BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
SB 1340 (LaMalfa) - Appropriation of water: Sewerage Commission
Oroville
Amended: April 9, 2012 Policy Vote: NRW 8-1
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: April 30, 2012 Consultant:
Marie Liu
This bill does not meet the criteria for referral to the
Suspense File.
Bill Summary: SB 1340 would explicitly authorize the Sewerage
Commission Oroville to apply for a permit from the State Water
Board to appropriate water in an amount equivalent to its
wastewater discharge into the Feather River.
Fiscal Impact: One-time costs of $110,000 from the Water Rights
Fund (special fund) in 2013 to conduct a cumulative impact
analysis.
Background: Existing law gives the owner of a wastewater
treatment plant the exclusive right to treated wastewater. Last
year, AB 134 (Dickinson) Chapter 212/2011 gave authorization to
the Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District to apply to
the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) for a permit to
divert water from the Sacramento River in an amount equal to the
district's discharge of treated wastewater into the Sacramento
River. Since the passage of AB 134, the Sacramento Regional
County Sanitation District has submitted its application for an
appropriation.
Proposed Law: This bill would give virtually the same
authorization granted to the Sacramento Regional County
Sanitation District to the Sewage Commission Oroville - the
explicit authority to apply for a permit to divert water in an
amount equal to its wastewater discharge into the Feather River.
Related Legislation: AB 134 (Dickinson) Chapter 212/ 2011
Staff Comments: The authority authorized in AB 134 and proposed
in this bill is essentially restating existing law and does not
SB 1340 (LaMalfa)
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seem to offer any additional powers or duties to either the
applicant or to the SWRCB. The Sewage Commission Oroville,
should they submit an application, will have to pay an
application fee and an annual fee should they be issued a
permit. While it is unclear whether the application fee fully
reimburses the SWRCB's cost in reviewing the application, any
remaining costs would be incurred under existing law.
In response to concerns that expanding explicit authorization to
apply for divisions of water equivalent to wastewater discharges
might create unintended cumulative impacts, this bill contains a
reporting requirement for the SWRCB to study the potential
cumulative impacts on current water rights holders and the
ability to meet or exceed instream flow standards for the
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers should other districts apply
for similar water rights claims. To understand potential
cumulative effects, the SWRCB would need to run model
simulations, research current downstream water rights, and run
multiple simulations of the state's water resources model to
evaluate impacts to flow and water quality. The SWRCB estimates
that it would cost approximately $95,000 in staff resources to
analyze the cumulative impact of one application for water
rights for treated wastewater. Much of these staff resources
would be needed to set-up models to predict cumulative impacts,
but once this model is established, running multiple simulations
will be significantly less expensive per simulation. Thus, the
SWRCB believes that the broader report required by this bill can
be done with approximately $110,000 in staff resources. Staff
notes that while it is reasonable that running multiple
simulations will be significantly less expensive per simulation
once the models are established and calibrated, SWRCB's estimate
seems to assume significant "economies of scale."