2011 was a challenging year for environmental legislation in Sacramento as lawmakers were reluctant to support any measure that could be spun a imposing additional cost to the state or threatening jobs. Despite these challenges, Clean Water Action and its water allies achieved many notable victories for water this legislative season. The following is a list of gifts of clean water for the 2011 holiday season provided, in part, by Clean Water Action.
Human Right to Water: Clean Water Action won passage of a package of bills that will protect the fundamental right to safe and affordable drinking water. This included: AB 983, increasing access to funding for drinking water treatment in low income communities; AB1221, expanding small community eligibility for State cleanup and abatement funds; SB244, addressing drinking water and other infrastructure problems of small unincorporated communities, and AB 938, dismantling language barriers for non-English speaking residents when emergency drinking water notices are provided.

Bisphenol-A (BPA) Out of Baby Products: After a two-year battle to remove BPA from baby bottles and sippy cups, AB 1319 (Butler) which reduces infants’ exposure to BPA passed.  This plasticizer is a serious health threat to babies, even at very low doses. California is now the 11th state to enact a ban on BPA!

Foam Ban Passed the Senate: We’re leading the coalition to pass a state ban on foam containers. SB 568 (Lowenthal) passed the Senate with bi-partisan support. Hundreds of organizations including government, labor, environmental, business, and restaurant interests back this bill and it passed two committees of the Assembly. SB 586 won’t have a final floor in the Assembly vote until 2012- giving us time to counter the misinformation from the plastics industry.

Preventing Oil Spills: AB 1112 (Huffman) will help prevent potential oil spills by requiring state agencies to beef up monitoring and inspection efforts, and increase the per barrel fee through 2015 to prevent drastic budget cuts to oil spill prevention programs.

Green Business Certification Program: We believe that it is vital that businesses, small and large, choose to “go green.”  As such, we supported AB 913 (Feuer) which requires the state to develop a program to provide support to local government Green Business Certification Programs. These programs certify businesses that adopt environmentally friendly business practices, including increased energy efficiency, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, promotion of water conservation, and reduced waste generation as “Green Businesses”.

Defending the CEQA: This year industry used California’s high unemployment rate to stop good environmental bills. Nearly 30 bills were introduced in 2011 that would have carved out exceptions to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for various types of project, threatening to render CEQA meaningless.  Fortunately, due to significant push-back from the environmental community, only one CEQA measure, SB 292, was signed by the Governor. This bill promises expedited judicial review for any CEQA challenges to a proposed football stadium construction project in downtown Los Angeles. 

Central Valley Rural Drinking Water. Clean Water Fund continued organizing communities in the San Joaquin Valley facing contaminated tap water to help residents find solutions to their dirty drinking water. We published a report that shows residents of California communities without safe drinking water pay more than 3 times the EPA affordability limit for drinking water. Clean Water Fund also conducted a survey in the town of Thornton showing residents, whose tap water is contaminated by manganese, that shows they spend 60% more on water than EPA recommends.

Public Health Goal for Hexavalent Chromium: Thanks in large part to Clean Water Fund’s advocacy, California established the first in the nation Public Health Goal (PHG) for Chromium 6 at 0.02 ppb. A PHG is the safe level in drinking water. Now the Department of Public Health will set an enforceable drinking water standard. We will continue to pressure the Department to use the PHG level as the final drinking water standard.

Trash and Marine Debris: A Clean Water Fund study revealed that 67% of the trash on Bay Area streets comes from food and beverage packaging. We are using this information to promote state and local policies and business actions to crack down on the plague of single use disposable food and beverage packaging. Clean Water Action helped pass local ordinances to ban foam foodware in several cities and supported local bag bans. 54 jurisdictions have now banned polystyrene take out food packaging and 14 have banned disposable bags in CA. We also helped convince Starbucks to commit to selling 25% of its beverages in re-usable cups by 2015.

Safer Chemicals and Products: Clean Water Fund helped block proposed, shockingly weak, regulations for the California Green Chemistry Initiative. A new draft, released in November, reflects several Clean Water Fund recommendations to ensure consumer products sold in California will be less toxic. We continue the fight for safer products and greater transparency.

Happy Holidays and Wishing you Clean Water in 2012!