BILL ANALYSIS Ó ----------------------------------------------------------------- |SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | AB 1594| |Office of Senate Floor Analyses | | |1020 N Street, Suite 524 | | |(916) 651-1520 Fax: (916) | | |327-4478 | | ----------------------------------------------------------------- THIRD READING Bill No: AB 1594 Author: Williams (D) Amended: 8/22/14 in Senate Vote: 21 SENATE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY COMMITTEE : 5-1, 6/25/14 AYES: Hill, Hancock, Jackson, Leno, Pavley NOES: Gaines NO VOTE RECORDED: Fuller SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE : 5-0, 8/14/14 AYES: De León, Hill, Lara, Padilla, Steinberg NO VOTE RECORDED: Walters, Gaines ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 57-21, 5/29/14 - See last page for vote SUBJECT : Waste management SOURCE : California Compost Coalition Californians Against Waste DIGEST : This bill re-classifies the use of green material as alternative daily cover (ADC) at a landfill as disposal instead of diversion through recycling beginning January 1, 2020, and requires the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) to provide in its annual report, an update on the adequacy of funding from the Integrated Waste Management Fund (Fund) for their programs implemented pursuant to the California Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989 (Act). CONTINUED AB 1594 Page 2 Senate Floor Amendments of 8/22/14 require CalRecycle to provide an update on the adequacy of funding from the Fund for their programs and authorize CalRecycle to make funding mechanism recommendations. ANALYSIS : Existing law, under the Act: 1.Requires each city or county source reduction and recycling element to include an implementation schedule that shows a city or county must divert 25% of solid waste from landfill disposal or transformation by January 1, 1995, and must divert 50% of solid waste on and after January 1, 2000 through source reduction, recycling, and composting activities. 2.Establishes a state policy goal that 75% of solid waste generated be diverted from landfill disposal through source reduction, recycling, or composting by 2020. 3.Provides that the use of solid waste for beneficial reuse in the construction and operation of a solid waste landfill, including the use of ADC, constitutes diversion through recycling and is not considered disposal. 4.Requires each operator of a disposal facility to pay a quarterly fee based on the amount of all solid waste disposed of at each disposal site, and sets the fee for solid waste at $1.34 per ton. 5.Requires CalRecycle to file an annual report, on or before March 1 of each year, with the Legislature, regarding the administration of the Act during the prior calendar year. This bill: 1.Defines "green material" as any plant material that is either separated at the point of generation, or separated at a centralized facility that employs methods to minimize contamination, and specifies that green waste does not include treated wood waste, materials left over from the composting or material recovery process or construction and demolition waste. 2.Specifies that on and after January 1, 2020, the use of green material as ADC does not constitute diversion and shall be AB 1594 Page 3 considered disposal. 3.Requires jurisdictions, commencing August 1, 2018, to include in their annual reporting, information on how they intend to divert green material that is currently being used as ACD. 4.Provides that beginning in 2020, if the reclassification of green material used as ADC result in a local jurisdiction missing its diversion targets under the Act, then that local jurisdiction must include in its annual report an identification of barriers to recycling green materials and a plan to address those barriers. 5.Exempts green waste used as ADC from the tipping fee required for other solid waste disposal. 6.Requires CalRecycle to include in the annual report, on or before March 1, 2015, a status update on the adequacy of funding from the Fund for programs implemented pursuant to the Act and pursuant to other specified provisions regulating waste management facilities. 7.Authorizes CalRecycle to recommend alternative funding mechanisms for the programs, as specified. Background ADC . Landfill operators are required to cover all solid waste at the end of each day to control odors, vectors, fires, litter, and scavenging. Federal regulations require that cover consist of six inches of earthen materials, but also permit operators to use alternative measures, generally referred to as ADC. CalRecycle has 11 approved ADC material types. Generally, these materials must be processed so that they do not allow gaps in the exposed landfill face. Specific types of ADC authorized in California include: geosynthetic fabric (tarps); sewage sludge; ash and cement kiln dust; treated auto shredder waste (auto fluff); foam products; contaminated sediment, dredge soils, foundry sands, and energy exploration and production waste; compost materials; processed construction and demolition waste; shredded tires; and green materials. Solid waste diversion . Existing law requires local jurisdictions to divert 50% of solid waste from landfilling by AB 1594 Page 4 source reduction, recycling and composting. AB 1647 (Bustamante, Chapter 978, Statutes of 1996) established that local jurisdictions may use ADC as a strategy to achieve their waste diversion goals by deeming ADC recycling, and therefore counting towards the 50% diversion requirement for jurisdictions. While a large number of jurisdictions use green materials as ADC, only 11 of the state's 416 jurisdictions would drop below their required diversion rate if green materials used as ADC no longer counted as diversion. In 2012 (the most recent data available), approximately 1.6 million tons of green material was used as ADC. Use has gradually decreased since 2005, when it peaked at approximately three million tons. 75% Directive . CalRecycle is tasked with diverting at least 75% of solid waste statewide by 2020. Currently, organic materials, including green waste, make up one-third of the waste stream (approximately 11 million tons) and food continues to be the highest single category of disposal at over 15%. Green materials, such as lumber, cardboard, and leaves and grass comprise over 20%. CalRecycle is also charged with implementing its Strategic Directive 6.1, which calls for reducing organic waste disposal by 50% by 2020. According to CalRecycle, significant gains in organic waste diversion (through recycling technologies for organic waste including composting and anaerobic digestion) are necessary to meet the 75% goal and to implement Strategic Directive 6.1. Anaerobic digestion, which produces biogas that can be processed to biomethane fuel, is particularly suited to handle food waste. Green waste is more efficiently processed through composting. Compost, in addition to improving the quality of soil, prevents soil erosion, reduces the need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and enables better soil water retention. Tip fees . The Act requires that each ton of solid waste deposited in a landfill be subject to a fee of $1.40 per ton. Tipping fees are generally used to fund daily operational and closure costs of a landfill, but may also be used to fund AB 1594 Page 5 recycling programs, litter abatement, public education efforts and other programs. A local tipping fee can act as an incentive to encourage certain practices or disincentive so as to discourage other practices. Previous legislation capped the tipping fee at this level. The application of ADC is considered recycling under California law and is not subject to CalRecycle's $1.40 per ton disposal fee. Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) and Green Material ADC . Landfill gas is generated by the anaerobic decomposition of organic materials such as food, paper, wood, and green material. 50% of landfill gas is methane, a GHG that is 25 times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide (CO2). Under AB 32 (Nunez, Chapter 488, Statutes of 2006), landfill methane capture regulations were adopted as a discrete early action item, and requires owners and operators of certain uncontrolled municipal solid waste landfills to install gas collection and control systems, and requires existing and newly installed gas and control systems to operate in an optimal manner. Often, these systems involve a combustion step as a way to reduce the emissions of methane and other organics. However, significant amounts of methane from landfills continue to escape into the atmosphere. According to Air Resources Board's updated Scoping Plan, approximately eight million tons of CO2 equivalent are released annually by landfills. That number is expected to increase to 8.5 million tons of CO2 equivalent by 2020. Recycling organic waste provides significant GHG reductions over landfilling. Composting and other organics processing technologies, including anaerobic digestion, reduce GHGs by avoiding the emissions that would be generated by the material's decomposition in a landfill. Good Faith Effort . Under existing law, CalRecycle reviews disposal information from jurisdictions at regular intervals. If a jurisdiction is not able to comply with the 50% diversion mandate, CalRecycle makes a determination whether that jurisdiction made a "good faith effort" to meet the requirement. If a good faith effort is determined by CalRecycle to have been made by the jurisdiction, they are deemed in compliance. In order for CalRecycle to pursue enforcement action, they must AB 1594 Page 6 determine that the city or county failed to make a good faith effort to meet the state's diversion requirements. FISCAL EFFECT : Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes Local: Yes According to the Senate Appropriations Committee, there will be potential revenue losses of no more than $2 million, and possibly significantly less, to the Integrated Waste Management Fund as a result of excluding green material used as ADC from the tipping fee. SUPPORT : (Verified 8/25/14) California Compost Coalition (co-source) Californians Against Waste (co-source) Agromin American Biogas Council Association of Compost Producers Biodegradable Products Institute Bioenergy Association of California Breathe California California Biomass Energy Alliance California Climate and Agriculture Network California Coastal Protection Network California Compost Coalition California League of Conservation Voters California Organics Recycling Council California Refuse Recycling Council California Releaf California Resource Recovery Association Center for Biological Diversity Cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Thousand Oaks CleanPower Campaign CleanWorld Coalition for Clean Air Community Alliance with Family Farmers Costa Mesa Sanitary District Board of Directors Counties of San Francisco and Santa Barbara CR&R Environmental Services Ecology Center Environment California Frank M. Booth Design Build Co. GAIA AB 1594 Page 7 Global Green USA Grassroots Recycling Network Greenaction Greenwaste Recovery Integrated Waste Management Consulting Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy Napa Recycling and Waste Services Natural Resources Defense Council Natureworks, LLC Northern California Recycling Association Northern Recycling and Waste Services Novamont, North America, Inc. Peabody Engineering Planning and Conservation League Quackenbush Mountain Resource Recovery & Compost Facility Recology Republic Services Rethink Waste Sierra Club California Sonoma Compost Co. Tracy Material Recovery and Transfer Facility Upper Valley Disposal Recycling US Composting Council Vasko Electric, Inc. Waste Management Z-Best Composting OPPOSITION : (Verified 8/25/14) Cities of Diamond Bar and Monrovia Committee/Integrated Waste Management Task Force Los Angeles County Solid Waste Management ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT : The Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) writes that this bill, "which will reclassify the use of green waste as daily cover at a landfill as disposal instead of recycling. CAFF promotes the greater use of compost by farmers as an excellent tool to improve soil fertility, reduce fertilizer costs, improve soil water retention, and reduce environmental impacts. "While there may have been historical reasons for green waste ADC as recycling, we believe it is no longer justified. Green waste is an essential feedstock for the production of compost, AB 1594 Page 8 and compost as a product and an industry has greatly matured in the 25 years since ADC was first classified as recycling. Today's compost industry has an unmet demand for more feedstock to produce compost. We believe that AB 1594, in conjunction with AB 1826 (Chesbro), will significantly increase the availability of green waste as a feedstock for compost production, and for this reason CAFF supports AB 1594." ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION : Los Angeles County Solid Waste Management writes: Elimination of recycling credit for the use of green materials as a landfill alternative daily cover (ADC) would necessitate development of new composting and/or anaerobic digestion (AD) facilities. Currently, the 89 jurisdictions in Los Angeles County generate over 5 million tons of organics (including green materials) per year and our preliminary estimates indicate that County jurisdictions would need over 36 facilities with a processing capability of 250 tons-per-day each. A similarly sized facility in San Jose cost approximately $40 million; therefore the total cost to build this infrastructure in Los Angeles County could be as high as $2 billion. This is essentially a new industry for Los Angeles County and there are currently no AD facilities in the County which are open to the public. We believe state-administered grant and loan programs are critical to helping this industry get off the ground and become successful. Significant funding will be required to build the necessary processing infrastructure for organics waste recycling, which should not be limited to one or two processes. Many thermal, chemical, biological, and mechanical conversion technologies could be utilized to process organic material into a wide spectrum of resources which can be used to produce electricity and fuels. However, these technologies are stifled by antiquated legislative and regulatory barriers. These technologies can diversify our approach to organics management and help jurisdictions comply with the State's direction to divert these materials from landfill disposal. We encourage the State to take a technology neutral position or, at a minimum, not prohibit technologies that can provide equal or greater greenhouse gas reductions than anaerobic AB 1594 Page 9 digestion and composting. Although anaerobic digestion is at present the most widely used technology in California to convert biodegradable organic waste to energy, biomass gasification and other conversion technologies can manage a broader array of organic waste and have much less residual that may still need to be disposed. Moreover, the technologies provide comparable or greater greenhouse gas reductions, which must be the primary emphasis of the State's effort to divert organics from landfills through source separated collection. ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 57-21, 5/29/14 AYES: Alejo, Ammiano, Bloom, Bocanegra, Bonilla, Bonta, Bradford, Brown, Buchanan, Ian Calderon, Campos, Chau, Chesbro, Cooley, Dababneh, Daly, Dickinson, Eggman, Fong, Fox, Frazier, Garcia, Gatto, Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon, Gorell, Gray, Hall, Roger Hernández, Holden, Jones-Sawyer, Levine, Lowenthal, Maienschein, Medina, Mullin, Muratsuchi, Nazarian, Pan, Perea, John A. Pérez, V. Manuel Pérez, Quirk, Quirk-Silva, Rendon, Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez, Salas, Skinner, Stone, Ting, Weber, Wieckowski, Williams, Yamada, Atkins NOES: Achadjian, Allen, Bigelow, Chávez, Conway, Dahle, Donnelly, Beth Gaines, Grove, Hagman, Jones, Linder, Logue, Mansoor, Melendez, Nestande, Olsen, Patterson, Wagner, Waldron, Wilk NO VOTE RECORDED: Harkey, Vacancy RM:k 8/25/14 Senate Floor Analyses SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: SEE ABOVE **** END ****