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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|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)
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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
AB 408
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