BILL ANALYSIS Ó
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Kevin de León, Chair
SB 812 (de León) - Hazardous waste: facilities permitting.
Amended: January 16, 2014 Policy Vote: EQ 6-2
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: January 21, 2014 Consultant:
Marie Liu
This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill Summary: SB 812 would establish deadlines for the
submission of applications for hazardous waste facility permits
as well as deadlines for the processing of such applications.
Fiscal Impact:
Approximately $1M from Hazardous Waste Control Account
(special) in 2014-15, 2015-16, and 2016-7 for six additional
positions at the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC)
for the processing of continued permits.
Unknown, but likely insignificant, costs from the Hazardous
Waste Control Account (special), for permitting facilities on
an interim status grant in the long-term future.
Background: Under the California Hazardous Waste Control Act,
facilities that treat, store, handle, and/or dispose of
hazardous waste are required to be permitted by the DTSC. The
hazardous waste facility permit specifies specific requirements
for the facility to ensure safe operation. There are currently
117 facilities permitted by DTSC. While these permits expire
after 10-years, the facility is allowed to continue to operate
past this date while DTSC considers their permit renewal
application. There are currently 24 facilities operating under
these so-called "continued permits."
One permit of the 117 is an interim permit for a facility owned
by Exide Technologies in Vernon, California. The interim permit
was first issued in 1981. Over the next 30 years, while there
have been some steps taken to get the facility under a regular
permit, regular permit has not yet been issued. There are no
other facilities in California that are currently operating
under an interim permit.
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Proposed Law: This bill would require that applications for
hazardous waste facility permits be submitted at least two years
prior to the expiration date of the permit.
This bill would also require that DTSC approve or deny permit
renewal applications within three years of the expiration of the
permit, otherwise the application is deemed denied. DTSC would
have until January 1, 2018 to take final action on applications
for facilities whose permits expired on or before January 1,
2015.
This bill would also limit the operation of a facility under an
interim status grant to five years for grants issued on or after
January 1, 2015.
Related Legislation: SB 712 (Lara) would establish deadlines for
DTSC to take final action on permit applications from hazardous
waste facilities operating under an interim status grant. SB 712
is to be heard by this committee on January 21, 2014.
Staff Comments: DTSC has a BCP in the Governor's 2014-15 budget
for eight positions for two years to improve the permitting
process for hazardous waste facilities. As outlined in the BCP,
six of these positions would be to deal with 17 of the 24
continued permits over the next two years. At this rate, DTSC
could eliminate the backlog of continued permits in three years,
consistent with the deadlines established in this bill. Thus,
staff estimates that this bill would require 6PYs (3 hazardous
substances engineer, 1 supervising hazardous substances
engineer, 1 senior environmental planner, and 1 staff attorney)
as proposed in the BCP, but for three years at an approximate
cost of $1M annually.
Under the provisions of the bill, for future permit renewal
applications, DTSC would have up to five years to take final
action on the application- at least two years before the permit
expires and up to three years after the expiration. Presumably
this five year window would generally well accommodate DTSC's
publically stated goal taking action on permit renewal
applications within two years. However, DTSC notes that between
2016 and 2019, DTSC will have a surge in the number of permit
renewal applications as a large number of facilities expire in
this period (12 to 18 per year vs 6 in 2020). In addition to the
large number of changes to the permitting program both underway
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and anticipated in the near future, staff believes that there is
a fair amount of uncertainty on DTSC's long-term staffing needs
for their permitting branch. Therefore, the long-term impacts
of the time limits under this bill are unknown.
Hazardous waste facilities are required to pay fees with their
applications. However, applicants may pay a flat fee, which is
established in statute, that only covers a small portion of DTSC
regulatory costs. If the statute was amended to better cover
DTSC's regulatory costs, it is unclear whether such a change
could be retroactively applied to the facilities that have
renewal applications pending. Thus, a change to the fee
structure would not eliminate the costs associated with dealing
with the backlog of applications, but could allow greater
recovery of DTSC's permitting costs for future applications.
DTSC does not anticipate issuing any future interim status
grants. In the past, broad expansions of the hazardous waste
laws prompted the use of interim status grants as it allowed the
agency to better understand the newly regulated industries and
fine tune permit conditions before they were finalized. Should
there be another broad expansion of the hazardous waste laws in
the future, there is a small possibility that interim status
grants could be used again. Staff notes that even in the event
that interim status grants were to be used again, the cost
impacts of this bill would be mixed with the impacts of a large
number of changes underway and anticipated to DTSC's permitting
process. Compared to the other changes to the permitting
process, staff believes the cost impact of a three-year limit on
interim status grants would be minimal.