BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 2800
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Date of Hearing: April 18, 2016
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESOURCES
Das Williams, Chair
AB 2800
(Quirk) - As Amended April 12, 2016
SUBJECT: Climate change: infrastructure planning
SUMMARY: Establishes a Climate-Safe Infrastructure Working Group
(Working Group) to examine how to integrate scientific data
concerning projected climate change impacts into state
infrastructure engineering.
EXISTING LAW:
1)Pursuant to Executive Order S-13-08 (Schwarzenegger), requires
Natural Resources Agency (NRA), through the Climate Action
Team, to coordinate with local, regional, state, federal, and
private entities to develop a state Climate Adaptation
Strategy. Requires the strategy to summarize the best known
science on climate change impacts to California, assess
California's vulnerability to the identified impacts, and
outline solutions that can be implemented within and across
state agencies to promote resiliency.
2)Pursuant to Executive Order B-30-15 (Brown), in addition to
establishing a 40% Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission reduction
goal by 2030, requires several actions on adaptation
including:
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a) Requires NRA to update the state's climate adaptation
strategy every three years and ensure that its provisions
are fully implemented. Requires the state's climate
adaptation strategy to:
i) Identify vulnerabilities to climate change by sector
and regions, including, at a minimum, the following
sectors: water, energy, transportation, public health,
agriculture, emergency services, forestry, biodiversity
and habitat, and ocean and coastal resources;
ii) Outline primary risks to residents, property,
communities, and natural systems from these
vulnerabilities, and identify priority actions needed to
reduce these risks; and,
iii) Identify a lead agency or group of agencies to lead
adaptation efforts in each sector.
b) Requires each sector lead to prepare an implementation
plan by September 2015 to outline the actions that will be
taken as identified in state's climate adaptation strategy,
and report back on those actions to the NRA.
c) Requires state agencies to take climate change into
account in their planning and investment decisions, and
employ full life-cycle cost accounting to evaluate and
compare infrastructure investments and alternatives.
d) Requires state agencies' planning and investment to be
guided by the principles of climate preparedness,
flexibility and adaptive approaches for uncertain climate
impacts, protective of vulnerable populations, and
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prioritization of natural infrastructure solutions.
e) Requires the state's Five-Year Infrastructure Plan to
take current and future climate change impacts into account
in all infrastructure projects.
f) Requires Office of Planning and Research (OPR) to
establish a technical advisory group to help state agencies
incorporate climate change impacts into planning and
investment decisions.
g) Requires the state to continue its rigorous climate
change research program focused on understanding the
impacts of climate change and how best to prepare and adapt
to such impacts.
3)Requires the NRA to update its climate adaptation strategy,
the Safeguarding California Plan (Plan), by July 1, 2017, and
every three years thereafter, by coordinating adaption
activities among lead state agencies in each sector.
THIS BILL:
1)Makes various findings related to climate changes impacts and
the need to consider climate change impacts on siting and
design standards and specifications.
2)Requires state agencies to take into account the expected
impacts of climate change when planning, designing, building,
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and investing in state infrastructure.
3)Requires NRA, by July 1, 2017, to establish the Working Group
to examine how to integrate scientific data concerning
projected climate change impacts into state infrastructure
engineering.
4)Requires the Working Group to consist of the following:
a) Professional engineers with relevant expertise in state
infrastructure design from the Department of
Transportation, the Department of Water Resources, and the
Department of General Services; and,
b) Scientists from the University of California and the
California State University systems with expertise in
climate change impacts in California.
5)Requires the Working Group to work in coordination with other
climate adaptation planning efforts.
6)Requires the Working Group to consider and offer
recommendations on how better integrate knowledge of climate
impacts into infrastructure planning and design, including
more communication between climate scientists and
infrastructure engineers.
7)Requires the Working Group to make recommendations to the
Legislature.
FISCAL EFFECT: Unknown
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COMMENTS:
1)Author's statement:
Sound and reliable infrastructure is critically
important to public safety, quality of life, and
California's economy. While California is actively
engaged in developing the most up-to-date climate
change science, this information is not significantly
impacting infrastructure engineering and design
decisions. There is an urgent need for state
infrastructure engineering to adapt to predicted
impacts of climate change. Fortunately, California is
already undertaking important climate adaptation work
across different sectors. However, much of this work
is designed to be used by state and local planners,
not people who actually design and build
infrastructure. As a result, there is a gap between
the state's scientific understanding of projected
impacts of climate change and the nature of the
information that engineers require to determine
specifications on how to build.
AB 2800 bill is a small but critical step forward to
addressing the problem. It is important to bring
together climate scientists and professional engineers
who work directly on infrastructure with the directive
to examine how to integrate climate change impacts
data into infrastructure engineering. Office of
Planning and Research's current technical advisory
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group that is considering how to incorporate climate
change into state planning and investment decisions is
a valuable endeavor, but the group will not
specifically address the challenge targeted by this
bill. It is critical that engineers have practicable
information about climate change to better inform
their design specifications, and therefore a process
that includes engineers in the conversation is
necessary.
2)Adaptation. In 2009, the NRA described adaptation as a
relatively new concept in California policy and stated the
term means, "efforts that respond to the impacts of climate
change - adjustments in natural or human systems to actual or
expected climate changes to minimize harm or take advantage of
beneficial opportunities."
California's adaptation efforts can be traced back to 2008,
when Governor Schwarzenegger ordered the NRA, through the
Climate Action Team (CAT), to coordinate with local, regional,
state, federal, public, and private entities to develop, by
2009, the state's Climate Adaptation Strategy. Governor
Schwarzenegger's Executive Order required the strategy to
summarize the best known science on climate change impacts for
California, assess California's vulnerability to the
identified impacts, and outline solutions that can be
implemented within and across state agencies to promote
resiliency. As a result, NRA drafted The 2009 California
Climate Adaptation Strategy. The state's Climate Adaptation
Strategy represents the work of seven sector-specific working
groups led by 12 state agencies, boards, commissions, and
numerous stakeholders. The state's Climate Adaptation
Strategy proposes a comprehensive set of recommendations
designed to inform and guide California decision makers as
they begin to develop policies that will protect the state,
its residents, and its resources from a range of climate
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change impacts. In July of 2014, NRA released an update to
the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy Safeguarding
California: Reducing Climate Risk.
Climate risks in California include sea level rise, changes in
precipitation that increase the risk of both drought and
flooding, and increases in temperatures that can affect air
quality and habitat. California is responding to these risks
through various efforts, including the recently passed Water
Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014
(Proposition 1), which has several pots of funding for
responding to drought conditions or flooding brought by
climate change and dealing with sea level rise. Of the over
$7 billion allocated in the bond, $3.6 billion could be spent
on projects that deal in some way with adaptation.
In addition, the Coastal Commission (Commission) has been
working with coastal zone local governments to update their
local coastal programs to address shoreline hazards and sea
level rise. The Commission has also released a Draft
Sea-Level Rise Policy Guidance document that provides an
overview of best available science on sea-level rise for
California and recommended steps for addressing sea-level rise
in Commission planning and regulatory actions. This will help
coastal local governments to make planning decisions that will
take into account sea level rise and identify infrastructure
and property that is at risk.
3)Engineers and scientists. According to a report by the
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American Society of Civil Engineers entitled, "Adapting
Infrastructure and Civil Engineering Practice to a Changing
Climate":
Engineers should engage in cooperative research
involving scientists from across many disciplines to
gain an adequate, probabilistic understanding of the
magnitudes of future extremes and their consequences.
Doing so will improve the relevance of modeling and
observations for use in the planning, design,
operation, maintenance and renewal of the built and
natural environment. It is only when engineers work
closely with scientists that the needs of the
engineering community become fully understood, the
limitations of the scientific knowledge become more
transparent to engineers, and the uncertainties of the
projections of future climate effects become fully
recognized for engineering design purposes.
This bill would implement the approach outlined above by
creating the Working Group of both engineers and
scientists. This is a very different approach than past
adaptation bills. Prior bills focused on a top down
approach to incorporating adaptation into state and local
government decisions. This bill focuses on collaboration
between practitioners to drive systematic change. This
bill also codifies one of points in the Governor's
Executive Order B-30-15 related to state infrastructure.
4)Prior legislation.
SB 246 (Wieckowski), Chapter 606, Statutes of 2015,
establishes the Integrated Climate Adaptation and
Resiliency Program administered by OPR to work with and
assist local and regional efforts for climate adaptation
and resilience.
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AB 1482 (Gordon), Chapter 603, Statutes of 2015, requires NRA to
update its climate adaptation strategy, the Plan, by July 1,
2017, and every three years thereafter by coordinating adaption
activities among lead state agencies in each sector. This bill
also requires the relevant state agencies to maximize specified
objectives across sectors to address vulnerabilities identified
in the Plan.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
Union of Concerned Scientists (sponsor)
California League of Conservation Voters
Climate Resolve
Local Government Commission
National Audubon Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by:Michael Jarred / NAT. RES. / (916) 319-2092
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