California Legislative Session Hits Midway Mark: What's the Environment Score at Halftime?

AB 2153 would have provided a mechanism to ensure that California could continue to grow without further burdening already stressed water supplies and current ratepayers, who face increased water rationing and rising water rates. The measure requires new development to fully mitigate water demands by contributing a modest one-time investment of less than one percent of the cost of new development to water efficiencies and development of new local water supplies.

Less than a week after the Assembly missed its opportunity to pass AB 2153, the Governor declared a severe drought in California and cautioned that statewide water rationing may be necessary later this year.

The Governor's announcement is another clear demonstration that we must take dramatic steps to secure California's water supply. We'll continue to work with Assemblymember Krekorian to advance the critical and timely policy embedded in AB 2153.

Still Strong: Many Critical Environmental Measures Advance Into Second Half of Session

Although it failed to pass two of the most significant environmental bills introduced this year, the Legislature did support several other high profile measures ranging from land use policy to water conservation to plastic bags. Here are some highlights of bills that passed off the Assembly floor:

• AB 2175 (Laird/ Feuer) requires a twenty percent reduction in urban per capita water use by 2020 and requires the Department of Water Resources to set a numeric target for agricultural water efficiency, not less than 500,000 acre feet by 2020.
• AB 2058 (Levine) establishes the nation's most ambitious plastic bag reduction targets, requiring thirty-five percent of bags to be recycled by 2011 and 70 percent by 2012. The bill establishes "Ireland Style" advance disposal fee of fifteen cents per bag if targets are not met.
• AB 2093 (Jones) requires cities and counties to include policies that address the emission of greenhouse gases in their General Plans, either when the General Plan is updated or when their housing element update is due.
• AB 2558 (Feuer) authorizes the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to impose a fee on either motor vehicle fuels or vehicle registrations to fund countywide climate change mitigation.
• AB 1920 (Huffman) allows owners of small solar and small-wind energy systems to receive wholesale rate compensation from their electric utility for any surplus electricity generated at their home or business on an annual basis.
• AB 2447 (Jones) requires that a county deny approval of a tentative map if it is in a State Responsibility Area or an area of high fire risk. This bill allows for development only if the county can make findings that the proposed project is located and designed in conformity with state fire prevention regulations.

Environmental Health Legislation Also Fares Well

The Legislature took several steps last week to reduce and eliminate toxins from our environment and our bodies. Although both the Senate and the Assembly lightened some of the policy recommendations, the bills moving forward not only raise awareness of the dangers to toxics exposure but ensure that those exposures are lessened or eliminated.

• AB 1879 (Feuer) takes the most comprehensive approach by regulating lead, mercury, cadmium, PBDEs, hexavalent chromium and pthalates in all consumer products.
• Other measures limit hazardous chemicals in packaging and products: AB 3025 (Lieber) prohibits polystyrene, AB 2505 (Brownley) prohibits PVC packaging, and SB 1313 (Corbett) and SB 1713 (Migden) eliminate perfluorinated compounds and bisphenol, respectively, from consumer products.
• The push continues to eliminate lead from our daily lives. AB 2901 (Brownley), AB 2694 (Ma), and SB 1712 (Migden) seek to reduce or eliminate lead from jewelry, children's products and cosmetics.

Traci Sheehan is the Executive Director of the Planning and Conservation League, a statewide, nonprofit lobbying organization. For more than thirty years, PCL has fought to develop a body of environmental laws in California that is the best in the United States. PCL staff review virtually every environmental bill that comes before the California Legislature each year. It has testified in support or opposition of thousands of bills to strengthen California's environmental laws and fight off rollbacks of environmental protections.