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President Trump’s directive to roll back key protections for the nation’s waters helps to crystallize California’s challenge in the Trump era — and points the way toward a workable strategy for preserving and promoting the state’s environmental values despite an administration that is pushing in the opposite direction. At issue is a rule that defines the reach of the landmark Clean Water Act, the 1972 law to prevent contamination of drinking water and degradation of U.S. waterways.

Kale or quinoa? Free range chicken or seasonal veggie medley? Pellegrino or … recycled water? Californians could soon start drinking purified wastewater. In response to a five-year drought, the State Water Resources Control Board recently informed legislators that regulating recycled, drinkable water is perfectly feasible. California would be the first state in the nation to implement such regulations.

California is having its rainiest water year since record-keeping began in 1895 — a deluge that has been rapidly altering the landscape of a state that until recently was in drought. It has rained an average of 27.81 inches statewide from Oct. 1 to Feb. 28, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information reported. A water year begins on Oct. 1. The 20th century average was 15.5 inches in the same time period, and the previous record was the winter of 1968-69, when it rained an average of 27.34 inches, the agency reported. Signs of this shift are everywhere.

Conditions have improved in a small swath of Southern California that was one of the last areas of severe drought still standing during a wet winter for the record books. Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties are no longer under severe drought, according to this week’s U.S. Drought Monitor report. Recent rainfall improved the outlook for groundwater in the region, accounting for the improvement, the Monitor report said.