California has taken a big step towards boosting how much sewage water local governments can purify and reuse for drinking — a process known as water recycling. On Tuesday, the state proposed draft regulations to expand recycling by introducing new purification standards and processes. Why now: California law currently doesn’t allow cities to put recycled wastewater directly into municipal water distribution systems. Instead, cities are required to first inject that water underground into an aquifer, where further, natural filtration occurs. What’s proposed: These new regulations would allow putting recycled water directly into the local water system, allowing more cities to recycle water that don’t happen to have an underground basin to store water, or don’t have enough space in groundwater basins because of past pollution, which is the case in L.A.