BILL ANALYSIS �
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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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) 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
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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.
5)Provided that this is an urgency measure.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, pursuant to Senate Rule 28.8, negligible costs.
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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 bill would allow for the cost recovery of
those local agency expenses that ocure on the property or
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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 and 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: 0002407
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