Information related to the current status of legislation and regulations impacting California’s rural counties.
Assembly Bill 1 (C. Garcia): Hazardous Waste: Assembly Bill 1 establishes several new governance, policy, and fiscal reforms to improve the Department of Toxic Substances Control, including significantly increasing several fees and repealing several important fee exemptions. Status: AB 1 awaits consideration by the Assembly Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Concerns
Assembly Bill 246 (Quirk): Contractors: disciplinary actions. Assembly Bill 246 allows the Contractors State Licensing Board to take disciplinary actions against a contractor who violates state or local laws prohibiting illegal dumping. Status: AB 246 awaits consideration in the Senate. RCRC Status: Support
Assembly Bill 297 (Gallagher): Fire Prevention. Increases funding for forest health improvement and wildfire risk reduction projects and makes other substantive changes to help expedite project completion. Status: AB 297 awaits consideration in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Assembly Bill 318 (Levine): Hazardous waste: Assembly Bill 318 requires the Department of Toxic Substances Control to provide guidance to certified unified program agencies on how to characterize green waste under hazardous waste control laws. Status: AB 318 is awaiting consideration by the Assembly Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Pending
Assembly Bill 322 (Salas): Energy: Electric Program Investment Charge program: Requires the Energy Commission to consider bioenergy projects for biomass conversion when awarding funds under the Electric Program Investment Charge program. Status: AB 322 is awaiting consideration in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Assembly Bill 332 (ESTM): Hazardous waste: treated wood waste: Reestablishes a statutory pathway for the alternative management and disposal of treated wood waste in a landfill. Status: AB 332 is awaiting consideration on the Assembly Floor. RCRC Status: Support
Assembly Bill 648 (Fong): Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund: Healthy Forest and Fire Prevention: Appropriation. Continuously appropriates $200 million annually for forest health improvement and wildfire risk reduction projects Status: AB 648 awaits consideration in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Assembly Bill 819 (Levine): California Environmental Quality Act. Requires lead agencies to post California Environmental Quality Act notices and documents on their internet websites and to submit CEQA documents to the State Clearinghouse in electronic form. Status: AB 819 awaits consideration in the Senate. RCRC Status: Watch
Assembly Bill 843 (Aguiar-Curry): California Renewables Portfolio Standard Program: renewable feed-in tariff: Allows Community Choice Aggregators (CCAs) to access the CPUC BioMAT program that provides funding for renewable bioenergy electricity projects, including biomass and biogas. Status: AB 843 awaits consideration from the Assembly Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Assembly Bill 1078 (Patterson): Energy: building standards: photovoltaic requirements. Exempts residential buildings damaged or destroyed in a disaster during the 2020 calendar year from having to install solar energy systems under the California Energy Commission’s recently adopted building requirements. Status: AB 1078 awaits consideration from the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Assembly Bill 1154 (Patterson): California Environmental Quality Act: exemption: egress route projects: fire safety. Exempts from the California Environmental Quality Act egress route projects undertaken by a public agency and that are recommended by the Board of Forestry to improve fire safety of an existing subdivision. Status: AB 1154 awaits consideration from the Assembly Natural Resources Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Assembly Bill 1201 (Ting): Solid waste: plastic products: labeling: compostability and biodegradability. Authorizes CalRecycle to adopt regulations for plastic product labeling to ensure that plastic products labeled as compostable or home compostable are clearly distinguishable from non-compostable products. Prohibits the sale of a plastic product labeled as compostable, home compostable, or soil biodegradable unless the product meets specified standards. Status: AB 1201 awaits consideration from the Assembly Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Watch
Assembly Bill 1276 (Carrillo): Single-use food accessories and service ware. Prohibits food facilities and platforms from providing single-use food accessories to consumers unless requested or necessary to protect public health and safety or safe delivery. Status: AB 1276 awaits consideration from the Assembly Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Watch
Assembly Bill 1311 (Wood) Recycling: beverage containers: certified recycling centers. Makes modest changes to the Beverage Container Recycling Act to increase consumer access to redemption opportunities. Status: AB 1311 awaits consideration from the Assembly Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Assembly Bill 1344 (Arambula): State Department of Public Health: Needle and Syringe Exchange Services. Exempts needle and syringe exchanges services from the California Environmental Quality Act. Status: AB 1344 awaits consideration in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Neutral
Assembly Bill 1403 (Levine): Emergency Services. Assembly Bill 1403 clarifies that deenergization events (also known as PSPS events) qualify as events for which a state of emergency or local emergency can be declared under the California Emergency Services Act. Status: AB 1403 awaits consideration on the Assembly Floor. RCRC Status: Support
Assembly Bill 1454 (Bloom): Beverage Container and Litter Reduction Act. Assembly Bill 1454 makes several changes to the Beverage Container Recycling Program, including creation of a new $25,000 startup loan for the creation of new recycling centers in unserved or underserved areas. Status: AB 1454 Awaits consideration by the Assembly Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support if Amended
Assembly Bill 1547 (Reyes): Air pollution: warehouse facilities. AB 1547 allows the Air Resources Board to regulate indirect sources of air pollution and requires local governments to undertake many other actions to identify and address the potential environmental impacts of warehouse development projects. Status: AB 1547 is a two-year bill. RCRC Status: Oppose.
Senate Bill 30 (Cortese): Building Decarbonization: Prohibits state agencies from designing or constructing a state facility that is connected to the natural gas grid and prohibits state agencies from funding projects for the construction of residential and nonresidential buildings that are connected to the natural gas grid. Status: Senate Bill 30 awaits consideration by the Senate Governmental Organization Committee. RCRC Status: Oppose Unless Amended
Senate Bill 38 (Wieckowski): Beverage Containers: Replaces the existing Beverage Container Recycling Program (Bottle Bill) with a new recycling program administered by beverage container manufacturers and increases the CRV from $0.05 to $0.10 per container if the state fails to achieve specified recycling rates. Repeals the $10.5 million annually set aside for payments to cities and counties to address recycling and litter. Status: SB 38 awaits consideration by the Senate Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Oppose Unless Amended
Senate Bill 52 (Dodd): State of Emergency: Power Outages. Senate Bill 52 clarifies that deenergization events (also known as PSPS events) qualify as events for which a local emergency can be declared under the California Emergency Services Act. Status: SB 52 awaits considerationin the Assembly. RCRC Status: Support
Senate Bill 54 (Allen): Plastic Pollution Producer Responsibility Act. SB 54 requires manufactures of single-use, disposable packaging and food service ware to ensure that those products sold, distributed, or imported into the state are either recyclable or compostable. Status: SB 54 awaits consideration from the Senate Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support in Concept
Senate Bill 99 (Dodd): Community Energy Resilience Act of 2021. Senate Bill 99 requires the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission to develop and implement a grant program for local governments to develop community energy resilience plans. Status: SB 99 awaits consideration in the Senate Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Senate Bill 207 (Dahle): Photovoltaic Recycling Advisory Group: Senate Bill 207 seeks to spur the recycling and reuse of solar photovoltaic panels by requiring an advisory group to make recommendations to ensure that, to the extent possible, all solar photovoltaic panels in the state are reused or recycled at the end of their lives in a safe and cost-effective manner. Status: SB 207 awaits consideration by the Senate Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Senate Bill 244 (Archuleta): Lithium-ion batteries: illegal disposal: fire prevention: Senate Bill 244 seeks to prevent lithium-ion battery fires by requiring the state to develop training and best practices for the detection, safe handling, and suppression of fires that originate from discarded lithium-ion batteries in solid waste collection vehicles, transfer and processing stations, and disposal facilities. Status: SB 244 awaits consideration from the Senate Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Senate Bill 261 (Allen): Regional Transportation Plans: Sustainable Communities Strategies. Requires the Air Resources Board (ARB) to adopt new greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction targets for incorporation into the sustainable communities’ strategies prepared by the state’s 18 metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). Status: SB 261 is a two-year bill. RCRC Status: Oppose
Senate Bill 289 (Newman): Recycling: batteries and battery-embedded products. Requires producers of battery and battery-embedded products to create stewardship organizations and programs for the collection, transportation, and recycling of those products. Status: SB 289 awaits consideration in the Senate Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Senate Bill 341 (McGuire): Telecommunications Service: Outages. Makes several changes to increase oversight and accountability of telecommunications service outages. Status: SB 341 awaits consideration from the Senate Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Senate Bill 343 (Allen): Environmental Advertising: Recycling Symbol. Prohibits the sale of any product or packaging using a deceptive or misleading claim about its recyclability, including using the chasing arrows symbol unless CalRecycle determines the product or packaging is recyclable. Requires CalRecycle to identify the types of plastic products and packaging from which a claim of recyclability may be made. Status: SB 343 awaits consideration from the Senate Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Watch
Senate Bill 533 (Stern): Electrical corporations: wildfire mitigation plans: deenergization events: microgrids. Requires electrical corporations to include in their wildfire mitigation plans their efforts and projects to reduce the need for future deenergization of circuits that have frequently been deenergized. Status: SB 533 awaits consideration from the Senate Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support
Senate Bill 619 (Laird): Organic waste: reduction regulations. Will seek to provide local governments with additional flexibility to achieve the state’s organic waste recycling requirements. Status: SB 619 awaits consideration from the Senate Appropriations Committee. RCRC Status: Support