BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 408 Page 1 CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS AB 408 (Wieckowski, Logue and Miller) As Amended August 29, 2011 2/3 vote. Urgency ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |ASSEMBLY: |78-0 |(May 19, 2011) |SENATE: |36-0 |(August 31, 2011) | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |COMMITTEE VOTE: |9-0 |(September 6, 2011) |RECOMMENDATION: |concur | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Original Committee Reference: E.S. & T.M. SUMMARY : Makes changes to hazardous material reporting, emergency response, and hazardous waste manifest requirements and to the requirements for the management of used paint. The Senate amendments: 1)Provide technical amendments to the requirement regarding the collection and management of used paint. 2)Clarify the safety requirements for retailers taking back paint products. 3)Increase the amount of propane, from 300 to 500 gallons, that may be stored on a business site without being subject to the requirements to file a hazardous material business plan. 4)Provide that utilities are not required to maintain a hazardous material business plan for remote electrical equipment with less than 1,320 gallons of mineral oil. 5)Remove the provisions of the bill that allowed small communities to apply "in lieu" water quality violation fines to local capital projects that would address the causes of the water quality violations. 6)Double-joint the provisions of this bill with AB 255 (Wieckowski) AB 408 Page 2 related to paint recycling and SB 456 (Huff) related to the collection of household hazardous waste to avoid chaptering out conflicts. AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY: 1)Enabled local government cost recovery for emergency response to hazardous substances spills under a wider range of circumstances: a) Provided that those expenses for an emergency response necessary to protect the public from a real and imminent threat incurred by a public agency are a charge against any person whose negligence causes the incident, if either of the following occurs: i) Evacuation from the building, structure, property, or public right-of-way where the incident originates is necessary to prevent loss of life or injury; or, ii) The incident results in the spread of hazardous substances or fire posing a real and imminent threat to public health and safety beyond the building, structure, property, or public right-of-way where the incident originates. b) Expanded the definition of "hazardous substance" for the purposes of local government cost recovery. 2)Allowed for consolidating manifesting procedures for haulers of hazardous waste to be used for the receipt, by a transporter, of one shipment of used oil from a generator whose identification number has been suspended, if certain requirements are met. Sunseted this authority on January 1, 2014. 3)Allowed the local Certified Unified Program Agency (CUPA) to exempt reporting for hazardous material quantities less than the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) threshold levels for low-hazard materials. 4)Expanded the compliance project "in lieu" provisions from the mandatory minimum penalty violations provisions of the Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act to include publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) serving a population of 20,000 or fewer persons. AB 408 Page 3 5)Provided that this is an urgency measure. FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations Committee, pursuant to Senate Rule 28.8, negligible costs. COMMENTS : Need for this bill. According to the author, "AB 408 provides a wide-ranging series of regulatory reforms addressing the problems of business, local governments, and emergency personnel in complying with California hazardous material and hazardous waste laws. In many cases we find conflicting standards between State and federal agencies or the laws have failed to keep up with changing industrial practices. This bill brings together primarily technical elements of our statutes that need to be easier to understand, simpler for business and local governments to comply with but done in a way that increases the actual protection on the public health and the environment." Local emergency response . Local government emergency response agencies face toxic chemical spills and accidents every day. In 2010, there were over 3,100 reported chemicals spills in California. The cost of responding to many of these incidents falls on local taxpayers. Toxic spills may originate in a public right of way and result in highway closure or result in the spread of a hazardous substance beyond the public right of way. Under existing law, cost recovery for emergency response is available only if the incident either results in 1) an evacuation "beyond the property where the incident originates" or 2) the spread of hazardous substances "beyond the property of origin." (Health and Safety Code Section 13009.6(a)) In both cases, the operative word is "beyond." However, if the incident originates on a public right-of-way (e.g., a tanker truck spills hazardous materials on a public highway), existing law arguably does not allow cost recovery because evacuation of the affected section of the highway does not constitute evacuation "beyond the property where the incident originates," and a spill on the highway may not necessarily spread "beyond" the highway. Similarly, if the incident originates in a building or structure on a large property, requiring emergency response, but the evacuation or spread of hazardous materials remains within the confines of the large property, it would appear that local cost recovery for the emergency response is precluded because neither the evacuation nor spread occurred strictly "beyond the property of origin." This AB 408 Page 4 bill would allow for the cost recovery of those local agency expenses that occur on the property or public right-of-way. Consolidated manifest for hazardous waste collection . This bill addresses the issues raised by the inability of a used oil transporter to pick up a load of used oil from generators who did not return their annual ID number verification and related forms and fees. Often these are small generators who infrequently generate used oil and have not acknowledged the need to keep their ID number up to date. This bill allows for a one-time pick-up with both the generator and the transporter reporting the pick-up to DTSC. Business plans -- emergency response and annual inventories . California Health & Safety Code Section 25503 requires any business that handles/stores a hazardous material or a mixture containing a hazardous material to establish and implement a "Business Plan for Emergency Response" to a release or threatened release of a hazardous material. A central purpose of the existing law requiring businesses to devise a plan for managing hazardous materials and reporting on this annually is to ensure that emergency response personnel, e.g., fire fighters, will have advanced knowledge of the hazards they may be confronting, such as in response to a fire. Paint product stewardship program . Current law (AB 1343 (Huffman), Chapter 420, Statutes of 2010) requires a manufacturer of paint sold in California, individually or through a representative organization, to implement a recovery program "to undertake responsibility for the development and implementation of strategies" to reduce generation, promote reuse, and manage waste paint through the collection, transport, and processing of postconsumer paint. This bill adds technical amendments to the Paint Product Stewardship Program to allow retailers to collect and manage used paint without the need for hazardous waste facility permits. Analysis Prepared by : Bob Fredenburg / E.S. & T.M. / (916) 319-3965 FN: 0002766 AB 408 Page 5