BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó



                                                                AB 408
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        CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
        AB 408 (Wieckowski, Logue and Miller)
        As Amended  August 29, 2011
        2/3 vote.  Urgency
         
        
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        |ASSEMBLY: |78-0 |(May 19, 2011)  |SENATE: |36-0 |(August 31, 2011)    |
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         ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
        |COMMITTEE VOTE:  |9-0  |(September 6, 2011) |RECOMMENDATION: |concur    |
        |                 |     |                    |                |          |
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        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
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          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.









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        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 








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        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










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