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Water & sanitation

In shortfall ~1.4% shortfall, the best-performing social category

2.2% shortfall

in access to water from systems that meet drinking water quality standards

0.5% shortfall

in basic access to sanitation

Framing

Access to clean drinking water and sanitation is a basic human need for health and well-being, according to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6. Globally, billions of people currently lack access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene, and we are not on track to address this global shortfall by 2030. Compared to global performance averages, California has relatively small problems with clean water, sanitation, and hygiene as a percentage of population. Nevertheless, data indicate that over a million residents in California lack access to either clean water or basic sanitation or both.

Policy spotlight

* In 2019, California passed Senate Bill 200 (SB 200), which enabled the State Water Resources Control Board to create the Safe and Affordable Funding for Equity and Resilience Drinking Water (SAFER) program, to help high-risk water systems provide safe drinking water. * State Water Board Resolution No. 2022-0019 and 2016-0010 recognize Californians' equal and human right to sanitation. As a result, the state is undertaking a comprehensive Wastewater Needs Assessment, which may provide more accurate California-specific sanitation data for future assessments.

Justice lens

* Disadvantaged communities and communities of color are disproportionately impacted by unsafe water quality: 56% of failing public water systems serve disadvantaged communities, and 67% serve majority communities of color. * In the Central Valley, particularly in Southern San Joaquin Valley, groundwater pumping for agriculture has left shallower wells for drinking water dry or contaminated, primarily impacting low-income Latino populations. * Given sanitation data comes from California's homelessness and substandard housing statistics, racial disparities in homelessness translate directly to a disproportionate lack of access to basic sanitation among the Black population.

Source & citation

Content on this page draws from The California Doughnut Snapshot and Report, used under CC-BY 4.0.

Aritza, A. and Kraus-Polk, J. et al. (2025). The California Doughnut Snapshot and Report. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17540639