President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency on his first day in office last year, signaling support for oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear power at the expense of renewable sources like wind and solar.
The move excited fossil-fuel industry leaders but alarmed clean energy, environmental and community justice advocates across the country.
It was the first of many efforts to weaken environmental protections in favor of industry led by a revamped Environmental Protection Agency, including proposals to dismantle air and water regulations.
Most recently, the Trump administration withdrew from the world’s key climate change treaty, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, making the U.S. the first to sign the agreement, and the only nation to ever leave it.
In California, environmental disputes over off-shore drilling, data center construction, cross-border sewage spills and federal funding cuts will dominate debate throughout 2026.
In 2025, the EPA canceled billions of dollars in federal funding for environmental justice projects across the nation, including millions for clean air projects in San Diego neighborhoods impacted by industrial pollution. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin also visited the Tijuana River Valley to see the sewage crisis that has plagued South Bay communities for decades, promising what he has called a “hundred percent solution.”
Meanwhile, as an international race for dominance in the artificial intelligence industry accelerates, Californians are wondering how a boom of data centers will impact communities already strained by high energy rates and limited water supplies. They’re also closely watching the federal government’s renewed efforts to drill off the coast.
Here are some major environmental issues inewsource is tracking in 2026.
The California coastline
President Trump has set his sights on off-shore oil, and California is in his scope.
In November, the Trump administration announced plans to open up California’s coast, as well as areas off the coast of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, to off-shore oil and gas drilling.
The proposal would open six areas throughout the state for the first time in four decades, including three in Southern California.
Local leaders have largely decried the announcement and some have rallied in support of legislation to block the projects sponsored by U.S. Rep. Mike Levin, a Democrat representing parts of northern San Diego and southern Orange counties.
In a statement last month, Levin pushed back against the suggestion that the projects are needed to lower gas prices, suggesting that instead they pose a threat to California’s economy.
“The coastline already generates tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in tourism, recreation, real estate, research, and commercial fishing,” the statement reads. “These industries are valuable precisely because the coast is clean and healthy. A single spill threatens all of that.”
In December, San Diego County supervisors passed a resolution on a 4-1 vote, opposing any off-shore drilling, saying it is a threat to ecosystems, fisheries and coastal economies. Supervisor Joel Anderson cast the dissenting vote without comment.
Even if its leaders are opposed, a state cannot outright block drilling in federal waters that start three miles off the coast. But governors of coastal states can lobby against drilling and also have the opportunity to weigh in on the leasing process with the federal agency charged with managing the projects, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Levin’s bill aims to make the projects illegal altogether. Since 2026 is a consequential midterm election year with control of Congress at stake, off-shore drilling may have ripple effects nationwide.
A massive data center
The expansion of the so-called data centers which power technology will also remain a key national issue as companies like Google and Meta race to expand artificial intelligence technology.
Data centers are large air-conditioned warehouses that house massive computer servers and hardware requiring a large amount of space, energy and water to run.
Communities across the nation have been bracing for, debating and weathering the impacts of the data center boom. People are concerned about potential spikes in utility bills and long-term impacts on public health.
Now residents of Imperial, a two-hour drive east of San Diego, are facing the issue.
In November, Imperial County supervisors greenlit construction of a massive data center to be built beside residential communities in Imperial.
County officials gave Imperial Valley Computer Manufacturing the go-ahead to build the 950,000-square-foot data center on several parcels of land totaling 75 acres in an unincorporated area in Imperial. The project would be one of the largest data centers in California.
Gilberto Manzanarez, the founder of Valle Imperial Resiste, a grassroots environmental collective, said people are concerned about noise, water consumption, electrical grid impacts and costs.
Manzanarez is also a part of a collective called NIMBY Imperial, which has garnered more than 4,000 signatures lobbying against the data center.
Many residents learned about the project after it was already greenlit by the county.
The company says the project will bring in more than 2,500 construction jobs.
“Is it worth it for the people without really knowing the real long-term effects of these centers?” Manzanarez said.
The city and county are now in a legal dispute over the site. The city says the county should have done an environmental review, but the county says one wasn’t required.
State Sen. Steve Padilla, a Democrat whose district includes San Diego and Imperial counties, has stepped in, calling for a public review of the data center project.
Padilla has sponsored legislation to protect residents from the impacts of data centers. As introduced, Senate Bill 57 would have established a special pay structure to protect consumers from price increases. It was revised instead to authorize the state Public Utilities Commission to study how data centers shift costs to ratepayers.
Amid all the attention, the massive project in Imperial is in limbo.
Alarms about toxic pollutants
The Tijuana River sewage crisis continues to plague communities in the river valley as residents call for solutions. Rapid growth in the region has continuously outpaced repairs and buildout of failing infrastructure on both sides of the border. Doctors are sounding alarms about long-term exposure to toxic pollutants that scientists have identified in the air and water.
Last year inewsource published out a months-long project, called Home Sick, interviewing and documenting the chronic health issues of more than 100 people living and working in the river valley.
The project highlighted a need for a sustained study of long-term exposure to the decades-long pollution crisis, and now county of San Diego officials say they will fund a study of chronic hydrogen sulfide exposure, one of the toxic gasses emanating from the river.
Environmental advocates are watching to ensure the International Boundary and Water Commission, the federal entity that manages the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant, upgrades the plant.
“The real theme is making sure that the funding and the agreements that are now in place to address this border pollution are followed and are implemented as quickly as possible,” said Phillip Musegaas, the executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper, an environmental advocacy group working on cross-border sewage.
Dive into the project
In December, the Trump administration made a new agreement with Mexico that includes updated timelines for wastewater projects and a feasibility study for how the region can plan for projected population growth.
Last year Musegaas and his team at Coastkeeper carried out water tests in the river and found numerous industrial chemicals. He says California lawmakers should investigate U.S. companies in Tijuana to determine the source of the pollution and hold companies accountable for “essentially poisoning communities in the Tijuana river valley in the U.S.”
“It’s outrageous,” he said.
Devastating federal cuts
Following billions of dollars of cuts to environmental justice grants across the nation, advocacy groups and foundations have been seeking ways to fill funding gaps.
In one local case, the California Strategic Growth Council, a state agency that funds climate infrastructure, stepped in last month after the National City-based advocacy group Environmental Health Coalition and the philanthropy-focused San Diego Foundation had to pause work on clean air and climate resilience initiatives in several underserved San Diego neighborhoods. This affected the San Diego neighborhoods of Barrio Logan, Logan Heights, Sherman Heights, Stockton, Shelltown, Southcrest, Mount Hope and Grant Hill.
In December, the council awarded the groups $7.3 million to help close their funding gap. At the time, Jose Franco Garcia, the executive director of Environmental Health Coalition, called the funding “an initial step in restoring hope and trust in a community that wasn’t just devastated by the EPA funding cuts this year but that has been underinvested in for generations.”
The groups will now be able to carry out an initiative which will fund green space, air quality improvements in residential areas near industry and climate-related workforce development.
