generated from the breakdown of waste. Even though it’s a short-lived climate pollutant compared to long-lasting carbon dioxide, it severely exacerbates human-caused climate change.

The new rules will eventually require landfill operators to take action when a satellite or airplane detects a methane leak, improve routine leak monitoring and reporting and mandate stronger action on recurring issues. The protections will add to a suite of regulations the state passed in 2010, which made California the first state to develop stricter standards than the federal government.

“This is another example of California’s leadership in reducing emissions and harmful climate-warming pollutants across all sources. With these updates, California will be able to more efficiently and effectively monitor methane sources to detect and remedy leaks quickly,” CARB Chair Lauren Sanchez said in a press release.

The board reported that the state’s methane satellite, which passes by four to five times a week, has helped stop 10 large leaks since May.

“We believe that many operators would be interested in adopting these technologies to reduce the need for costly labor, especially as the number of mature technologies increases over time,” said air resources engineer Quinn Langfitt, who introduced the regulator’s proposal at a public hearing on Thursday.

The changes, which will affect 188 landfills in the state, are part of meeting the state’s goal to reduce methane emissions by 40% below 2013 levels by 2030.

Officials said the new rules could reduce landfill emissions by 427,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. They would create $34 million in social benefits and cost landfills around $12 million, with the largest bearing the brunt of the price tag.

A recent report backed up the agency’s findings: By 2050, landfill emissions could be reduced by more than half and up to 64% by the end of the century, according to a March analysis by Industrious Labs. The group noted that California landfills emit 7.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent of methane annually, which has “the same climate impact as driving 1.7 million cars for one year.”

But even though the board passed the new rules, they won’t go into effect immediately; staff will need to address a slew of clarifying questions raised by the public and board members during the hearing.

CARB board member Diane Takvorian supported the rule but pushed for a public-facing dashboard to show when and where emissions plumes are detected.

“People are asking for basic information,” Takvorian said, noting that technology is moving fast and that people need information now, not in years. She and others recommended an 18-month technology review after the rule goes into effect. They also suggested that the state and landfills share any data with the public as soon as possible.

“If we have the data, we should share it,” board member Hector De La Torre said.

John Kennedy, senior policy advocate for the Rural County Representatives of California, said he is “supportive of efforts to reduce emissions.” His group represents more than two-thirds of the landfills to which the standards would apply. Kennedy wants to ensure that the implementation is feasible for local governments “while protecting the communities that are close to those landfills.”

A spokesperson from Waste Management, which does business as WM, representing facilities across the state, thanked staff for the updated plan, but said he hopes they will work with the industry on site-specific conditions, which of the new rules are “necessary and useful to diagnose conditions,” and a framework for using alternative monitoring technologies.

Multiple residents from the Los Angeles community of Val Verde attended the meeting. They said they have suffered because of widespread noxious odors and hazardous gas emissions from the Chiquita Canyon Landfill in recent years. Brandi Howse, who spoke during public comment, said she has lived about 1,000 feet from the landfill for 27 years.

Howse said she has experienced clouds of methane and other gases at her home.

“You become dizzy, disoriented, nauseous. You get headaches, burning sinuses and bloody noses,” Howse said. “We are left to be concerned with long-term effects. I know that myself and my neighbors to my left and my right have all had cancer.”

Community members from the Kern County community of Avenal approached the podium to say that the landfill in their community is causing health concerns, including cancer, and people are leaving the town because of it.

“The smell is really bad,” said Leticia Luna, who moved to Avenal 15 years ago. “People are leaving our community because their homes are not safe, and when they leave, they find it difficult to sell because we live very close to the landfill.”

While many groups applauded the new rule, Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics, said it is a “real first step,” and that CARB needs even stronger rules to prevent fires and large emission leaks at landfills.

This story was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on Wednesday.

As the holiday shopping season approaches, many small-business owners across Los Angeles are looking for a much-needed boost in sales after months of financial strain tied to immigration raids.

In Boyle Heights, for example, more than a dozen local restaurants reported losing 50% or more of their customers or revenue in the weeks after federal agents began conducting sweeps, according to a Boyle Heights Beat survey. 

One business owner said he lost more than $10,000 in revenue. Another estimated a loss of around $15,000.

Leading up to Black Friday, the merchants association known as Somos Los Callejones and the Los Angeles Tenants Union are teaming up with Councilmember Ysabel Jurado to host a street festival Saturday in the L.A. Fashion District’s Santee Alley. Olympic Boulevard between Santee Street and Maple Avenue will be shut down for the festival, which will feature music and vendors.

Event organizers aim to bring business back to the callejones, where vendors have noticed a decrease in foot traffic since immigration sweeps began in the summer. The Fashion District was among the locations that experienced the first workplace raids in early June.

Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights in District 14, will be attending the event.

The councilmember helped facilitate the opening of the city’s Small Business Administration’s Business Recovery Center at 1780 E. First Street. There, small businesses and nonprofit organizations affected by the raids can access information and resources about loan programs available to those experiencing financial hardship, a CD 14 spokesperson said.

On the Eastside, small businesses and community groups are launching holiday markets, hoping to boost local sales. Check back with Boyle Heights Beat soon for a full list.

A protest of New York’s Museum of Modern Art — over a 1984 exhibition that included only 13 women among a group of 169 artists — was a bit of a blip at the time.

The bigger impact was that the protestors would go on to found a long-running activist collective called the “Guerrilla Girls,” that would become known around the world for its outspoken calls for equity for women and people of color in the art world.

Now the anonymous group, who don gorilla masks and assume names of women artists of the past to maintain their anonymity, has its own exhibition at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, called “How to Be a Guerrilla Girl.” 

Though that doesn’t mean the collective is sparing the Getty when it comes to calling out how museums perpetuate inequity through their acquisitions and exhibitions.

How the “Guerrilla Girls” got the art world’s attention

Using straightforward language, glaring statistics and humor and disseminating their messaging through protest signs, flyers, letters and postcards, eye-catching billboards and numerous media appearances, the Guerrilla Girls gained worldwide attention.

Guerrilla Girls posters on display at the "How to Be a Guerrilla Girl" exhibition at the Getty Center.

(

Monica Bushman / LAist

)

The gorilla masks (and sometimes gloves too) didn’t hurt either. The use of the disguises grew out of one members’ confusion between the words “guerrilla” and “gorilla,” and became an essential part of the group’s collective public identity.

What’s on display in “How to Be a Guerrilla Girl”

The “How to Be a Guerrilla Girl” exhibition draws from the first 15 years of the Guerrilla Girls’ archives, which the Getty acquired in 2008, to show the stages of development — from lists and drafts to final products — of the various methods the collective has used to spread their calls for change.

"The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist" is one of the Guerrilla Girls' most well known works. Early drafts of it are included in the "How to Be a Guerrilla Girl" exhibition.

(

Monica Bushman / LAist

)

Some of the group’s best known works are posters that read “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met[ropolitan] Museum [of Art]?” and another titled “The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist,” which lists things like “Having an escape from the art world in your [four freelance] jobs” and “Not having to undergo the embarrassment of being called a genius.”

Zanna Gilbert, one of the exhibition’s lead curators, says that while there have been many other Guerrilla Girls exhibitions, what makes this one unique is how it shows the behind the scenes work and thought processes that led up to these final products.

 “We have a lot of their brainstorming notes so you can really see the process of how they did their activism,” Gilbert says. “So we see it as a kind of toolkit for other people to learn from them.”

Not sparing the Getty from criticism

The exhibition also includes excerpts from the group’s media appearances through the years (like this one on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2016) and an interactive digital display titled “What about Getty?” that reveals stats on how the Getty Museum and Research Institute measure up when it comes to the inclusion of women in collections and exhibitions over the years.

One example: “In the Getty Museum’s painting collection: 81.15% are by men, 18.03% are by anonymous, and less than 1% are by women (0.82%).”

“Institutional reflection is a strategy often used by the Guerrilla Girls when they're invited to do a project at an institution,” Kristin Juarez, also a lead curator of the exhibition, explains. “That if you're inviting the Guerrilla Girls to kind of bring what they do to your institution, you should also be open to reflecting on the work that they're doing.”

A portion of the new Guerrilla Girls work in the "How to Be a Guerrilla Girl" exhibition.

(

Monica Bushman / LAist

)

The Getty also commissioned a new work from the Guerrilla Girls, which features their takes on the content of some of the paintings and sculptures in the Getty Collections, using cartoon speech bubbles to add commentary from the imagined perspectives of the women depicted in them.

The relevance of the Guerrilla Girls today

“ We think that this is an interesting moment, 40 years later, [when] some of the work still feels like it was made today,” Juarez says.

Taken together as a whole, she hopes the exhibition offers viewers a sense of “what it means to form a group and use your voice together.”

What to know before you go

The “How to Be a Guerrilla Girl” exhibition is open at the Getty Center now through April 12, 2026 and is presented in both English and Spanish.

Admission to the museum is free but requires a reservation. Parking is $25 ($15 after 3pm, $10 after 6pm, and free after 6pm on Saturdays). Metro bus 761 stops at the Getty Center entrance.