AB 1577: California Safe Drinking Water Act: Sativa-Los Angeles County Water District.

Existing law, the California Safe Drinking Water Act, provides for the operation of public water systems and imposes on the State Water Resources Control Board various responsibilities and duties. The act authorizes the state board to order consolidation with a receiving water system where a public water system or a state small water system, serving a disadvantaged community, consistently fails to provide an adequate supply of safe drinking water. The act authorizes the state board, for the purpose of providing affordable, safe drinking water to disadvantaged communities and preventing fraud, waste, and abuse, to contract with an administrator to provide administrative and managerial services to a designated public water system and to order the designated public water system to accept those administrative and managerial services, including full management and control, if sufficient funding is available and if the state board finds that consolidation with another system or extension of service from another system is either not appropriate or not technically and economically feasible.

This bill would require the state board to order the Sativa-Los Angeles County Water District to accept administrative and managerial services, including full management and control, from an administrator selected by the state board. The bill would require the districts board of directors, upon the appointment of an administrator, to surrender all control to the appointed administrator and would provide that the district shall thereafter cease to exist. The bill would authorize, if the Local Agency Formation Commission for the County of Los Angeles approves a dissolution of the district, a successor agency designated in the dissolution, in consultation with the Local Agency Formation Commission for the County of Los Angeles, to solicit proposals, evaluate submittals, and select any public water system to be the receiving water system and provide retail water service to existing and future ratepayers within the former territory of the district, as provided. The bill would limit the liability of specified entities involved in the dissolution of the Sativa-Los Angeles County Water District and make related changes.

This bill would make legislative findings and declarations as to the necessity of a special statute for the Sativa-Los Angeles County Water District.

This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.