Under existing law, the State Water Resources Control Board and the 9 California regional water quality control boards regulate water quality and prescribe waste discharge requirements in accordance with the federal national pollutant discharge elimination system permit program established by the federal Clean Water Act and the Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act.

This bill would require the board to, on or before August 1, 2025, establish regulations governing annual reporting by compliance entities, as defined, regarding waste discharges, as provided. The bill would require compliance entities to submit a report to the board by June 1, 2026, and annually thereafter on waste discharges and their locations, as provided. The bill would require the board to quantify the cost of mitigating contamination, if any, caused by those reported waste discharges and would require the board to notify the compliance entities of the cost of mitigating their contamination. The bill would authorize the compliance entity to elect to mitigate the contamination caused by the entity’s reported waste discharges, or to have the board impose a surcharge for the cost of mitigating the compliance entity’s contamination. The bill would create the California Water Quality and Public Health Impact Fund for receipt of revenue from the surcharge. The bill would require, within 3 months of reporting to the board waste discharges that affect the quality of the water of the state within any region, any nonexempt compliance entity to prominently label any product sold in California whose production resulted in waste discharge contaminating California’s water quality with a warning label, as specified. The bill would authorize the board to adopt regulations to seek administrative penalties for nonfiling, late filing, or other failures to meet the requirements of these provisions, and would require these penalties to be deposited into the California Water Quality and Public Health Impact Fund, which the bill would create. The bill would require the moneys in the fund to be used exclusively to mitigate the impacts of the contamination on waters of the state caused by the reported waste discharges. The bill would authorize the board to charge compliance entities a reasonable fee necessary to cover the board’s reasonable costs of administering and implementing these provisions and to impose noncompliance penalties, not to exceed $1,000,000. The bill would exempt from these provisions certain discharge requirements prescribed by the state board or a regional board and permits issued by a state in accordance with a program approved by the United States Environmental Protection Agency pursuant to the federal Clean Water Act.