California has spent billions of dollars restoring rivers, lakes, and streams after they have been damaged by pollution, development, altered landscapes, and other pressures. This restoration is essential work, but there is another, often overlooked, part of protecting clean water: making sure our outstanding waters don’t become degraded in the first place. 

California already has a powerful tool for doing just that. It simply hasn’t made much use of it. 

Under the Clean Water Act’s antidegradation framework, states can designate exceptional waters as Outstanding National Resource Waters, or ONRWs. ONRW designation can be the highest level of water quality protection available under the Clean Water Act, establishing a legal standard that prohibits any permanent degradation of a water body’s existing quality. The objective is straightforward: when a river, stream, or lake possesses exceptional water quality or ecological or recreational significance, we should maintain that quality rather than allowing it to slowly decline with allowable pollution. 

So far, despite California’s extraordinary diversity of rivers, lakes, streams, and headwaters, the state has designated only Lake Tahoe and Mono Lake as outstanding waters. 

Protecting Clean Water Before It Becomes Polluted 

Much of California’s water quality policies are reactive. We regulate discharges, monitor conditions, identify waters that have become impaired, establish cleanup requirements, and then invest considerable public and private resources trying to restore them. 

ONRW designation offers a different approach: protect exceptional waters while they are still exceptional. 

This approach is particularly important because degradation does not always happen through one catastrophic event. Water quality can decline incrementally as new activities and permitted discharges accumulate across a watershed. Sediment from disturbed landscapes, nutrients, increased water temperatures, and other pollutants may individually appear manageable while cumulatively changing the character of a river over time. Preventing new sources of pollution or managing a water body that is becoming less clean is virtually impossible until the level of pollution reaches the thresholds set by California’s clean water standards.  

Once that happens, restoring what was lost can be extraordinarily difficult and expensive. 

California Has a Tool, But Not a Roadmap 

One reason this water quality tool remains underutilized is surprisingly simple: California has never established a clear statewide process for designating Outstanding National Resource Waters. 

Regional Water Quality Control Boards can consider ONRW designations through amendments to their Basin Plans, with those amendments ultimately requiring approval by the State Water Resources Control Board. But, as of now, there is no clear statewide guidance explaining how a Regional Board should identify a potential ONRW, what information should support a designation, what findings should be made, or how the designation should ultimately be implemented. 

Recently, several Regional Water Boards have explored ONRW designations. Without statewide guidance, however, each region is effectively left to develop its own approach. This process could produce thoughtful solutions tailored to individual watersheds, but it could also result in inconsistent criteria, unnecessary uncertainty, and nine Regional Boards potentially reinventing the same process. 

Meanwhile, communities, Tribes, conservation organizations, and others interested in protecting exceptional waters have no clear roadmap for bringing a proposal forward. 

The State Water Board is uniquely positioned to solve this problem. 

What Statewide Guidance Could Do 

Statewide ONRW guidance does not need to dictate which California waters should receive the designation. Those decisions should be based on the characteristics of individual waters and developed through the appropriate regional public processes. 

Instead, ONRW guidance should establish a predictable and transparent pathway for considering designation. 

For example, the State Water Board could explain what characteristics make a waterbody an appropriate ONRW candidate; what water quality, ecological, recreational, and cultural information should be considered; how nominations can be initiated; how Tribes, communities, water users, and other interested parties should participate; what findings Regional Boards should make; and what the State Water Board expects when a designation comes before it for approval. 

Equally important, this guidance should clarify what designation means after it occurs. What constitutes a prohibited lowering of water quality? How should temporary or short-term changes be evaluated? What monitoring is appropriate to ensure that the exceptional qualities that justified designation remain protected? 

Clear guidance would benefit everyone — not only advocates seeking ONRW designations, but also Regional Boards, water agencies, and communities that want to understand what a proposed designation would actually mean. 

The Time to Protect Exceptional Waters Is While They Are Still Exceptional 

California still has remarkable waters worth protecting. They include cold, clear Sierra Nevada headwaters; North Coast salmon streams; desert springs; waters flowing through wilderness and protected landscapes; and rivers valued by generations of Californians for swimming, fishing, boating, wildlife, cultural practices, and simple enjoyment. 

Some of these waters may ultimately qualify as Outstanding National Resource Waters. Others may not. Californians deserve a functioning process for asking the question. 

That is particularly important at a time when federal clean-water protections have become less certain. California cannot control every change in federal environmental policy, but it can make full use of the authority it already has to protect its own waters. 

For decades, California’s approach to water quality has necessarily devoted enormous attention to repairing damage that has already occurred, and we must continue that work. 

But we should also recognize something much simpler: the best time to protect an exceptional water body is before it needs to be restored. 

What you can do 

The State Board is now considering their triennial review, priorities, and workplan, and are asking for comment letters on that workplan.  Write a letter to the Board urging them to prioritize the creation of an ONRW guidance document as part of their review. 

Letters are due at noon on Monday, September 21^st.   

The Board asks that you email your written comments in PDF format to commentletters@waterboards.ca.gov and include “Review of State Plans and Policies” in the subject line.  

You may also mail or hand deliver your written comments to the following address:  

State Water Resources Control Board  

Attention: Courtney Tyler, Clerk to the Board  

P.O. Box 100, Sacramento, CA 95812-0100 (by mail)  

1001 I Street, 24th Floor Sacramento, CA 95814 (hand delivery) 

For more information visit: Protecting California’s Rivers When Federal Rules Won’t