BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 1594
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CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
AB 1594 (Williams)
As Amended August 22, 2014
Majority vote
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|ASSEMBLY: |57-21|(May 29, 2014) |SENATE: |23-12|(August 27, |
| | | | | |2014) |
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Original Committee Reference: NAT. RES.
SUMMARY : Specifies that green material (i.e., yard trimmings
and untreated wood wastes) used as alternative daily cover (ADC)
at a landfill does not constitute diversion and shall instead be
considered disposal beginning in 2020.
The Senate amendments :
1)Beginning March 2, 2015, require the Department of Resources
Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) to include an update on
the adequacy of funding from the Integrated Waste Management
Fund (Fund), including the oversight of solid waste that is
accepted at a disposal facility and is not subject to the
tipping fee.
2)Beginning January 1, 2020, require a local jurisdiction that,
as a result of not being able to claim diversion for the use
of green material as ADC, does not meet the state's diversion
requirements to include specified information in its annual
report to CalRecycle, including a plan to address the barriers
to achieving the diversion requirement.
3)Delete the requirement that CalRecycle make a determination
relating to good faith effort based on specified
considerations if a local jurisdiction will no longer meet the
state's diversion requirements as a result of not being able
to claim diversion credit for green material used as ADC.
4)Beginning August 1, 2018, require local jurisdictions to
include information on how the jurisdiction intends to address
the requirements of this bill and divert green material from
use as ADC in its annual report to CalRecycle.
5)Specify that nothing in this bill modifies, limits, or
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abrogates the authority of a local jurisdiction with respect
to land use, zoning, or facility siting decisions.
6)Define "green material" to have the same meaning as Title 27
of the California Code of Regulations, Section 20690(b), which
is defined as any plant material that is either separated at
the point of generation, or separated at a centralized
facility that employs methods to minimize contamination.
Green material includes, but is not limited to, yard
trimmings, untreated wood wastes, paper products, and natural
fiber products. Green material does not include treated wood
waste, mixed demolition or mixed construction debris, manure
and plant waste from the food processing industry, alone or
blended with soil. Processed green material may include
varying proportions of wood waste from urban and other sources
and shall be ground, shredded, screened, source separated for
grain size, or otherwise processed.
7)Specify that "green material" does not include materials left
over after the material recovery process (fines) or processed
construction and demolition waste materials.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, this bill will result in potential revenue losses of
no more than $2 million, and possibly significantly less, to the
Fund as a result of excluding green material used as ADC from
the tipping fee.
COMMENTS : According to the author, "California is one of the
only states to allow the use of green material as landfill cover
and the only state to count cover material as diverted - nearly
half the states in the country have banned the landfilling of
this material all together. Eliminating this wasteful practice
will help the State meet its environmental goals, support the
growth of agriculture, and create jobs."
Landfill operators are required to cover all solid waste at the
end of each day to control odors, vectors, fires, litter, and
scavenging. Federal regulations require that cover consist of
six inches of earthen materials, but also permit operators to
use alternative measures, generally referred to as ADC.
Specific types of ADC authorized in California include:
geosynthetic fabric (tarps); sewage sludge; ash and cement kiln
dust; treated auto shredder waste (auto fluff); foam products;
contaminated sediment, dredge soils, foundry sands, and energy
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exploration and production waste; compost materials; processed
construction and demolition waste; shredded tires; "spray
applied cementitious products;" and, green materials.
In December 1993, after more than a year of public discussion
and consideration, the California Integrated Waste Management
Board (CIWMB) adopted an ADC policy that would have allowed a
limited amount of ADC to count toward a jurisdiction's diversion
rate. The implementation regulations for this policy were
rejected by the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) on the
grounds that the CIWMB did not have the statutory authority to
limit ADC diversion credit. This OAL disapproval prompted the
CIWMB to formulate a new ADC policy at its January 1995 meeting.
The new policy considered use of ADC to be diversion so long as
that use was approved by CIWMB and "not excessive." This new
policy included limiting the ADC diversion credit to the
"functional equivalent" of the earthen material used as daily
cover.
In February 1996, the Sacramento Superior Court ruled in Natural
Resources Defense Council vs. the California Integrated Waste
Management Board that the regulations were inconsistent with the
Public Resources Code Section 41780, which requires local
jurisdictions to "divert" solid waste from landfills through
source reduction, recycling, and composting activities. The
court also ruled that no recycling activity at a landfill,
including material recovery and composting could be counted as
diversion.
AB 1647 (Bustamante), Chapter 978, Statutes of 1996, established
that local jurisdictions may use ADC as a strategy to achieve
their waste diversion goals. This bill also specified that
recycling activities conducted at a landfill are considered
diversion.
In October 2013, CalRecycle released the Update on AB 341
Legislative Report: Statewide Strategies to Achieve the 75
Percent Goal by 2020. The report outlines a "new recycling
rate" to measure progress toward the 75% goal, which will not
include "beneficial use of waste-derived materials at
landfills," including green materials used as ADC. The report
is clear that the new measurement system will not affect how
individual jurisdiction's diversion rates are calculated.
While a large number of jurisdictions use green materials as
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ADC, only 11 of the state's 416 jurisdictions would drop below
their required diversion rate if green materials used as ADC no
longer counted as diversion. In order for CalRecycle to pursue
enforcement action, it would have to determine that the city or
county was also failing to make a "good faith effort" to meet
the state's diversion requirements.
In 2012 approximately 1.6 million tons of green material was
used as ADC. Use has gradually decreased since 2005, when it
peaked at approximately three million tons.
CalRecycle is tasked with diverting at least 75% of solid waste
statewide by 2020. Currently, organic materials, including
green waste, make up one-third of the waste stream
(approximately 11 million tons) and food continues to be the
highest single category of disposal at over 15%. CalRecycle is
also charged with implementing its Strategic Directive 6.1,
which calls for reducing organic waste disposal by 50% by 2020.
According to CalRecycle, significant gains in organic waste
diversion are necessary to meet the 75% goal and to implement
Strategic Directive 6.1. Recycling technologies for organic
waste include composting, anaerobic digestion, and other types
of processing that generate renewable fuels, energy, soil
amendments, and mulch.
Recycling organic waste provides significant greenhouse gases
(GHG) reductions over landfilling. Composting and other
organics processing technologies, including anaerobic digestion,
reduce GHGs by avoiding the emissions that would be generated by
the material's decomposition in a landfill. Landfill gas is
generated by the decomposition of organic materials such as
food, paper, wood, and green material. Fifty percent of
landfill gas is methane, a GHG that is 21 times more efficient
at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. While most modern
landfills have systems in place to capture methane, significant
amounts continue to escape into the atmosphere. According to
the Air Resources Board's GHG inventory, approximately seven
million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent are released
annually by landfills. That number is expected to increase to
8.5 million tons of CO2 equivalent by 2020.
Analysis Prepared by : Elizabeth MacMillan / NAT. RES. / (916)
319-2092
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