Download the Scorecard (pdf)

Our California Clean Water Legislative Scorecard grades your legislators on their work to protect our water, our environment and our communities during the 2011-2012 legislative session, which ended in August!  In it, we track Clean Water Action’s 2011 – 2012 legislative priorities including:

• ensuring Californians have access to  safe and affordable drinking water, and
• making sure the water quality of our state’s precious waterways is improved, and that state policies ensure environmental justice, reduce exposure to toxic chemicals, and prevent plastic pollution and waste.
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Clean Water Action is working to protect California from the dangers of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Across the country, communities are suffering from health impacts related to fracking including: contaminated drinking water and polluted air, degradation of local waterways, and decreased property values. In most states, fracking operations are designed to extract natural gas reserves. In California, it’s all about oil.

California has the largest oil shale play in the nation- the Monterey Shale. It spans much of the Central Valley and the Central Coast along with Los Angeles. It lies below most of the sources of drinking water for Central Valley residents and contains 15 billion barrels of oil that have historically been too difficult to extract.  Until now.

banning polystyrene foam for take-out packaging makes a lot of sense. 

Foam is light-weight and breaks apart into small pieces. It is easily, widely dispersed in the environment and impacts our water quality in a big way. 

A study published in 2011 found that 71% of all the plastic flowing through the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers is foam.  From there the foam flows directly out to the ocean and then waves wash it back onto local beaches. It is the second most common form of beach debris in California, according to a study conducted in Orange County.

Click here for additional information on foam.