UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation

Community water systems serve as the local water provider for 98% or more of Los Angeles County’s population and have the responsibility to collect, report, and share data regarding water quality to the state and to their customers under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and associated state law.

Public water systems’ technical, managerial, and financial capacities vary greatly throughout the state, as does their ability to comply with existing standards. For instance, larger public water systems may be better able to comply because they can more easily staff and pay for required maintenance and water testing, while “at-risk” water systems likely need to pass off costs to their customers. Additionally, many water systems face aging infrastructure and underinvestment that cause challenges in providing safe drinking water.

Although water systems are publicly regulated (unlike private wells) and residents commonly expect that water systems are responsible for their tap water quality, water systems are not responsible for on-site or private premise plumbing. Instead, as other briefs cover, property owners are responsible for on-site plumbing. Thus, water systems are not fully responsible for the quality of water coming out of the tap.

The State of California, primarily through the State Water Resources Control Board (Water Board), serves as the regulator of drinking water systems and the operator of many funding programs to help systems comply with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and associated state laws. The Water Board thus has an important role in assisting residents in identifying and addressing premise plumbing issues. However, some of the board’s potential to regulate requires additional authorities and responsibilities to be granted by the state legislature.

Small water systems are 13 times more likely to violate the Safe Drinking Water Act than large systems and are less resilient in the face of drought and other challenges resulting from the climate crisis. Low-income, rural, and indigenous communities bear the brunt of these consequences, thereby perpetuating inequality. Water system consolidation — or the merging of two or more previously independent water systems — presents one possible solution to many of these challenges.

This brief highlights some, but not all, of what may be needed to address heat in schools. It is not intended to be fully comprehensive. For example, it is outside the scope of this document to focus on labor-related actions. Additionally, we focus on actions that can be taken at the state level. Yet we recognize the critical role of school districts and schools to address heat. A focus on the local level, involving interviews with school employees, could be the subject of a separate paper on heat and schools. Addressing extreme heat is only one piece of making schools more climate resilient. Our heat-specific action areas fit into a broader landscape of work for climate-resilient schools. To illustrate, the Climate Ready Schools Coalition calls for increased funding and a “Master Plan for Sustainable and Climate-Resilient Schools” to identify and guide a wider set of investments to promote equity, health and climate mitigation alike in schools.