AB 1642: Wildfires: contamination standards.

Existing law establishes the Office of the State Fire Marshal in the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and establishes the Deputy Director of Community Wildfire Preparedness and Mitigation within the office. Existing law makes the deputy director responsible for fire preparedness and mitigation missions of the department, as provided. The Department of Toxic Substances Control regulates the handling and management of hazardous waste and hazardous materials.

This bill would establish a nonrebuttable presumption that a home, school, workplace, or other structure is safe for human occupancy after a wildfire only if the levels level of lead and TEM-identified asbestos on an indoor surface meet meets specified conditions, as provided. The bill would require the Department of Toxic Substances Control to adopt, no later than July 1, 2027, emergency regulations specifying the science-informed, health-based standards for investigation, environmental testing, and clearance, to guide the removal of lead and asbestos inside and outside of homes, schools, workplaces, and other structures in residential areas after a wildfire, as provided. The bill would also require the department, in consultation with the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, to adopt regulations by July 1, 2028, specifying science-informed, health-based standards for hazardous chemicals following a wildfire, and would require those standards to be established at chemical levels to ensure safe reoccupancy and prevent new reduce cancer cases and noncancer health risks attributable to such fires, as provided. The bill would define terms for purposes of these provisions, including downward ash zone and would require the department to determine the downwind ash zone for each WUI fire using methodologies and data sources from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as provided.