What Leadership on California’s Water Future Looks Like

This article is second in a series looking at California’s upcoming gubernatorial election and the protection of one of our most essential and irreplaceable resources: water. 

In our last article, we described a California water system under strain. Over-allocated rivers, aging infrastructure, intensifying climate extremes, and a political imbalance between where water originates and where decisions are made are just some of the increasing pressures our water system faces. Identifying these challenges matters, but diagnosis alone is not enough. 

Elections are not just moments to identify what is broken; they are also moments to define what leadership should look like. As Californians look toward the 2026 gubernatorial race, the more important question about water becomes: What does responsible, future-focused water leadership actually require?

To help answer that question, SYRCL and our clean water partners are collaborating and sharing ideas on a framework grounded in decades of on-the-ground experience, science, and community advocacy. It rests on principles to safeguard California’s water future that protects people, rivers, and coastal waters alike.

Protect a Sustainable and Affordable Water Supply 

Water is a public necessity. A healthy water system must reliably serve households, farms, ecosystems, and local economies, even as climate change makes water supplies less predictable. 

True water security comes from living within our hydrologic limits, not from continually withdrawing more water from already stressed rivers and groundwater basins. This means prioritizing conservation, capturing stormwater, recycling water for reuse, and investing in efficiency before turning to expensive and environmentally damaging supply projects. 

Protecting a sustainable water supply also means keeping water affordable. Fair pricing structures and local solutions can help ensure that basic water needs are met without placing disproportionate burdens on low-income households or rural communities. 

Leadership here means investment and planning, so communities are resilient in dry years and not forced into crisis decisions when weather swings from one extreme to another. 

Protect California’s Coast and Marine Waters 

California’s coast is one of our state’s most defining features, and it is also where everything upstream ends up. Pollution that enters rivers and streams does not disappear; it flows downhill, affecting estuaries, beaches, fisheries, and coastal communities.

Protecting the coast requires more than cleaning up trash after the fact. It means addressing pollution at its source, including excess fertilizer pollutants, warm water discharges, and toxic runoff that can fuel harmful algal blooms and low-oxygen conditions deadly to marine life.

As ocean conditions change and waters warm, these threats are growing. Strong water leadership recognizes that protecting the coast begins inland, and that clean marine waters are essential to public health, recreation, fishing, tourism, economy, and California’s identity.

Protect Freshwater Rivers, Streams, and Headwaters 

Rivers are the heart and arteries of California’s water system, carrying snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific Ocean. Yet many rivers are so heavily diverted that they no longer function as living systems — especially during dry years, when resilience matters most. 

Protecting freshwater means keeping water in rivers, setting clear and enforceable limits on how much water can be removed to protect the beneficial uses of the waterway, safeguarding headwaters and seasonal streams, and managing surface water and groundwater as one connected system. Healthy rivers help reduce flood risk, recharge groundwater, support salmon and steelhead, sustain recreation, and strengthen local economies. 

When rivers are treated only as plumbing, everyone loses — both people and nature. Leadership in this space means recognizing rivers as shared public resources that must remain alive and functional to support communities now and into the future. 

Strengthen Water Governance and Accountability 

Even the strongest water protections fail if the rules are not enforced or if the standards themselves are simply too weak. Today, many California waterways are polluted or impaired — in part because enforcement is inconsistent and under-resourced. And, in some cases, dischargers are in compliance with the law, but the standards to protect our water and environment are too weak and do not equate to or result in protection of our waterways. 

Strong water governance means decisions guided by science, transparency, and the public interest. It means ensuring that impacted communities, Tribal nations, and those advocating for rivers and marine life have a real voice in how water decisions are made. 

Leadership here is about rebuilding trust — trust that laws will be applied fairly, that water will be protected for future generations, and that decisions will not sacrifice long-term health for short-term gain. 

A Framework for Evaluating Leadership 

As the 2026 gubernatorial election approaches, these four principles offer voters a clear lens for understanding and comparing candidates and their vision for California’s water future.  

Our goal is two-fold: first to build an informed and engaged citizenry; and second, to engage all gubernatorial candidates in this critical conversation.

This is the conversation our rivers, communities, and coast deserve. 

This article is the second in a series looking at California’s upcoming gubernatorial election and how it will shape our shared water future.