BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 145
Page 1
ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB 145 (Perea and Rendon)
As Amended April 24, 2013
Majority vote
WATER, PARKS & WILDLIFE 9-2
ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY 5-2
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|Ayes:|Rendon, Blumenfield, |Ayes:|Alejo, Bloom, Lowenthal, |
| |Bocanegra, Fong, Frazier, | |Stone, Ting |
| |Gatto, Gray, Yamada, | | |
| |Bloom | | |
| | | | |
|-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------|
|Nays:|Dahle, Beth Gaines |Nays:|Dahle, Donnelly |
| | | | |
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APPROPRIATIONS 16-1
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|Ayes:|Gatto, Harkey, Bocanegra, | | | | |
| |Bradford, Ian Calderon, Campos, | | | | |
| |Donnelly, Eggman, Gomez, Hall, | | | | |
| |Ammiano, Linder, Pan, Quirk, | | | | |
| |Wagner, Weber | | | | |
| | | | | | |
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|Nays:|Bigelow | | | | |
| | | | | | |
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SUMMARY : Transfers, during the 2014- 2015 fiscal year, the
duties and responsibilities related to the regulation and
oversight of drinking water, including the authority to
administer the Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund
(SDWSRF), from the Department of Public Health (DPH), which is
under the California Health and Human Services Agency (CHHSA),
to the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB), which is
within the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA).
Specifically, this bill :
1)Makes findings that include, but are not limited to, the
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public nature of, and human need for, water; the effects of
groundwater contamination, especially upon communities that
lack the financial resources to resolve their drinking water
problems; and, the Legislature's attempts at addressing safe
drinking water access.
2)Asserts that the state needs a consolidated and comprehensive
system to ensure safe drinking water for all, including
protecting groundwater for drinking water, and that
consolidating all water quality programs into the SWRCB, the
one state agency whose primary mission relates to water
quality, will yield numerous benefits.
3)States the Legislature's intent to use a process with broad
public participation from affected stakeholders and agencies
in order to craft the most effective management structure for
achieving a comprehensive strategy for protecting drinking
water quality.
4)Makes codified findings and declarations, including that it is
the Legislature's intent to effectively use California's
limited water and financial resources to ensure that all
communities enjoy access to safe drinking water and that this
2013 reorganization of the State's Drinking Water Program
(DWP) will maximize efficiencies of drinking water,
groundwater, and water quality programs by creating a
comprehensive water quality program under one state agency
that addresses water quality at all stages of the hydrologic
cycle.
5)Creates a new Division of Drinking Water Quality at the SWRCB
that succeeds to and is vested with all of the authority,
duties, powers, purposes, responsibilities, and jurisdiction
of DPH for the purposes of the both the DWP and the SDWSRF.
Requires the reorganization to be implemented during the
2014-15 fiscal year.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Authorizes, pursuant to the federal Safe Drinking Water Act
(SDWA), the United States Environmental Protection Agency
(USEPA) to set standards for drinking water quality and to
oversee the states, localities, and water suppliers who
implement those standards. Under the State Water Drinking Act
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(SDWA) Amendments of 1996, establishes the Safe Drinking Water
State Revolving Fund (SDWSRF) program, which authorizes the
USEPA to award capitalization grants to states and authorizes
the states to, in turn, provide low-cost loans and other types
of assistance to public water systems to finance the costs of
infrastructure projects needed to achieve or maintain
compliance with federal SDWA requirements.
2)Requires, pursuant to California's parallel SDWA statute, DPH
to regulate drinking water and to enforce the federal SDWA and
other related regulations.
3)Continuously appropriates the SDWSRF to DPH and requires DPH
to undertake specified actions to implement the SDWSRF
pursuant to the federal SDWA, including providing grants or
revolving fund loans for the design and construction of
projects for public water systems that will enable suppliers
to meet safe drinking water standards.
4)Regulates, pursuant to the federal Clean Water Act (CWA), also
administered by the USEPA, discharges of pollutants into the
waters of the United States and regulates quality standards
for surface waters. Under the CWA Amendments of 1987,
establishes the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF)
program to fund water quality projects, including nonpoint
source, watershed protection or restoration; estuary
management projects; and municipal wastewater treatment
projects. Authorizes USEPA to award capitalization grants to
and authorizes states to, in turn, make loans to communities,
individuals, and others for water quality activities to
further the provisions and requirements of the CWA.
5)Establishes, pursuant to the Porter-Cologne Water Quality
Control Act (Porter-Cologne), California's statute that
predates the CWA and upon which some sections of the CWA are
modeled, the SWRCB and the regional water quality control
boards and provides that the SWRCB and the regional water
quality control boards are the principal state agencies with
authority over matters relating to water quality and
implementation of the CWA. Requires the SWRCB to administer
the CWSRF.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee, there are unknown administrative costs for
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transferring the program, likely in the hundreds of thousands of
dollars, which are potentially offset by future efficiencies.
COMMENTS : Both federal environmental regulatory statutes that
govern water quality issues, the CWA and the SDWA, are
administered under one federal agency: USEPA.
In California, water quality regulation is bifurcated. The
SWRCB, which is housed in Cal/EPA, administers the CWA,
Porter-Cologne, and the CWSRF. Then DPH, which is housed within
the CHHSA, administers the SDWA, the State's parallel statute to
the SDWA, and the SDWSRF. In essence, this means that the SWRCB
and the regional water quality control boards are responsible
for the quality of a water source before the water is pumped.
But, once the water is pumped from a drinking water well or
surface-water intake point, then DPH becomes responsible.
The missions and the mandates of the SWRCB and DPH, while
overlapping with regard to water, are different. The SWRCB
provides comprehensive protection for California's waters by
exercising authority over both water allocation and water
quality, with the exception of drinking water quality. DPH
manages programs for a broad range of health-related activities,
such as chronic disease prevention, communicable disease
control, family health and planning, health care quality
(including the regulation of health care facilities and
professionals and laboratories), but also drinking water
quality.
DPH's DWP regulates over 8,000 public water systems (PWS), which
are defined as privately or publicly owned water systems that
serve more than 15 service connections or 25 people. Regulation
includes inspecting the systems, issuing permits, taking
enforcements actions, and implementing new requirements due to
changes in federal or state law or regulations. For small PWS
serving less than 200 service connections, DPH has delegated
regulatory authority to 34 California counties. The delegated
counties regulate approximately 4,600 small PWSs that are
usually owned by schools, churches and small businesses, like
restaurants and hotels. Other functions of the DWP have
included responding to emergencies, providing technical support,
and, providing financial assistance for water system
improvements, including funding under Proposition 50 (2002),
Proposition 84 (2006), and the SDWSRF.
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Prior legislation has made several attempts to address safe
drinking water. AB 2222 (Caballero), Chapter 670, Statutes of
2008 required the SWRCB to, among other actions, identify the
communities that rely on contaminated groundwater as a primary
source of drinking water. In response to AB 2222 the SWRCB
identified 682 such communities serving nearly 21 million
people. SB 1 X2 (Perata), Chapter 1, Statutes of 2007-08 Second
Extraordinary Session required the SWRCB, in consultation with
other agencies, to prepare a report to the Legislature that
would improve understanding of the causes of nitrate groundwater
contamination and identify potential remediation solutions and
funding sources to recover costs expended by the state. AB 685
(Eng), Chapter 524, Statutes of 2012 declared it is state policy
that every human being has the right to clean, affordable, and
accessible water adequate for human consumption, cooking and
sanitary purposes. However, the findings from both the AB 2222
and SB 1 X2 reports suggest that drinking water contamination in
California disproportionally affects small, rural and low-income
communities that depend mostly on groundwater as their drinking
water source.
Since November 2012, the Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic
Materials Committee (ESTM) has held a series of oversight
hearings on the provision of safe, affordable, accessible
drinking water to all Californians, especially to those in
disadvantaged communities. As part of those hearings, the
Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) provided two analyses
relating to the DWP: 1) a comparison between DPH's management
of the SDWSRF and the SWRCB's management of the CWSRF, and; 2)
an evaluation of the transfer of the DWP from DPH to the SWRCB.
With regard to the SDWSRF, the LAO found that while there had
been some improvement in recent years, it still generally
performs less well than the CWSRF and performs significantly
below other states' SDWSRFs. Thereafter, on April 19, 2013, the
USEPA issued a notice to DPH for non-compliance with the
requirements of the SDWA. The USEPA notice stated that
California has the largest unliquidated obligation in the nation
and gave California 60 days to remedy specific instances of its
non-compliance or submit an acceptable corrective action plan.
If the state fails to do so, the USEPA may suspend payment to
the SDWSRF. Additionally, the USEPA can take other enforcement
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actions such as withholding further grant funds, wholly or
partly suspending current awards, or wholly or partly
terminating current awards.
The second LAO report regarding a potential transfer of the DWP
from SPH to the SWRCB concluded that transferring the DWP to the
SWRCB could have several advantages, including greater policy
integration on water issues; accelerated rulemaking; increased
efficiencies and administrative capacity; and heightened
transparency and greater public participation by utilizing a
board that meets in public. The LAO's report also cautioned
that there could be potential disadvantages, including, loss of
some integration with public health programs; temporary
disruption in the program's capacity to perform regulatory
activities; and, potentially increased, mainly short-term,
administrative costs. Ultimately, however, the LAO testified
that it would recommend transferring the DWP from DPH to the
SWRCB.
The author states that the shift of an environmental health
program from a health based agency to an environmental
protection based agency is not a new trend. At the federal
level, USEPA administers both clean water and safe drinking
water statutes and funds. In California, Cal/EPA already has
several divisions that protect human health and the environment
at the same time, such as the California Air Resources Board and
the Department of Pesticide Regulation. The author states that
placing the DWP under the SWRCB will strategically tie together
all water quality and water rights programs, thus enabling
California to better address future issues such as climate
change and increases in population. Supporters state many
disadvantaged communities in California are regulated by DPH and
have lacked safe and reliable drinking water for numerous years.
They maintain that DPH's inability to help these communities
makes it clear that the administration of the DWP by DPH is a
barrier to achieving safe drinking water. In contrast, they
state that the SWRCB has expertise in water quality and could
quickly and efficiently take on the additional responsibility.
Opponents however state that they provide safe drinking water to
millions of customers across the state, are regulated by DPH,
and that the State's DWP, including the permitting and
inspection functions, generally works well. Opponents suggest
that the focus of this bill needs to be on targeted solutions
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that truly address the drinking water problems that
disadvantaged communities in unincorporated areas are facing.
Opponents maintain that they are concerned that moving the
entire DWP could negatively affect the parts of the program that
work and not solve the problems that do exist. Other opponents
add that the transfer would create disruptions of vital division
functions; would inherently undermine human health functions;
and, could distract SWRCB from existing high profile priorities.
Analysis Prepared by : Tina Cannon Leahy / W., P. & W. / (916)
319-2096
FN:
0000964