If you feel like so much happened in 2024 that it could fill several years, you’re not alone.

Throughout the year, CalMatters covered the many big stories in California, and our photojournalists, illustrators and contributors documented them — often through the faces of those most directly affected.  

There were concerns about health care, including abortion access, maternity ward closures and affordability. Artificial intelligence took center stage, along with debates about data privacy. The homelessness crisis — and the billions spent to address it — continued to grab the attention of the public and politicians. Protests over the Gaza war again embroiled college campuses, as they tried to balance public safety and free speech. Nature also made news, with an atmospheric river in November and a tsunami scare in December.

And yes, we had an election. The presidential race became far more California-focused than expected when President Joe Biden dropped out and anointed Vice President Kamala Harris — a Californian who had been the state’s attorney general and represented it in the U.S. Senate. Harris drew a lot of enthusiasm and carried California by 20%, but lost vote share compared to Biden in every California county except Inyo — and lost the national vote and Electoral College to Donald Trump.

As you look back on 2024, here’s a selection of some of the year’s most compelling images:

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State and federal water officials announced today their long-awaited new rules for operating two massive water delivery systems that serve 30 million Californians and much of the state’s farmland.

The rules will oversee operations of the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, which carry water from Northern California rivers south to San Joaquin Valley farmers, Los Angeles area residents and many other water users in the southern half of the state.

Deliveries will increase for major urban water suppliers and many farms, while they’ll be cut for some farmers. Schedules for releasing water from Lake Shasta, the state’s largest reservoir, will be revised. 

Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the new operating plan represents the best path forward for the competing interests of cities, farms and fish. “It’s good for both people and the environment,” he said. “It’s the expression of what people want from us.”

The regulations, which take effect immediately, replace a set last modified in 2019 through a contentious revision by the first Trump administration, which state officials protested because it was expected to harm salmon and other Delta fish. 

But environmental groups say the rules from the Biden and Newsom administrations are even worse than the Trump policy in terms of protecting the state’s iconic Chinook salmon, endangered Delta smelt and other fish. 

A federal environmental review last month concluded that some salmon, which already are in dire shape, would be harmed by the new operating plan, with numbers of young salmon expected to drop. 

“I’m concerned that the alternative adopted today will adversely harm fish that are already in danger of extinction,” said Ashley Overhouse, water policy advisor at Defenders of Wildlife.  

Many farm groups and urban water districts applauded the new path forward, commending it as the best of several alternatives analyzed by state and federal officials for maintaining water supplies while protecting the environment. 

For a consortium of water suppliers representing 27 million people in much of California, stretching from the Bay Area to San Diego, and 750,000 acres of farmland, the new plan is particularly beneficial. The rules will slightly increase their average annual deliveries of Delta water and, in drought years, cause no significant change.

That includes the giant Metropolitan Water District, which provides much of the water used by 19 million Southern Californians in six counties. Interim General Manager Deven Upadhyay called the rules “an important milestone” after years of discussions.

But for some San Joaquin Valley farmers, water deliveries could drop by almost 20% in dry years, with slighter cuts in wetter years. Still, they have voiced their support for what they consider a plan that is overall protective of water supply. 

The new plan, however, comes as a disappointment for the Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest agricultural water supplier, which provides water for crops in Fresno and Kings counties. Growers there will lose some of their water, which district officials said has a disproportionate impact on their region.

“This inequity alone provides ample justification for” rejecting the new rules, the Westlands district wrote in a public comment last month. “It overlooks broader economic ripple effects, particularly on businesses dependent on agricultural workers.”

Thad Bettner, executive director of the Sacramento River Settlement Contractors — a major group of rice, nut and row crop farmers — supports the new rules because, he said, they will help address critical threats to Chinook salmon, which could ultimately help not just the fish but farmers, too.  

“Water supplies aren’t going to get better until fish do better,” he said.

The federal and state agencies rejected another alternative, drafted with environmental groups, that would have sharply cut water exports. Average river flows through the Delta and into the ocean would have increased, improving river conditions and increasing fish populations, according to modeling by the Bureau of Reclamation.  

No one knows what President-elect Donald Trump will do about the Delta rules when he enters the White House, but he has complained frequently about California “wasting water” by sending it into rivers and the ocean for fish. 

In September, while campaigning in Southern California, Trump said he would turn on a giant “faucet” and promised Californians “more water than you ever saw and the smelt is not making it anyway…All those fields that are right now barren, the farmers would have all the water they needed.”

The two massive Central Valley water systems — operated by the California Department of Water Resources and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — have long formed the nexus of disagreements between water suppliers and environmentalists, who fault them for devastating the region’s ecosystem. 

According to an analysis released by the Bureau of Reclamation in November, the new rules will harm several protected species of fish. More cold water will be kept in Lake Shasta and released in the summer and fall as salmon spawn, resulting in more fish being born. But it fails the fish in subsequent life stages, ultimately leading to fewer juveniles, according to the federal agency’s report.

In critically dry years, winter-run Chinook could produce 23% fewer juveniles than baseline conditions — which are already tipping the fish toward extinction. Even in wet years, the modeling shows, winter-run juvenile salmon numbers will decline. 

But while some fish would be harmed, two federal agencies responsible for protecting the species said the new operating rules are “not likely to jeopardize (their) continued existence.” If the agencies had found “jeopardy” of extinction, it would have triggered a protracted and complex federal process under the Endangered Species Act.

“The proposed action has a suite of protective measures … that we felt are going to help set the foundation for us to continue to build on,” said Jen Quan, the West Coast regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service. She said modified timing of releases from Lake Shasta will improve cold-water spawning conditions for the fish and support them during migration, and steps taken in the Delta will reduce fish killed near pumping stations. 

She added that introducing hatchery winter-run Chinook to tributaries upstream of Shasta Dam also will help the species in the future.

“We felt like we could at least not see the extinction of these species and help really move them forward,” Qual said.

Resiliency of the federal Central Valley Project, “with its importance to the agricultural industry and drinking water deliveries across California, is critical to the state’s water supply future,” said Mike Brain, the Biden administration’s principal deputy assistant secretary for water and science. “The revised operating plan will improve regulatory certainty for water users and provide a more stable water supply for communities, farms and fish.”

But the new rules do not end the decades-long wars over Delta management or determine its entire fate. While they specifically cover operation of the two water delivery systems, they are just one part of the state’s broader Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan, an overarching state regulation now undergoing a separate, controversial update process.

Sometime in the next year, the state water board will vote on a new water-quality plan that would either impose rules that dramatically increase minimum flow requirements through the Delta or adopt a set of so-called voluntary agreements that commit water users to restoring stream habitat for salmon and other fish. 

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The Biden administration today approved California’s groundbreaking mandate phasing out new gas-powered cars just weeks before the incoming Trump administration poses a threat of overturning electric vehicle and climate rules.

The granting of the waiver by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows California to move forward in requiring 35% of new 2026 model cars sold in the state to be zero-emissions, 68% in 2030 and 100% in 2035. Nearly all zero-emission cars are powered by electricity.

The EPA also today gave the go-ahead to a 2020 California regulation requiring reductions in nitrogen oxides — a key ingredient of smog — emitted by heavy-duty trucks and buses.

The Trump administration is likely to challenge the approved waivers through the courts and deny other California vehicle standards yet to be greenlit. 

At a campaign event in Michigan earlier this year, Trump dismissed the possibility of any state banning new gas-powered cars, declaring, “I guarantee it — no way.”

“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, including stopping attacks on gas-powered cars. When he takes office, President Trump will support the auto industry, allowing space for both gas-powered cars AND electric vehicles,” said Karoline Leavitt, Trump-Vance Transition spokesperson.

For longer than half a century, California’s vehicle emissions rules have been the driving force for dramatic improvements in the state’s air quality, especially in the smoggy Los Angeles basin and San Joaquin Valley. Cars, trucks and other vehicles are the biggest sources of smog-forming gases and soot, which cause asthma and heart attacks and other serious respiratory problems. 

“California has longstanding authority to request waivers from EPA to protect its residents from dangerous air pollution coming from mobile sources like cars and trucks,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement. “Today’s actions follow through on EPA’s commitment to partner with states to reduce emissions and act on the threat of climate change.”

Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at UCLA, said the decision to grant the waivers makes it much more difficult for the Trump administration to challenge them since they would have to try to reverse an agency decision, rather than deny a pending waiver. Nevertheless, a legal battle over the rules is likely, she said.

“We can expect, likely, a lot of legal wrangling ahead,” Carlson said.

Congress granted California the authority to set its own vehicle emissions standards in a 1967 clean-air law. But each standard set by California requires a waiver from the EPA before it can be implemented. 

Under the federal Clean Air Act, the EPA can only legally reject a waiver if it’s “arbitrary or capricious,” unnecessary for addressing air pollution or technologically infeasible due to inadequate lead time.

None of California’s waivers has ever been successfully revoked. The Trump administration in 2019 tried to revoke part of one waiver and tried to eliminate California’s authority to enact its own emissions and mileage rules for cars. But California and 22 other states sued. The Biden administration’s EPA in 2022 granted the state a waiver for the earlier version of its zero-emission car rules, which triggered a lawsuit by oil companies and 14 Republican-led states.

The stakes are high since the state’s air pollution ranks among the nation’s worst. Failure to meet federal health standards for smog and soot could result in economic sanctions, including the loss of highway funds. 

“This might read like checking a bureaucratic box, but EPA’s approval is a critical step forward in protecting our lungs from pollution and our wallets from the expenses of combustion fuels,” Paul Cort, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice, said in a statement. “The gradual shift in car sales to zero-emissions models will cut smog and household costs while growing California’s clean energy workforce.”

The Newsom administration has been pressing the EPA this year to approve all eight California clean-vehicle rules that still needed the agency’s go-ahead. Gov. Gavin Newsom traveled to Washington, D.C. last month to press the Biden administration to act before Donald Trump takes over the White House on Jan. 20.

“Clean cars are here to stay,” Newsom said in a statement. “Automakers and manufacturers have made it clear they intend to stick with California and consumers as we move toward clean cars that save people money. Naysayers like President-elect Trump would prefer to side with the oil industry over consumers and American automakers, but California will continue fostering new innovations in the market.”

Nevertheless, the transition to electrify transportation faces headwinds even in the Golden State. Electric car sales, once surging, have plateaued this year. Sales through the first nine months of this year were up only 1.2% over the same period last year, according to state data. That compares to a 56% increase in sales the previous year and 38% in 2022.

“Never mind that the technology isn’t there and the charging infrastructure is falling apart. Never mind that this isn’t practical in rural areas or that people can’t afford to pay even higher up-front costs for cars,” said Assemblyman James Gallagher, a Republican from Chico. “Newsom and his Democrat allies are all in on making life harder and more expensive for working Californians.”

The November election has already influenced some decision-making at The California Air Resources Board, which enacts the state’s air pollution and climate rules. Earlier this month, the board at the last minute pulled back a proposed rule ramping up sales of zero-emission motorcycles. That decision came in part due to Trump’s election, a person familiar with the board’s thinking said. The state will instead offer incentives for people to buy electric motorcycles.

The EPA still is considering six other California clean air rules, including ones that phase out diesel trucks and require cleaner locomotives, commercial ships and off-road diesel vehicles like tractors and construction equipment. The most controversial are the regulations for trucks and locomotives.

“We urge EPA to approve California’s remaining outstanding waivers and authorizations for other lifesaving clean air programs, allowing states to continue their long-standing commitment to air quality and public health protection,”  said Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to review whether the oil industry has the legal standing to try to overturn a lower court’s decision that allowed California to set low- and zero-car emission standards for model years 2015 through 2025.

American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, representing the oil industry, said today that the “EPA’s authorization of the California ban and California’s ban itself are unlawful.”

The new waivers approved today will provide more opportunities for legal disputes in the Trump 2.0 era, and those battles could once again reach the conservative-leaning Supreme Court. The justices earlier this year did away with a 40-year-old judicial rule of thumb, known as “Chevron deference,” which has been key for setting climate and environmental policy. The principle, rooted in a 1984 decision, obligated judges to yield to a federal agency’s interpretation when determining how a Congressional law should be applied.

Congress has passed little direct legislation on climate change and the EPA has relied on interpretations of older environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act.

Efforts to overturn California’s authority may also extend to Congress. The Congressional Review Act allows Congress to revoke federal rules approved during a certain timeframe at the end of an administration. Legal experts, however, debate whether that law would apply to EPA actions related to California’s clean-air waivers.

Republicans may attempt to repeal the Clean Air Act provisions that empower California, but such efforts would likely encounter resistance, including potential Democratic filibusters. Historically, bipartisan support for combating air pollution has thwarted similar moves to alter the Clean Air Act.

California’s clean-car mandate is also central to its climate strategy and has helped make the state a national leader in climate policy, with 11 states and Washington, D.C., adopting or planning to adopt its zero-emission car sales mandate.

Automakers prefer a single national standard governing their vehicles’ emissions. But they also have worked closely with California officials for decades because of the state’s history, legal authority and economic influence. Many automakers, aware of California’s large market share, have opted to negotiate with the state rather than resist state standards. In 2020 BMW, Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and Volvo agreed to adhere to California’s standards through 2026, irrespective of federal actions. Stellantis pledged compliance with zero-emission car sales requirements through 2030, even in the face of federal or judicial opposition.

For 2026 models, 35% of sales in California must be zero emissions under the state rules; through September, they are only 25.4% of sales this year.

The phased-in mandate allows sales of new plug-in hybrids as well as battery-only cars, and the state says some gas-powered cars are expected to remain on California roads for more than 25 years.

Many obstacles stand in the way of electrifying cars, including the need for more public fast chargers. State officials estimate that California needs a million public charging stations in six years — almost 10 times more than the number available to drivers a year ago — and 2.1 million by 2035.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an auto industry group, published a memo last week saying that it “will take a miracle” for all of the states that follow California’s rules to reach 100% new zero-emission cars by 2035.

“There needs to be balance and some states should exit the program,” John Bozzella, the group’s CEO, said.

“Automakers are producing electric vehicles… but there’s a huge gap between these EV sales mandates and a customer’s reasonable expectation they can still choose what kind of vehicle to drive.”

The Newsom administration is refining a contentious set of proposed rules, years in the making, that would reshape how farms and cities draw water from the Central Valley’s Delta and its rivers. Backed by more than $1 billion in state funds, the rules, if adopted, would require water users to help restore rivers and rebuild depleted Chinook salmon runs.  

The administration touts its proposed rules as the starting point of a long-term effort to double Central Valley Chinook populations from historical levels, reaching numbers not seen in at least 75 years. But environmental groups have almost unanimously rejected it, saying it promises environmental gains that will never materialize and jeopardizes the existence of California’s iconic salmon and other fish.

“There is no way the assets they’ve put on the table, water and habitat combined, are going to achieve the doubling goal — no way, not possible,” said Jon Rosenfield, science director with San Francisco Baykeeper. 

Dubbed Healthy Rivers and Landscapes but better known as “the voluntary agreements,” the proposal is one of two pathways for state officials as they update a keystone regulatory document called the Bay-Delta Water Quality Control Plan, which was last overhauled in 1995.

With the ecosystem of the Bay-Delta in the throes of collapse, the set of rules is critical to determining how much water flows through the Delta for salmon and other species and how much is available for growers and cities in the Central Valley and Southern California.

Once vital to indigenous cultures and the coastal ecosystem, Chinook salmon and other native fish have declined for decades due to dam operations, water diversions, increased water temperatures and marine food web issues. Numbers of spawning adult Chinook have dropped so low that all commercial and recreational salmon fishing has been banned for two years in a row, and preliminary numbers this year show no signs of recovery. 

State officials from multiple agencies have lauded the Healthy Rivers program — which would meter out flows for fish while mandating restoration of floodplains and other river features — as their preferred option for updating the plan.

California’s most influential water districts, serving tens of millions of people and most of the Central Valley’s farmland, have rallied behind the state’s preferred option, which has taken center stage during public workshops since November.

Newsom administration officials have worked on these rules for years during negotiations with the San Joaquin Valley’s Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest agricultural water provider, the giant Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and other water users.

California Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot described the proposal as “a new and strengthened approach” that will protect both the environment and the water supply. 

Crowfoot told the water board that the proposed rules would do “a good job working to balance all of (Californians’) needs, and ultimately help the environment to recover in ways that’s workable for communities across our state.” 

Such a balance has long eluded state officials.

“This is progress,” Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said at a November water board workshop. “It’s gone on so long. It’s time.” 

Back in 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom endorsed the “voluntary agreement” approach. “Today, I am committing to achieving a doubling of California’s salmon population by 2050. These agreements will be foundational to meeting that goal,” he wrote in a CalMatters opinion piece.

Nina Hawk, the Bay-Delta Initiatives group manager with the Metropolitan Water District — which provides water that serves 19 million Southern Californians — said the Newsom proposal would create an equitable pathway to meeting human and environmental water demands.

“It is important that we try to balance what the state board defines as beneficial uses … both for the environment and for farms, in a way that looks at the integrity of the water system and also for the state of California’s natural resources and its economy,” Hawk said.  

Kevin Padway of the Zone 7 Water Agency, which serves 270,000 East Bay residents, encouraged the water board to adopt the rules, commending them as an “immediately implementable” route to balancing water demands for people and environmental uses.

But environmentalists aren’t sold. Some have even refused to call it by its formal name, saying it’s a euphemism with no bearing on “healthy rivers.” They say the rules would favor water users, allowing cities and farms to draw so much water from the Delta and its tributary rivers that salmon will continue their long decline. They say the proposed rules simply don’t offer fish the water they need, let alone support the state’s salmon rebuilding mandate. 

“If you’re diverting more than half of a river’s flow, you are guaranteeing negative population growth” of salmon, said Gary Bobker, Friends of the River’s program director.

The complex flow rules could even allow growers to entirely drain some rivers in critically dry years, according to Barry Nelson, a water policy analyst with the Golden State Salmon Association who spoke at a recent board workshop.

“Dewatering rivers during droughts would be completely consistent with the Bay-Delta Plan,” he said. 

The State Water Resources Control Board is the agency with the authority to approve the rules. A public hearing and vote could come in 2025.

The water board’s other option would require strict minimum flows in rivers. Water users say those rules would have unacceptable impacts on farms, hydropower and communities — including planned housing projects — while environmentalists and tribes laud it as more protective of fish. It would ensure that rivers contain an average of 55% of the total water available in the watershed at a given time — a measure called unimpaired flow.

While momentum has built behind the state’s Healthy Rivers plan, the state water board could still go either way with their vote. It is even possible that officials adopt both options, with the unimpaired flow pathway reserved as a regulatory backstop, should the Newsom proposal fail, or as concurrent rules applied to waters users who opt out of the voluntary agreements.  

Doubling Chinook runs — is it a stream dream?

A longstanding mandate requires fishery and water managers to double the Central Valley’s population of naturally reproducing Chinook salmon from levels observed between 1967 and 1991. This would translate into an average of 990,000 spawning Chinook each year, almost 10 times recent averages.

State officials say their Healthy Rivers plan would help to realize this goal. Around year-eight — when the program could be extended — officials hope to be about 25% of the way to the doubling goal, said Louise Conrad, lead scientist with the state Department of Water Resources.  

Officials with the National Marine Fisheries Service, in a January letter to the state, said the eight-year timeframe “is concerning, given the dire status of native fish species within the Sacramento River Basin and Delta.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in comments emailed to the Water Board in January, noted the light water allowances in critically dry years.

“EPA is concerned that the total volume and timing of Delta inflow and outflow provided under the proposed VA (voluntary agreement) alternative relative to baseline is not large enough to adequately restore and protect aquatic ecosystems,” the agency wrote. 

This target of doubling Chinook is nothing new. The almost legendary “doubling goal” has been on the books since the early 1990s, when federal law set the deadline for 2002. 

Now the state’s proposed rules would punt it to 2050 — what salmon advocates say is much too far away for a species already on the brink and a vanishing fishing industry.

“Salmon runs could potentially be extinct by then with the flow assets they’re putting forward,” said Ashley Overhouse, Defenders of Wildlife’s water policy advisor.

Representatives of California tribes, who historically relied on Chinook as a dietary mainstay, say they were excluded from planning discussions. 

“The only people that have been at the table talking about the voluntary agreements are water agencies, water contractors, irrigation districts, and private companies,” said Gary Mulcahy, government liaison for the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. “They (state officials) have excluded tribes, disadvantaged communities, environmental justice communities for nine years.”

But the flow rules environmentalists and tribes prefer would cut deep into urban and agricultural water supplies, causing “impacts far and wide” on water exports from the Delta, storage in upstream reservoirs and hydropower production, said Jennifer Pierre, general manager of the State Water Contractors, which represents 27 water agencies that serve 750,000 acres of farmland and 27 million people.

Farmers, she said, would experience substantial permanent economic losses, forcing widespread fallowing of their crops. San Joaquin Valley growers would lose more than a quarter of their water in dry years, and 13% on average for all years, according to the draft rules.

Thaddeus Bettner, executive director of the Sacramento River Settlement Contractors — a group of farmers who largely grow rice  — said it would force as much as 30% of his district’s 450,000 irrigated acres out of production, with harder impacts on growers with little groundwater to fall back on. 

Rice farmer Jon Munger, with 13,000 acres on the east side of the Sacramento Valley, said, in some years, the unimpaired flow approach favored by environmentalists could strip him of virtually all of his water in summer months. His groundwater supply is very limited.

“We wouldn’t have any water to grow rice,” he said. 

That option would also squeeze residential water use. The Placer County Water Agency, which serves about a quarter-million residents northeast of Sacramento, would lose almost half its supply, threatening initiatives to accommodate a growing population, said General Manager Andrew Fecko. 

It would cost Southern California a big chunk of its municipal water, too. 

“We wouldn’t have sufficient water supply,” said Hawk at the Metropolitan Water District. “It would be a decline at the taps, it would be a decline for businesses.”

Billions of dollars in new salmon habitat

The program proposes restoring 45,000 acres of structural habitat, like floodplains, tidal marshes, in-river piles of woody debris and gravel spawning beds over the next eight years. 

Thousands of acres are already completed or underway. This, according to Overhouse at Defenders of Wildlife, leaves roughly 30,000 planned acres that would be brand new additions to the ecosystem — which she and others say would mute the promised benefits of the program. 

All of this will cost money, and to date $2.4 billion in public funds have been secured to support the flow measures and the habitat restoration. Another $500 million may be needed.

The state’s proposed rules would allocate to the Sacramento River system between 100,000 and 700,000 acre-feet of water per year, depending on how much precipitation has fallen. But environmentalists say this isn’t nearly enough. They also worry that regulatory loopholes would allow future water projects — such as the Sites Reservoir, for which Newsom advocated at a public appearance last week — to divert water that would be protected if the state adopted unimpaired flow rules.

“It is not an accident that they haven’t solved this problem,” Nelson, with the Salmon Association, said. “The VAs (voluntary agreements) and the Delta tunnel and Sites are a package.” 

Some conservationists are optimistic about the state’s proposal.

Rene Henery, California science director with Trout Unlimited, thinks more habitat and water — especially in dry years — will be needed to protect salmon. But he also thinks the rules could succeed, as long as it’s just the first step of many in a flexible and collaborative restoration process — something he and a team of colleagues are trying to initiate with a state-funded project called Reorienting to Recovery.  

UC Davis fish biologist Carson Jeffres, who has studied floodplain restoration projects, also said the salmon doubling objective is achievable through the Newsom proposal as long as state officials “have the courage to be nimble and adjust and adapt if it looks like things aren’t going as planned.”

Tribal water rights advocate Regina Chichizola, executive director of Save California Salmon, rejected the Newsom administration’s notion that the state balances competing needs and demands. 

“We’ve compromised so much that we’re facing an extinction crisis, that tribes don’t have fish for ceremonies,” she told the board in an emotional public comment last week.

“Of course I want to make sure that all of the cities have access to water, but in the end agriculture is going to have to use less water,” she said. “The job of the water board is not to make everyone happy, it’s to protect beneficial uses and clean water, and if the salmon go extinct on your watch, that’s something that you’re going to have to tell your grandkids about.”

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The U.S. Supreme Court announced today that it will review whether the oil industry has the standing to try to overturn a decision that allowed California to set its own limits on pollution emitted by automobiles.

The case filed by oil companies, other fuel producers and 17 other states argued that the federal government exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act when it granted California a waiver to set its own tougher auto emissions standards.

The Supreme Court agreed to only examine whether the fuel companies that appealed a lower court ruling have the standing to sue. Oil and other fuel companies are not regulated under the California standards; only automakers are.

The justices rejected the fuel industry’s request to consider whether it was unlawful for the Biden administration to grant California the federal waiver.

“Congress did not give California special authority to regulate greenhouse gases, mandate electric vehicles or ban new gas car sales — all of which the state is attempting to do through its intentional misreading of statute,” Chet Thompson, president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, said in a statement. The group was one of the parties seeking a Supreme Court decision. “We look forward to our day in court.”

Officials from the state Air Resources Board declined to comment.

Under a clean air law enacted by Congress in 1967, California has the power to enforce its own tougher standards for vehicle emissions. Congress gave California this unique privilege because it regulated emissions before the law’s passage. Other states can adopt California’s stricter policies, but cannot set their own.

California’s unique ability to set its own course under the Clean Air Act has been the keystone for all of the state’s efforts to clean its air. It’s a major reason why the state has been able to markedly improve its air pollution over the past half century, though much of the state still has some of the nation’s worst smog and soot.

The case stems from a dispute from the prior Trump administration, which in 2019 revoked a waiver that the Obama administration granted for California’s 2012 zero-emission car mandate. The Biden administration reinstated the waiver in 2022, and oil companies and Republican-led states sued the Environmental Protection Agency.

The lower court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, ruled in April in favor of the EPA. The oil industry, other fuel producers and 17 states appealed the case to the Supreme Court earlier this year.  

Automakers, environmentalists and other states, including New York, intervened in the case on the behalf of the EPA and the state of California.

The regulation, known as California’s Advanced Clean Cars I, cut greenhouse gas emissions and smog-causing pollutants by increasing zero- and low-emission vehicle sales requirements for model years 2015 through 2025. The air board ramped up those rules in 2022 to require all new cars to have zero emissions by 2035.

The case comes at a complicated time for the state’s efforts to combat climate change and air pollution.  Each of California’s emission standards must be granted a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before it can take effect.

The EPA has not yet approved waivers for eight of California’s standards, including its landmark zero-emission car rule. Others require cleaner trucks, locomotives, commercial ships and off-road diesel vehicles like tractors and construction equipment. The most controversial one mandates zero-emission trucks.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s EPA is expected to deny or try to revoke all of the waivers that California is seeking to enforce its clean air standards.

But Congress wrote explicit provisions in federal law about when EPA can reject them: The federal agency can only reject California mandates if they are “arbitrary or capricious,” if the state doesn’t need them to clean its severe air pollution, or if they are inconsistent with federal law because there is “inadequate lead time” for manufacturers to develop electric cars or other technologies at a reasonable cost.

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California Assemblymember Buffy Wicks is feeling a time crunch in California’s quest to combat climate change. So she’s trying to speed up renewable energy source construction and storage.

“We do have to make it faster and better,”  Wicks said recently. “Government has to work better for people.”

Wicks, an Oakland Democrat, was speaking about a Legislative subcommittee field hearing on permitting reform that she held to discuss streamlining renewable energy permits last month. It was part of a statewide tour of several cities to explore permitting solutions for issues such as energy, housing and climate change.

The first stop in the Coachella Valley hearing was the Desert Peak battery storage project in Palm Springs, by NextEra Energy Resources.

It’s silhouetted against the San Bernardino Mountains, surrounded by a field of wind turbines and next to a Southern California Edison substation. The battery storage center draws power from the Palo Verde nuclear generating station in Arizona and renewable energy projects in the desert, said Pedro Villegas, executive director for political and regulatory affairs for NextEra.

Rows of sheds house hundreds of lithium-ion batteries that store power and then feed it into the grid. At full capacity Desert Peak will produce 700 megawatts, enough to power about 140,000 homes. 

Facilities like this are key to California’s ambitious climate goals. The state aims to reach net carbon zero — the point at which the amount of greenhouse gasses that humans emit equals the amount removed from the atmosphere — by 2045. In 2022 the California Air Resources Board released a plan to get there.

To do that, California has to cut red tape, Wicks said. Industry experts at the hearing said there has to be less duplication of paperwork, increased staffing at regulatory agencies and better coordination between them.

Wind and solar farms can displace valuable ecosystems and farmland, while battery storage sites pose fire risks, so the state is facing pushback from rural communities that are ground zero for renewable energy development.

Five years ago San Bernardino County restricted new large-scale wind and solar projects on more than a million acres of rural land after residents in some communities complained the projects threatened fragile natural environments and historic sites.

“We need to be mindful of creating sacrifice zones in pursuing climate solutions,” Nataly Escobedo Garcia, policy coordinator for the Fresno-based Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, told the subcommittee.

Converting traditional farms to solar farms also sparks opposition, Villegas said. 

“Especially in rural areas, some folks have a reaction to turning agricultural lands to solar energy,” he said. 

Battery storage has gotten bad press lately, with several high profile fires in San Diego County. 

An Escondido battery storage facility caught fire in September, prompting evacuations and closures of nearby schools. In May a blaze at a battery storage site in Otay Mesa burned for two and a half weeks, sparking worry about the safety of the high-powered batteries. In September 2023, a Valley Center energy storage facility caught fire. 

Energy experts said the industry has improved its fire safety protocols since those were built.

“The facility in Escondido was installed in 2017,” said Scott Murtishaw, executive director of the California Energy Storage Alliance. “That’s ancient technology.” 

Despite advances in newer and potentially safer energy technology, lawmakers say efforts to wean Californians off fossil fuels aren’t moving fast enough to avert the effects of climate change.

“There’s a huge chasm between the things we say are our priorities and what we are actually delivering in the state” in renewable energy and climate action, said Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat from Irvine. “The No. 1 thing we need to do to accelerate the pace is permit reform.”

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The Biden administration today awarded $135 million to help California communities clean up air pollution and combat climate change by replacing diesel and gas-powered buses and trucks with electric vehicles.

President Joe Biden is rushing to allocate funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, widely regarded as his flagship effort to combat climate change, before his term ends. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to pull back any “unspent” funds authorized by the 2022 legislation. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded a total of $735 million to 70 applicants nationwide. About 70% of the funding will support the purchase of clean school buses, mostly powered by electricity.

Trucks and buses are among the largest sources of smog and soot in California. Diesel exhaust is a known cause of cancer, and trucks pollute many neighborhoods, especially near ports and warehouses. Under a California mandate, starting in 2036, no new fossil-fueled medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks can be sold in California, and by 2042, large companies must convert their trucks to zero-emission models. 

The EPA chose 13 California applicants to help purchase 455 zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles powered by batteries.

The largest California recipient is the South Coast Air Quality Management District, responsible for regulating air pollution in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. The agency will use $24.8 million to electrify school buses and $33.9 million to replace work trucks, such as step vans and box trucks, with electric models. In addition, the Los Angeles Unified School District was awarded $20.4 million for clean bus upgrades.

Oakland received $27 million, including $10.5 million for a joint Port of Oakland and United Parcel Service project to introduce battery-powered trucks, $1.45 million for the city’s municipal fleet electrification and $15.1 million for school bus upgrades.

The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District also secured $8.9 million to electrify heavy-duty vehicles, which will help address the region’s severe air pollution. Transit systems in Bakersfield and Pasadena also received funds, along with CalTrans, the Oxnard School District and the cities of Santa Monica and Pico Rivera. 

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Standing in his front yard in Wilmington, Jose Ulloa can’t get a sentence out without coughing. Heavy-duty trucks, headed to and from the Port of Los Angeles, pass in front of his home all day, their engines roaring and their exhaust spewing into the air.

Ulloa, who was diagnosed with asthma a few years ago, suffers frequent breathing problems and was hospitalized after one attack. The truck traffic is likely a trigger, since health officials say diesel exhaust is known to cause asthma attacks and other respiratory problems, including lung cancer.

The parade of big rigs in his neighborhood started four years ago, after a series of traffic pattern changes altered their route. 

Imelda, his wife, sweeps the yard and cleans the home nonstop, but black dust still collects on every surface of their home within hours. 

“If you blow your nose, black dust will come out,” she said. “It’s a terrible life living here.” 

In Oakland, Mashhoor Alammari, who runs a small fleet of drayage trucks that haul cargo to and from the port, wants to do his part to help clean the air of dangerous diesel exhaust.

His company, The Crew Transportation, Inc., bought two new zero-emission big rigs at a cost of more than $900,000. But the trucks, powered by hydrogen fuel cells, are expensive to operate and there are few if any fueling stations along their routes. The new trucks have been sitting in the parking lot most of the time since he bought them. 

“I don’t want to put myself into a financial hole,” he said.

The experiences of the Wilmington family and the Oakland truck company illustrate the frustrations and obstacles that Californians face as state officials pursue an aggressive and controversial mandate to clean the air by phasing out diesel-powered big rigs and other trucks.

California’s mandate, approved by the Air Resources Board last year, is the first in the world to ban new diesel trucks and require a switch to zero-emission vehicles, which are powered by electricity or hydrogen. 

Companies face varying deadlines for ending their use of diesel, which for decades has been an efficient powerhouse fueling the economy and transport of goods. Starting in 2036, no new fossil-fueled medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks can be sold in California, and by 2042, large companies must convert their trucks to zero-emission models.

The trucking industry says the regulation is unreasonable and will wreak havoc on the economy, making it difficult to make long-haul shipments. The California Trucking Association and a collective of 17 states, including Nebraska, Alabama and New Mexico, have sued the state, alleging the rule oversteps state power. 

From big rigs to garbage trucks and delivery vans, the rules will dramatically change the 1.8 million commercial trucks driven on California’s roads over the next two decades. Sales already are accelerating even though no deadlines have kicked in yet. Last year, one out of every six trucks sold in the state — more than 18,000 — were zero emissions.

California’s mandate is in flux because the state still needs a waiver from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before it can start enforcing them. President-elect Donald Trump has criticized California’s electric car mandates and in the past tried to revoke the state’s authority to set its own vehicle standards. 

One deadline already has passed: New drayage trucks, which are used to haul containers from ports, were supposed to be zero emissions by last January. But that deadline is not yet being enforced.

Truck companies like Alammari’s that took a risk to be early adopters of  clean trucks are now in limbo, swallowing high operating costs and competing with cheaper diesel-only companies in an already struggling industry. 

In the meantime, California’s most vulnerable residents who live near roads with heavy diesel truck traffic may have to wait longer for a solution.

The dangers of diesel

Diesel trucks are among the state’s biggest sources of microscopic particles of soot, which can damage lungs and trigger asthma attacks and heart attacks. They also play an outsized role in California’s smog: While they make up just 6% of all vehicles on California’s roads, they are responsible for 72% of nitrogen oxides, a key ingredient of smog, emitted by on-road vehicles, according to the air board.

In addition, health officials declared diesel exhaust, which contains dozens of toxic gases, a human carcinogen several decades ago because of studies linking it to lung cancer.

In the Los Angeles basin, diesel exhaust is responsible for more than two-thirds of the cancer risk posed by air pollution, according to a risk analysis by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

The biggest dangers from diesels are in communities near high-traffic corridors. People near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, downtown Los Angeles and parts of the Inland Empire are at risk of 350 to 500 cancer cases per million people because of diesel fumes, according to the analysis. That risk has dropped substantially in recent years as trucks get cleaner.

California’s clean truck rule is expected through 2050 to save $26.5 billion in statewide health costs and save fleet owners $48 billion through reduced fuel and maintenance costs, according to the air board.

“The health benefits from eliminating the pollution (from diesel trucks) far exceed any cost the industry will bear,” said Adrian Martinez, an attorney for environmental group Earthjustice. “Trucking lobbyists and other folks are super loud and they’re going to focus on the difficulties of the transition. But millions of Californians affected by pollution from the freight industry is not acceptable.” 

Lots of obstacles for emissions-free trucking

But a lack of fast, reliable charging stations and the vehicles’ limited ranges makes it difficult, even impossible, for trucks to transport goods long distances.

Electric heavy-duty trucks have ranges up to 250 miles, while hydrogen-powered ones can drive about 500 miles on a full tank. They can use the same public fast chargers as cars, but that’s impractical because they take up too much space and charging can take up to six hours. For hydrogen, only 22 fueling stations for large trucks are operating or in development statewide, according to the California Energy Commission.

Battery-powered trucks also are heavy, which means they can carry less cargo. As a result, companies have to charge more, which shippers aren’t usually willing to pay. 

The industry also points to the substantial investment that is needed to expand the electric grid’s capacity to eventually charge thousands of battery-powered trucks.  

“No one’s opposed” to cleaner air, said Matt Schrap head of the Harbor Trucking Association, which represents drayage truck companies. “It is about practical application and implementation of these rules. We have nowhere near enough infrastructure.”

The air board’s mandate “is the epitome of ready, fire, aim,” he said.  

Air board officials stress that truck companies have time and flexible options to comply, and the state is working to help them understand and comply with the complex rules. 

“People are worried, I get it. But (the deadline) is not tomorrow,” said Bruce Tuter, who oversees compliance and outreach at the air board.  “Charging times, charging speeds, all of that needs to start building up where it gets quicker to charge a truck and where it’s more accessible to charge when you’re traveling long distances.” 

Alammari, the truck company owner from Oakland, said he bought his two hydrogen trucks because he had interest from a shipping company that wanted to work with zero-emission vehicles. The profits Alammari would have made working with that company would have justified the added costs of operating a hydrogen fuel cell truck, he said.  

At the last minute, however,  the company chose to work with someone else. Without any customers willing to pay more to ship with his hydrogen trucks, he can’t use them. He’s doing his best to transition his entire fleet to zero-emission vehicles. He had even ordered three more. 

But even with help from state grants, Alammari said it’s not enough to help him operate the zero-emission vehicles or buy more of them. He pays substantially more for insuring them, and it costs twice as much to fully fuel them with hydrogen compared to a diesel, he said. 

Without companies willing to ship goods with zero-emission vehicles, early adopters of the technology, like his company, The Crew Transportation, Inc., are at a disadvantage until the mandate makes everyone comply.

“If I don’t get customers to use these trucks, The Crew Transportation is not going to move forward to get the three remaining hydrogen trucks we ordered,” he said.

Air board officials created the most stringent deadlines for drayage trucks partly because they travel near the most vulnerable communities — the low-income communities of color around the ports. They also tend to make shorter trips compared to other heavy-duty trucks, and ports are equipped with some fueling and charging stations, air board officials said. 

Some companies that operate drayage trucks near disadvantaged communities may qualify for state grants of up to $336,000 toward the cost of a new hydrogen or electric truck. Under the regulation, they are able to keep their diesel trucks until they reach 800,000 miles or 18 years, whichever is earlier.

But, based on how many miles are already on his trucks, Alammari expects them to be unusable by 2028 under the mandate. As he sees it, the future of the company he’s worked so hard to build is at risk. 

In the Los Angeles area, Sandra Espinioza, a truck driver for IMC Logistics, drives seven miles between Lomita and Torrance several times a day before powering up at the WattEV charging station in Long Beach. It’s a short and easy work route that makes it easy for a battery-powered truck. 

“They’re really quiet, and a really smooth drive,” she said. “You don’t smell the fumes. When it’s (charged) 100%, you’re gonna be able to go through your day.” 

Most of the truck fleets subject to the rules are considered “high priority” — federal fleets, such as the post office, and companies with at least one vehicle in California and $50 million or more in gross annual revenue or 50 or more vehicles.

These large operators have two ways to comply. Most are choosing a phase-in option. Under that option, smaller vehicles, such as UPS or Amazon delivery vans and box trucks, must be 100% zero emissions by 2035. But long-distance, heavy-duty trucks get more time to comply: 10% must be zero emissions by 2030 and 100% by 2042. 

Jim Gillis, president of Compton-based IMC Logistics’ Pacific region, said the air board’s deadlines are so aggressive that it poses challenges to even large companies like his. His company has 319 diesel trucks, 50 hydrogen fuel cell trucks and six electric trucks in California. Installing a handful of charging stations at its headquarters was an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Gillis said trucking companies essentially are conducting research and development with these zero- emission technologies. The new trucks have frequent recalls and can make hauls more expensive. Battery powered trucks have to be used for shorter trips because of their limited range. 

Gillis said the federal government’s delay in approving a waiver for California’s truck rule doesn’t help his company, since it already bought the clean trucks and has to compete with other companies. But he said IMC is large enough that it can absorb the costs without much consequence. 

Electric and hydrogen trucks are the future, Gillis said, adding that large companies like his have a responsibility to show the way. 

“We have to do it now,” Gillis said. “The more we try to delay this, it’s just going to be more painful down the road. Every mile that I put on a hydrogen truck today is going to benefit somebody down the road.”

‘A literal case of life and death’ in communities

As fleet owners struggle with the transition to clean fuels, families near freeways and ports throughout California suffer the consequences of inhaling toxic fumes. 

Ulloa looks out of his bedroom window toward Drumm Avenue in Wilmington and sees diesel trucks hauling cargo from the Port of Los Angeles lined up on his street. To feel any relief, he confines himself in this room.

When he’s at work in Costa Mesa, his asthma symptoms don’t bother him. But he said his coughing starts as soon as he’s home. Last year, during Thanksgiving dinner, he was hospitalized for three days before his asthma could be stabilized. 

“As soon as I get home from work the smell of diesel fumes and the dirt makes me cough,” Jose said. “I have to lock myself in my room with my air purifier and humidifier on. As soon as I go outside, I start coughing.” 

The family has lived there for almost 30 years, long before the trucks serving the port started coming through their neighborhood. Antonio Ulloa, Jose and Imelda’s son, remembers being a child and playing with other kids in the street. They’d play tag, skateboard and shoot basketballs into a hoop set up on the street, without any fear.  

Now, at 31, Antonio sees no kids outside. Families keep their children indoors and shut all the windows to keep the pollution and noise out. 

When Antonio’s nephew visits the family home, just a few hours playing in the front yard will give him nosebleeds. “It’s depressing,” he said. 

Wilmington has long been known as one of the areas most affected by the air pollution. Community members report allergies, nosebleeds and the need for supplemental oxygen. About 12% of children in Wilmington have been diagnosed with asthma as of 2023, according to data from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

People living near the ports of LA and Long Beach breathe the highest concentrations of diesel exhaust in the Los Angeles basin, which raises their risk of lung cancer. Out of every million people chronically exposed to diesel fumes in West Long Beach, more than 350 people could contract cancer, according to South Coast Air Quality Management District analysis.

“It’s a literal case of life and death for a lot of our community members and our loved ones,” said Paola Vargas, a Carson resident and organizer with nonprofit East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. 

“Every day matters. Every day we don’t have those (truck emissions) rules and they aren’t passed is a day wasted and a day of harmful impacts for us.” 

UC Irvine researchers reported last year that even considering new vehicle technology and the state mandate, heavy-duty drayage trucks will still cause an estimated 2,142 asthma attacks and 106 premature deaths and $1.31 billion in health costs in 2035. That is a dramatic improvement, though, as trucks have gotten cleaner under air board rules: In 2012, they caused an estimated 15,468 asthma attacks, 483 premature deaths and $5.59 billion in health costs.

Most of the asthma cases and deaths will be in disadvantaged communities along highway routes between the ports and Inland Empire warehouses, according to the study. The researchers concluded that it is worth paying truck companies more than a billion dollars to replace diesels expected to be on the road in 2035 because of the health effects.

“The problem is not going to solve itself,” said Jean-Daniel Saphores, chair of UC Irvine’s department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an author of the study. “These trucks are still doing a lot of harm and they’re disproportionately harming disadvantaged groups, even with all the regulation.” 

The harm to disadvantaged communities extends to the Inland Empire, where an abundance of land is spurring warehouse development that draws more truck traffic.  

San Bernardino County’s nearly 2,500 warehouses, for instance, generate 362,000 truck trips a day, according to data by Warehouse CITY, a tool created in collaboration with Pitzer College and research agency Radical Research. In Los Angeles County, 16,600 warehouses generate 267,000 daily truck trips. 

MaCarmen Gonzalez, a San Bernardino resident, said she noticed that many young children in her community carry inhalers. After learning about the impacts of diesel pollution, she became an activist for clean air, including the state’s zero-emissions truck rule.

“You can’t see (the exhaust), but it’s killing you,” she said.

Parents struggle to find places for their children to play outdoors in neighborhoods near the Port of LA. On a recent sunny afternoon, Brittany Guevarra played with her three-year-old son at the Wilmington Waterfront Park playground. 

In the background, on Harry Bridges Boulevard, a long line of diesel trucks passed by. The strong smell of diesel exhaust occasionally wafted through the park as children played to the rumble of traffic. 

Guevarra used to live in San Pedro, but the cost of housing was too high. She was drawn to Wilmington by cheaper rent. At the time, the trucks and port pollution didn’t cross her mind. Now, it’s inescapable. 

“Afterward I thought about it and I was like, ‘dang,’” Guevarra said. “I do worry. That’s why I keep (my son) inside. I know it’s bad.”

As the seemingly endless stream of trucks kept coming, Guevarra walked her son home after playing in the park. She doesn’t think she’ll ever return.

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Diane Moss lost her home in the Santa Monica Mountains after power lines ignited the apocalyptic Woolsey Fire in 2018. Since then, she’s pressed for a safer electric grid in California.

“It’s so easy to forget the risk that we live in — until it happens to you,” said Moss, a longtime clean energy advocate. “All of us in California have to think about how we better prepare to survive disaster, which is only going to be more of a problem as the climate changes.”

In recent years, California’s power companies have been doing just that: insulating power lines and burying lines underground, trimming trees, deploying drones and using risk-detection technology.

As wildfires across the U.S. intensify, California is on the leading edge of efforts to prevent more deadly and destructive fires ignited by downed power lines and malfunctioning equipment.

Customers have shouldered a hefty price for wildfire safety measures. From 2019 through 2023, the California Public Utilities Commission authorized the three largest utilities to collect $27 billion in wildfire prevention and insurance costs from ratepayers, according to a report to the Legislature.

And the costs are projected to keep rising: The three companies — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — continue to seek billions more from customers for wildfire prevention spending. Rates are expected to continue outpacing inflation through 2027.

Fire safety projects are a big part of the reason that Californians pay the highest electric rates in the nation, outside of Hawaii. Other reasons include rooftop solar incentives, new transmission systems and upgrades for electric vehicles.

High electric bills have helped fuel a statewide affordability crisis alongside soaring housing prices, expensive groceries and costly gasoline. Small businesses are feeling the burden, along with the state’s poorest residents: One in three low-income households served by the three utilities fell behind in paying their power bills this year.

California’s three investor-owned utilities are regulated monopolies, so when they spend money on costs related to wildfires, they recover it through customers’ bills.

The price of electricity has ignited debate about how much California families should bear for the cost of wildfire prevention, whether utilities are balancing risk and affordability and whether the money is being spent wisely.

Loretta Lynch, a former head of the state utilities commission, said lack of oversight is a problem, with the commission “rubber-stamping outrageous costs” and allowing the companies to “address wildfires in the most expensive, least effective way possible.”

One of the biggest controversies is whether the utilities should be spending so much on burying power lines, an extremely costly and slow process.

Last year, a state audit concluded that the utilities commission and the state’s advocates office must do more to verify whether utilities were completing the work they sought payment for.

The three companies say the billions of dollars in spending is necessary as climate change worsens wildfires across the state. Utility equipment has caused less than 10% of the state’s fires but nearly half of its most destructive fires, according to the utilities commission.

PG&E, which a few years ago came out of bankruptcy triggered by its liability for several deadly, destructive fires, has adopted the stance that “catastrophic wildfires shall stop.” The company, which serves the most high-risk areas in California, is the state’s largest spender on wildfire prevention.

PG&E plans to bury 10,000 miles of power lines in its highest-risk areas — work that is highly contentious because it is costly and slow. The company has buried 800 miles since 2021, with each mile costing between $3 and $4 million. Last year, the commission approved a $3.7 billion plan for PG&E to bury 1,230 miles of lines through 2026.

Sumeet Singh, PG&E’s chief operating officer, told CalMatters that the utility is concerned about rates, too. He said the company is “very committed to stabilizing our customer rates as we go forward without compromising safety. I think that’s clear, that it’s a non-negotiable….There’s a pretty robust process, and oversight, that we are under.”

Kevin Geraghty, chief operating officer of SDG&E, called the wildfire spending process “the most highly-scrutinized, regulatory utility process I have ever been involved in, in my life.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order in October aimed at tackling the high costs of electricity, asking state agencies to evaluate their oversight of wildfire projects and ensure that the utilities are focused on “cost-effective” measures. He is seeking proposals for changes in rules or laws by Jan. 1.

Reduced to ash

The spark for the increased spending came seven years ago, after California suffered one of its worst droughts and a series of devastating wildfires in 2017 and 2018, many ignited by utility equipment.

Sixteen fires were caused by PG&E equipment during a rash of October 2017 fires that decimated Napa, Sonoma and other Northern California counties. That December, the Thomas Fire, sparked by Southern California Edison equipment, engulfed parts of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

But the devastation of 2017 was only a prelude to an even graver year. On Nov. 8, 2018, the Camp Fire leveled the town of Paradise, killing 85 people, making it the deadliest wildfire in state history.

The Camp Fire was caused by the failure of an old metal hook attached to a PG&E transmission tower. An intense wind event pushed the fire at a rate of roughly 80 football fields per minute at its peak. The company in 2020 pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for its role in the disaster.

The same day as the destruction in Paradise, another fire ignited some 470 miles south. In the Simi Hills of Ventura County, Southern California Edison wires in two separate locations made contact with others, triggering “arc” flashes that rained hot metal fragments and sparks onto the dry brush below. These triggered two blazes, which soon merged to form the Woolsey Fire.

Santa Ana winds spread the conflagration across parched terrain, with swaths of the nationally protected Santa Monica Mountains reduced to ash.

Moss, the clean energy advocate, evacuated her home with her son that day. Her husband, clinging to hope, stayed until the blaze threatened to swallow him whole. Their neighborhood near Malibu, with its heavily wooded surroundings, was no match for the inferno. 

“My husband stayed until the last minute, when it just — it looked like it could cost him his life,” Moss said. “Everybody else left, and just about all of us lost.”  

Three people died. Moss’ home was gone, reduced to a hollowed out structure and charred rubble, along with about 100,000 acres of parkland and wilderness, more than any other fire in recorded history for that area. 

In 2019, downed PG&E lines ignited Sonoma County’s Kincade Fire. Then two years later, the Dixie Fire, also caused by PG&E equipment, became the second largest wildfire in California history, burning 963,000 acres north of Chico.

The 2021 Dixie Fire, which claimed one life and destroyed 1,311 structures, was the last catastrophic wildfire in California confirmed to be caused by utility equipment.

‘It just takes the wrong ignition’

The number of fires triggered by the companies’ equipment fluctuates from year to year, driven by the huge variability in California’s weather. But data from 2014 through 2023 indicate there were substantially fewer fires last year than in other recent years. SDG&E equipment caused 16 fires after its high of 32 fires in 2015, Southern California Edison had 90 fires, compared to a 2021 high of 173, and PG&E reported 374 fires after a high of 510 in 2020.

PG&E also reported that fires in its highest-risk areas trended down every month of 2023 compared to the same months in previous years. But that progress reversed this year, with 62 fires reported by August in high-risk areas, compared to 65 in all of 2023. (PG&E would not provide 2024 fire data to CalMatters.)

Caroline Thomas Jacobs, inaugural director of the state Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety, established in 2021 to oversee utility safety, said progress can be hard to measure. Nevertheless, she said she has seen a cultural shift at electric companies in recent years, with a more focused approach in high-risk areas and an environment that empowers workers to prioritize safety. 

“It just takes the wrong ignition … under the right conditions, to have a catastrophic fire,” Thomas Jacobs said. “But are we in a better place? The numbers seem to indicate we’re moving in the right direction.”

PG&E has installed more than 1,500 weather stations and 600 AI-enabled cameras to detect severe weather and ignitions, Singh said. Enhanced safety systems now cut power to lines within a tenth of a second. The utility also has cleared vegetation, ordered power shutoffs during high-risk times, insulated lines and buried some lines underground.

“Where do we see the greatest risk?” Singh said the company asks itself, and “what is the most cost-effective way to be able to reduce that risk for every dollar that’s spent?”

Southern California Edison said since its investments began in 2019, the risk of catastrophic wildfire in its system has dropped between 85 and 90%. The company plans to bury 600 miles of lines in high-risk areas but it is relying much more on less-expensive insulating technology, which already has been used on more than 6,000 miles of lines.

SDG&E began prioritizing wildfire prevention, including underground and insulated lines, a decade ahead of the other two utilities, after its lines sparked three major fires in 2007. The company has avoided a catastrophic fire since 2007, despite operating in one of the nation’s most fire-prone regions.

“We continue to double down, and do and do more tomorrow than we did yesterday,” said Brian D’Agostino, the utility’s vice president of wildfire and climate science. “We don’t take a single day without a fire for granted.”

Wildfire spending — ‘an odd system’

Critics say the scramble to address the wildfire crisis has left the state vulnerable to overspending by utilities.

About two months before the Camp and Woolsey fires, outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 signed a $1 billion plan to thin forests and clear out the tinderbox of California’s dead and dying trees. That measure came too late to prevent the devastation. 

But it opened the door to increased spending by utilities beyond limits set in the highly deliberative process known as their general rate cases, which determine what Californians pay.

Newsom and the Legislature in 2019 created a $21 billion wildfire fund paid for by Wall Street investors and California ratepayers to help PG&E exit bankruptcy and protect utilities from being financially threatened by the wildfires they cause. The utilities cannot access the state’s $21 billion fund unless their wildfire plans are approved by the energy safety office.

One problem, critics say, is that the safety plans are approved by one government entity while the spending to carry them out is approved by another.

“We now have this very odd system,” said Lynch, who served on the utilities commission from 2000 through 2004. “The Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety reviews the plans, puts out guidelines, but then the (commission) still has to ratify the plans, so that the utilities can take money from their ratepayers.”

Wildfire safety goes underground

On a temperate, clear morning in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Placerville in October, a PG&E construction crew donned yellow jackets and safety helmets and went about the work of burying power lines along a narrow, wooded road. Overhead lines snaked through thick trees in this area — prime fire risk territory. The workers buried the lines in a trench that had been dug using a heavy piece of equipment designed to cut hard concrete and soil. 

Once those power lines are buried and activated, their risk of fires are all but eliminated.

Burying lines in high-risk areas improves reliability amid rising wildfire risks and extreme weather, PG&E’s Singh said. Though it’s pricier up front, it eliminates the yearly expense of trimming trees and vegetation, which makes it a better, long-run value for customers, he said.

“Underground is a no-brainer when you look at it from that lens,” Singh said.

But the high cost and the time it takes to do the work has left some skeptical. The company has buried 800 miles of wires underground since 2021, and plans to bury more than 1,600 by the end of 2026. It aims to get the cost per mile down to $2.8 million by the end of 2026 from $3 million at the end of 2023. 

Michael Campbell, assistant deputy director of energy for the public advocates office, a state entity that represents utility customers, said PG&E should consider other means of preventing wildfire, like insulated wires, otherwise known as “covered conductors.” This can be deployed more quickly and at a lower cost, he said, and is effective when combined with operational techniques like fast trip settings and power safety shutoffs.

“In some areas, (burying power lines) really is the correct approach to minimize risk. But it’s also very slow and very expensive, and so there’s a need to address safety in as many miles as quickly as possible, to reduce overall risk,” Campbell said.

The utilities commission has taken a proof-of-concept approach: The commission scaled back PG&E’s plan to bury 2,000 miles through 2026 to 1,230. The commission approved installing covered conductors, or insulated power lines, over 778 miles.

Lynch is skeptical of utilities and their big projects because they can profit from them, and Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, says too much spending is going unchecked. 

The sense of urgency following fires paved the way for the multi-billion surge in spending. The commission authorized PG&E, for instance, to spend $4.66 billion on wildfire costs from 2020 through 2022, but the company ultimately spent $11.7 billion and is seeking payment through utility bills, according to The Utility Reform Network. 

Audits of nearly $2.5 billion in 2019 and 2020 wildfire spending found some costs from PG&E, Southern California Edison and SDG&E may already have been covered by previously approved rates, or more documentation was needed to confirm they had not been covered.

The utilities challenged many of the findings, saying they didn’t plan to claim some of the costs, and disputed the auditor’s conclusions as well as some of their calculations. In interviews with CalMatters, representatives for all three utilities said the process in place to oversee wildfire spending at the utilities commission was robust and thorough. 

Geraghty, of SDG&E, said the process is transparent, with public comment periods and hearings. Regarding critics who say wildfire prevention should be cheaper and faster, “every one of them had that voice, had that say, had that transparency through this entire process,” he said.

Some expenses, such as operating costs, have an immediate impact on how much people pay in their bills. But other costs, such as long-term investments in insulating or burying power lines, are stretched out over years, meaning they add to bills for decades to come.

Over time, these capital costs are growing due to factors like depreciation and the returns utilities are allowed to generate. This creates a compounding effect, meaning wildfire-related capital costs will take up an increasing share of what California customers are charged in the future.

Feeling the pinch in Oakland, the fear near Malibu

The burden of the rising bills is hitting many Californians hard. Roshonda Wilson, of Oakland, couldn’t afford to pay her power bill even though she said she watches television only after sunset, refrains from running unnecessary appliances and is hyper-aware of every energy-consuming action in her household. At one point PG&E turned her power off this year. “I couldn’t catch up,” she said. 

On the other hand, Moss — who has weathered not just the trauma of losing her home near Malibu but also the difficult process of rebuilding — says the expensive wildfire prevention work is critical to prevent more tragedies.

“Even though (burying power lines) is costly and time-consuming, the cost and time of not doing it is starting to seem more devastating to a broader swath of people,” Moss said.

Nevertheless, the rate hikes have alarmed climate activists who fear rising power bills in California may trigger a backlash against the state’s effort to switch to renewable energy, and influence other states, too.

“The state, we fear, will start to lose the political will to keep pushing on,” said Mohit Chhabra, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The problem with that is not that California will be a few years late — we can handle that. But the impact on all the other states who are looking at California.”

Natasha Uzcátegui-Liggett and Miguel Gutierrez Jr. contributed to this report.

This story was corrected on Dec. 3 to say that Californians pay the highest electric rates, not bills. Average bills in California are lower than in other states, but its rates per unit used are the highest except for Hawaii.

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After the recent discovery of a destructive mussel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, some experts say California officials have failed to effectively enforce laws designed to protect waterways from invaders carried in ships’ ballast water. 

A state law enacted 20 years ago has required California officials to inspect 25% of incoming ships and sample their ballast water before it’s discharged into waterways. But the tests didn’t begin until two years ago — after standards for conducting them were finally set — and testing remains rare. State officials have sampled the ballast water of only 16 vessels out of the roughly 3,000 likely to have emptied their tanks nearshore. 

Experts say stronger regulations are needed, as well as better enforcement. 

“It’s not really a surprise that another invasive species showed up in the Delta,” said Karrigan Börk, a law professor and the interim director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. “It’s likely to continue happening.”

Native to eastern Asia, the mussels — detected near the Port of Stockton, in a small San Joaquin Valley reservoir and several other Delta locations — were the first to be detected in North America. If the mollusc evades eradication efforts, it could spread over vast areas of California and beyond, crowd out native species and clog parts of the massive projects that export Delta water to cities and farms. 

Ted Lempert, a former Bay Area Assemblymember who authored a 1999 state law aimed at preventing ships from bringing invasive species into California, said state officials “apparently took their eyes off the ball.”  

“We were trying to get ahead of the game, so I’m really frustrated that after all these years some of the events we were trying to prevent have come to pass,” he said. 

But the prospect of an invasive species colonizing a new region frequented by ships “is a numbers game” that can happen even under the most rigorous regulations and enforcement, said Greg Ruiz, a marine ecologist with the Marine Invasions Research Laboratory at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. “This is not a failure in the system,” he said.

Ballast water is stored in tanks to stabilize vessels at sea. Often taken on at the port of departure and released at the port of arrival, it is a global vector of invasive species, including pathogens that cause human diseases.

To address the threat to ecosystems and water supplies, the State Lands Commission, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Coast Guard enforce a suite of overlapping regulations. 

The goal of these state and federal rules is to reduce as much as possible the number of living organisms in discharged ballast water. Vessel operators can achieve this by exposing their ballast water to ultraviolet light, filtering it and treating it with chlorine, which is then removed before discharge. 

‘Highest standards in the world.’ But are they enforced?

About 1,500 ships a year entering California waters release ballast water, according to Chris Scianni, environmental program manager of the State Lands Commission’s Marine Invasive Species Program. To check for compliance, officials board and inspect nearly all of them, plus another thousand vessels prioritized for inspection for other reasons, Scianni said.

During these inspections, officers review ballast water logbooks and reporting forms, interview crew members, inspect water treatment equipment, and occasionally take water samples for testing. 

“We’re the only entity in the world that’s doing this right now,” Scianni said.

A 2003 state law declares that the State Lands Commission “shall take samples of ballast water, sediment, and biofouling from at least 25% of vessels” subject to invasive species regulations. But commission officials told CalMatters they interpret it to mean that 25% of ships must be inspected, with no specific requirements for sampling. 

Sampling for some ships began in 2023, after the commission enacted standards for how the tests are conducted. It’s a considerable endeavor: A cubic meter of water  — which weighs a metric ton — must be collected from a ship. It can take an hour to draw, and it must be done while the vessel is actively discharging. Hours more may pass before results are ready.  

Federal officials have their own ballast oversight program. It leans on a system of self-reporting by vessel operators — which critics consider a weak tool for ensuring compliance. An EPA spokesperson said the agency “can assess compliance with (the rules) either through a desk audit or an on-site inspection.”

Many experts told CalMatters that the state and federal limits on how many organisms are allowed in discharged water are adequate but that enforcement is lacking. 

“We had the highest (ballast water management) standards in the world, but they were never actually enforced because the state couldn’t come up with a set of technologies to implement them,” said Ben Eichenberg, a staff attorney with the group SF Baykeeper.  

Ted Grosholz, a professor emeritus with the UC Davis Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute said “the standards are very exacting…The problem we have is compliance. How many ships coming in with ballast water can we really sample and verify? Enforcement officials can’t watch everyone.”

Smithsonian’s Ruiz said state records show that all documented ballast discharges at the Port of Stockton since 2008 have followed state regulations.

Ships that discharge, however, occasionally remain uninspected as they enter a port. And some vessel operators may cheat, filling their ballast tanks with clean ocean water to pass off a faulty water treatment system as functional. Moreover, even treated ballast water can contain high levels of zooplankton. 

Ruiz, who has studied California’s data on ship arrival and locations of the mussels, said it’s probable the golden mussel entered the Delta at least a year ago and even possible that it’s been there for a decade or more, adding that “it could even have happened in the pre-treatment (of ballast water) era.”

Somehow, the creature slipped through the cracks and made itself a new home in what has been called one of the most invaded estuaries on the planet. 

It’s an outcome that Lempert as an assemblymember tried to prevent a quarter-century ago, when he authored the Ballast Water Management for Control of Non-indigenous Species Act. The law required incoming vessels to either retain their ballast water, drain it while simultaneously refilling with new water hundreds of miles out at sea, or use an “environmentally sound” treatment system. It tasked the California State Lands Commission with monitoring vessels for compliance. 

California has since enacted a complex system of regulations: In 2003, the Marine Invasive Species Act expanded the scope of Lempert’s legislation. Three years later, the Legislature required the commission to set limits on organism concentrations in ballast water; these “standards of performance” were implemented in 2022. While the standards allow minute levels of organisms in the water, the goal is “zero detectable living organisms” by 2040. 

Several federal laws also aim to protect U.S. waters from creatures like the golden mussel. 

Penalties for breaking ballast management rules have been modest. At the state level, violations have resulted in 24 fines in the past six years, totaling just over $1 million. Federal fines are rare, with just nine penalties issued amounting to about $714,000 in the EPA’s Pacific Southwest region since 2013.

Commission officials said “the frequency of noncompliant discharges … has dropped dramatically since our enforcement regulations (with penalties) were adopted in 2017.”

Can ballast water be sterilized?

California officials say achieving the law’s goal of zero organisms in ballast water discharged into waterways is infeasible. It would require a network of treatment plants at coastal ports, costing $1.45 billion over 30 years. The shipping industry would face another $2.17 billion in costs for installing systems capable of transferring ballast water to the floating treatment plants. 

But Eichenberg said some ships already use commercially available systems that consistently, and by a wide margin, outperform industry standards. He said the state’s failure to require that vessels use the most advanced treatment systems available — technology capable of nearly sterilizing ballast water — has culminated in the golden mussel’s arrival. 

“Something like this was bound to happen eventually,” he said.  

State and federal performance standards — modeled after international standards — limit the concentration of living zooplankton-sized organisms, like mussel larvae, in ballast water before discharge to 10 per cubic meter. For smaller organisms, allowances are higher. 

But even in ballast water that has undergone treatment in approved systems, zooplankton concentrations can be off-the-charts for reasons not always clear, according to Hugh MacIsaac, an aquatic invasive species researcher at the University of Windsor in Ontario, who has studied the spread of the golden mussel in South America and central China. 

Treating ballast water doesn’t necessarily work. A study in Shanghai found up to 23,000 zooplankton-sized organisms per cubic meter in the ballast water of half of ships sampled, MacIsaac said. 

Ruiz, at the Smithsonian research center, said the study’s sample size of 17 ships is too small to be representative and that such high concentrations are abnormal in the United States. “We sample vessels here, and that’s not what we see coming into the U.S.,” he said. 

Ship operators have shifted radically in the past 20 years “from no management to a nearly complete use of open-ocean exchange to, now, an almost complete transition to ballast treatment technology,” Ruiz said.

Attention turns to federal rules

The federal government, not state agencies, will soon become the key player in ballast management. That’s because new EPA rules, which are likely at least 18 months away from full implementation, will preempt state regulations.

The new rules — which state officials will help enforce — will keep the existing standards for organism concentrations, but prevent states from implementing their own rules that exceed federal standards. For example, California’s goal of zero detectable organisms in ballast discharge will be nixed. 

Nicole Dobrosky, the State Lands Commission’s chief of environmental science, planning and management, said states can petition the federal government for changes to the rules. 

Shippers welcome the shift to national rules that align with international standards, said Jacqueline Moore, Long Beach-based vice president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association. 

“An international industry by nature, the maritime community always appreciates consistent standards across the board, and across the ocean in this case,” Moore said. “It’s much easier for everyone.”  

But the change of regulatory oversight concerns Marcie Keever, the oceans and vessels program director with Friends of the Earth. She said that to date the State Lands Commission has been the more active enforcer.

Preempting state laws with federal standards that she says are too weak “will essentially give the shipping industry a free pass to pollute…These shipping companies are self-reporting pollution instances, and no one is doing anything about it except for the state.”

In 1973, the EPA exempted ballast water from the Clean Water Act. Eventually forced by court rulings to comply with the act, the agency released its newest standards in October for limiting organism concentrations in ballast water.

Keever said the EPA is not setting the bar as high as it should. 

“We’re still basically at the same place we were at 20 years ago,” Keever said. “The EPA has never set what we see as the best available technology for ballast water discharges.”

More than 150 environmental groups made similar claims in a 2022 letter to President Joe Biden, arguing that the technology exists now to almost entirely sterilize ballast water. 

“[W]e have the technical ability to efficiently remove or kill organisms that are trapped in a tank of water,” they wrote. “For half a century federal law has required EPA to use that ability to protect the environment and public health — yet EPA still refuses to do so.”

The EPA disagrees with the criticism. Joshua Alexander, press officer with the agency’s Region 9 San Francisco office, told CalMatters that “the EPA concluded that these standards (in the new rules) are the most stringent ones that the available ballast water test data can support.”

Can anything stop the mussel invasion?

October’s discovery of the golden mussel in California is being treated urgently by state and federal officials.

The creatures have wreaked havoc on water supply and hydroelectric facilities in South America, and they are spreading rapidly through central China. In the Great Lakes, invasive zebra mussels cause $300 to $500 million in damages annually to power plants and other water infrastructure — the types of impacts officials in California hope to avoid. 

Tanya Veldhuizen, the Department of Water Resources’ special projects section manager, said officials are considering the use of chemicals to remove the creatures from pumps, intakes and pipelines of the massive State Water Project, which transports water to farms and cities.  

Several scientists told CalMatters that with most nonnative species, eradication is only possible early in the game — meaning management officials often have one shot at success.

Biologist Andrew Chang, who works at the Smithsonian research center’s Marin County field lab, noted an old adage in invasion ecology — containing the spread of a nonnative species is like trying to put toothpaste back into a tube. “The more time that passes, the process of putting the toothpaste back in the tube gets messier and messier,” Chang said.

University of Windsor’s MacIsaac thinks California may be on the cusp of an unstoppable mussel invasion. 

“This is an enormous problem for your state,” he said.