Senate Standing Committee on Environmental Quality

The joint oversight hearing of the Senate Environmental Quality and Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee will now come to order. Good morning everybody. I would like to welcome you to this Joint Hearing. As was just stated, it's the Senate Environmental Quality Committee and the Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee.

I would like to thank Assemblymember Connolly and members of our committees who are probably on their way for gathering for this important meeting today. This oversight hearing will provide updates on the progress with the policy and fiscal reforms made to the Department of Toxic Substances Control, which is DTSC in 2021.

We will also hear from representatives of various organizations that have been deeply involved with the Department's programming and efforts. DTSD has a critically important mission that is to protect public health and the environment from toxic substances.

The Legislature began looking more closely at DTSC a decade ago in response to concerns that were raised about transparency, accountability and fiscal issues at the Department. In response to these concerns and following years of legislative hearings and various policy changes, SB 158 was passed in 2021 to implement reform measures.

SB 158 enacted several policy changes and created the Board of Environmental safety to improve DTSC's transparency, accountability and fiscal stability. The state has made significant investments into these reforms to set DTSC up for success, and the Legislature is eager to ensure that we protect our progress in this important mission.

It has been four years since this reform measure passed, and this is the third annual oversight hearing. I'm looking forward hearing about the Department's continued progress in implementing many of the reform measures as well as any challenges that need our attention.

DTSC has developed the first hazardous waste management plan since enacting SB158, which serves as a roadmap for the Department's programming. I'm looking forward to hearing about the details of this plan and the direction the Department intends to take.

SB158 also restructured the fee system for hazardous waste generators and filters facilities, so we will hear about whether those changes have contributed to fiscal stability. We will also address how the Department has faced its challenges with permitting hazardous waste facilities.

It will be important for us to understand the measures being taken to ensure these hazardous waste facilities are operating safely and that the Department is taking action to be proactive in protecting communities. We're also looking forward to hearing updates on the Safer Consumer Products Program, especially with the most recent investments in the program.

I know we have a lot of topics to cover today, so I won't take up too much time with my intro here. There will be three panels which will be followed by public comment period at the end.

So on our first panel we will hear testimonies from the recently somewhat newly appointed Director of DTSC, Katie Butler, and also the Chair of the Board of Environmental Safety, Andrew Rake Straw. And then we will have two panels that follow that.

So the second panel we will have Dawn Krupke from McHugh Krupke and Padrone on behalf of the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance, and Angela Johnson Mazatras Senior Attorney representing Earth Justice.

And our final panel we will welcome Yvonne Castellanos, the Toxics Coordinator at the Physicians for Social Responsibility, Los Angeles, and Avi Karr, the Senior Director for Toxics at the National Resources Defense Council and Nicole Quijones from Madden Quinones Advocacy on behalf of the Household and Commercial Products Association. And then as I said, we will have public comment.

So I want to thank you all again for being here today to provide testimony on this important topic. And I would like to hand it over to my colleague, Assemblymember Connolly, who is Chair of the Assembly Environmental, Toxic and Safety and Toxic Materials Committee for any opening remarks that he would like to provide.

Thank you Senator, just a few and great to see everyone this morning. Wonderful to be able to have this hearing today.

It has been a pleasure to be a first year chair of ESTM and would really like folks to know that when it comes to the environmental policies that we are discussing that we are overseeing, I am most concerned about how people are protected, especially those people in communities who are overburdened with pollution.

It's been a few years, as the Chair noted, since the Legislature passed SB158 and ideally we are well underway with implementing the policies and reforms within SB158. If we have not fully implemented parts of the measure, I'll be asking how we can fully realize the those reforms for the Board Chair of DTSC.

We realize you are relatively new to the Board. I will be very interested to hear your perspective on DTSC, how things are going. Additionally, some of the key issues facing the Board are the implementation of the Hazardous Waste Management Plan and looking at hazardous waste fees, as was mentioned.

Lastly, I just want to mention that there are a lot of policies under DTSC's authority. We likely will not be able to cover all of them today. So certainly in the future I would also be interested in potential briefings on specific issues that we're not able to cover today.

So before we start again, I join in thanking all the witnesses in advance and with that looking forward to the discussion

Okay, thank you. So now we will invite up our two panelists. Thank you. And you may begin when ready.

Okay. Can you hear me all right? Good morning. Thank you, Chair Blakespear, Chair Connolly, I really appreciate this opportunity to share our progress in a post reform DTSC era. Yes, I bring my own experiences, my public health background to the table to lead this organization.

But more importantly, I rely on the collective wisdom of everyone in this room, some who have traveled across the state to be here today to share their experiences and people who are watching online and our partners who aren't able to watch today because we are facing some of the most serious environmental challenges in history.

And it's only together, working collaboratively that we'll be able to move forward, leave this place better than we found it for future generations. So that's my overarching philosophy about, you know, how I lead the organization. With that said, since I've started serving as Director just nine months ago, I've brought three pillars to guide our Department.

First, enforcement strength, strengthening our enforcement culture at the Department. Two, improving our community engagement. And three, working collaboratively not just across the silos within our own Department, but across silos with our regulatory partners, our other external stakeholders.

And I'd like to highlight some of the accomplishments within these three pillars over the past year because these pillars have really helped us move forward past reform that was only four years ago to become a more transparent, accountable and proactive Department.

So we found that consistent, timely and equitable enforcement is integral to implementing our statutory mandates and protecting our communities that we serve first and foremost. Our goal with enforcement is always to bring a regulated entity into compliance. And for the most part, regulatory entities are willing to comply with the law.

Sometimes they need more information on how to do that. And we've been focusing on consistent training for enforcement staff to provide information to regulated entities to improve compliance through those inspections in the field.

We also are unique in the Cal EPA family, in which we have the only sworn peace officers, and we have criminal investigation tools as well. And we Reserve those for the most egregious of environmental crimes. And we won't hesitate to use that authority when necessary.

And there are some examples of that in just the past year where we've collaborated more closely with local district attorneys. Particularly the Los Angeles District Attorney has been a leader in this space.

We assisted the LADA with an investigation of Atlas Medals, and our work led to the shutdown of Atlas Metals, located immediately next to a high school. In recent years, the facility repeatedly received violations the community was very outspoken about the fear their kids had going to school every day right next to this facility.

The facility had explosions of gas cylinders and posing harm from the metals being recycled there to the nearby high school. So our criminal investigation team worked closely with the LADA and ultimately ATLAS was charged with five felony counts of hazardous waste disposal.

And now the facility is working to comply with our department's cleanup orders so that the site can be revitalized, reused, for hopefully a community led purpose. We've also taken our enforcement seriously when it comes to Chiquita Canyon Landfill and recently took enforcement action to address the ongoing elevated temperature chemical reaction that's occurring at that landfill.

It's impacting the nearby communities. The communities are experiencing health symptoms and odors. And in April this year we issued an imminent and substantial endangerment order and a summary of violations to require several corrective actions, including laying a geomembrane layer over the landfill to control the gases and odors.

If the landfill doesn't take prompt corrective measures, it will face penalties up to $70,000 per day. Also demonstrating our commitment to enforcement and transparency, last year we unveiled online an interactive map that shows where our inspections are being conducted across the state.

In California, we heard feedback about envirostore, our online database, about this information being hard to access, very cumbersome.

And while we have challenges fixing envirostore itself, we decided we would launch this so that people had easy to use readily available information about where DTSC is conducting its activities and then they can easily link to the summaries of those inspections violations and be more aware of what's happening in their neighborhood.

So you will see us doing more communication about our enforcement activities. It's important for the regulated entities so they understand the laws to comply with, and then also for the communities who are located near these facilities so they understand what's going on in their neighborhood.

And empowering communities with information on how to report environmental problems to us as well. Second, strengthening community engagement and collaboration. This is a huge priority for us this year, especially as ICE raids and military presence in communities are threatening the communities we serve and their health, well being and economic stability.

And so we take our community engagement extremely seriously, probably now more than ever to do it in a thoughtful way. As a government entity doing public outreach in communities that are overburdened with pollution, we have to work closely with community leaders. We have to be sensitive to access to meeting spaces and information.

And our teams are doing a great job of taking all of that into account. An example of DTSC doing community engagement differently than the past is. Tonight we'll be holding a second open house in Button Willow where one of our hazardous waste landfill facilities is located. And we're bringing environmental regulators from across the state to one space.

So it's a one stop shop for the community to get information on environmental problems they may be experiencing.

So while DTSC is focused on the permit renewal process for Button Willow Landfill, we're using this opportunity to engage with the community about environmental problems they may be having and bringing information solutions, talking through their problems with them in real time and in Spanish.

Since it's largely a Spanish speaking community, we've made strides in other areas, setting up our own Environmental Justice Advisory Council that was a part of the reform mandate. This council was launched and held their first meeting this year, which was a big milestone for us.

We've held over a dozen workshops and four public hearings with the board's partnership and leadership on the public hearings for the Hazardous Waste Management plan for the Exide cleanup project, one of DTSC's legacy cleanups. We develop new approaches to conduct outreach and collect feedback. We have an Exide Cleanup Feedback management system.

So this is an online port portal that makes it a lot easier for the public to submit their comments, ask their questions, track our responses and feedback. Not quite real time, but close to it. And that's a model now we're looking to take to other projects where we see a lot of public engagement.

And so we still have more work to do to take these examples and institutionalize them more across the Department. But we are on our way to do that. A tool to do that going forward.

Looking ahead this year, one of my Director priorities is to overhaul our Public Participation Manual, which when it was first created was one of the first of its kind and was revolutionary. And so we want to dust it off. We want to make sure that our public participation practices are modernized, reflecting the best standards today.

So we'll be working on that over the course of the next year and involving stakeholder input and comment to that process. As far as collaboration goes, we have been participating in dozens of Environmental justice task force meetings across the state.

This is where local entities and local organizations bring issues to our investigators, our enforcement teams and you know, we follow up on complaints and investigations, working together closely with our agency partners at CARB, at the Water Board, sometimes DPR and others.

It's really the cross coordination on our regulatory responses that often makes us most successful when we're tackling some of the hardest of environmental problems. So that collaboration is key. Earlier this year, as you all know, the Eaton and Palisades fires devastated the residents of Los Angeles.

And so we were all hands on deck with the hazardous waste removal from the properties. In a record time of 30 days, working closely with US EPA, we were integrated into the US EPA response teams working together to remove all the hazardous waste from the properties.

Now, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has close to finished the phase two operations and we continue to provide technical assistance. Our toxicology experts are responding in real time to questions from consultants, the county on rebuild process and helping residents have a clear path to move forward with their lives.

So I'd like to pivot from those three pillars the overarching sort of strategic goals of our Department. Now to reform specifics and four major areas I want to highlight that reflect how the Department has been implementing the reform mandates. First, fees along with governance reform offered fee reform.

And so I'm happy to share that DTSC is now a fiscally stable agency. This is a tremendous achievement from reform efforts. Reform established a sustainable fee structure to support our core programs and address these historical fiscal challenges.

However, since the enactment four years ago, we did initially experience challenges and so we were bringing in less fees than we had anticipated. And so I'm grateful to our staff, our budget office legislators for their support in helping us address the shortfall.

We quickly moved to partner with the Legislature, make necessary statutory changes around particularly exemptions and penalties for late or non payment. And then we promulgated regulations to implement these statutory changes and these regulations went into effect earlier this year.

So like with any new fee system, sort of the dust needs to settle, you know, see how the fees are coming in, what aspects of that system need to be tweaked. And that's exactly what we did with these recent statutory changes and the regulations that we set forth earlier this year.

So those were successful and like I mentioned, now we are fiscally stable with those changes. Second, the hazardous waste management plan, as you mentioned, Senator Blakespear, is a plan that requires our Department to think about the future of hazardous waste management in our state and what strategies recommendations do we have for particularly waste reduction and waste diversion.

And that is our number one focus with this plan. How can we as a Department foster more sustainable management practices and invest in research and innovation and facilitate that research and innovation across the state.

So it's not just a guide for our department's activities, but it's a guide for statewide activities, local activities alike, and to facilitate our partnerships. Earlier this year in March, we released and we met the statutory deadline for the release of the first draft of the plan and submitted it to the board.

The board has held the four public hearings and we heard extensive public comment. We heard loud and clear from the public and from the board, particularly one aspect of the plan we had set forth where we proposed to divert non rcra metal contaminated soil to municipal landfills, that we were asked to take that out. So we did.

So we've been revising the plan according to the public comment and the board input that we've been receiving. Our staff and the board staff staff have been working intensely together over the last couple months to produce a revised plan that we'll be releasing later this year.

So our goal is to get a final plan codified, approved by the board by the end of the year. And I'm confident that the recommendations in the plan will set us on the right path to think more proactively about waste reduction, waste aversion.

We still do have some data gaps that make this challenging for us to set specific goals. So we are in this three year cycle of updating the plan every three years.

And as we get more modernized data systems, better information on different waste streams, then we will be moving forward to refining the plan in future years as well. Third, I want to highlight our Equitable Community Revitalization Grant program.

This is an extremely popular grant program that funds environmental cleanups and so specifically for properties that are being revitalized by local municipality nonprofit organization. And we allocated over $129 million through 90 grants to support cleanup of contaminated sites for new uses. The uses include affordable housing, commercial and retail spaces, parks and community gardens.

So more than half of these projects funded by the grant program are in environmental justice communities. And they've made meaningful improvements to areas that have been disproportionately burdened in the past. One example is the Ms. Margaret Gordon Westport Affordable Housing Project. And this provides 58 affordable housing units in West Oakland, funded in part through this grant program.

Another example is the revitalization of the West Anaheim corridor through the City of Anaheim's Rebuild Beach Initiative. And they recently hosted a groundbreaking construction of nearly 50 extremely low income housing units. So through this work in affordable housing development, we've recognized that because of silos that naturally exist, piecemealed approach and funding can create delays.

And so we're taking action to address this by coordinating across state departments, such as with the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee and the California Department of Housing and Community Development. So we align our funding timelines and then ultimately that makes for more efficient project timelines.

We're also doing outreach to local municipalities about how to work the process of environmental cleanup to support more affordable housing development and other community reuse projects, supportive housing, parks, et cetera.

Fourth, the backlog of permits, I know is always a topic when you think about DTSC reform and prior to reform, prior to me coming to the Department, frankly, I was aghast at how many permits were expired 5 years, 10 years, 20 years old.

And since coming to DTSC, I've learned that the continued permit or expired permit doesn't preclude us from taking enforcement action if the hazardous waste law is violated, but it does limit our ability to regulate facilities because the permit comes with requirements and conditions that have to be met for operation.

And so it's simply not good government to let these permits continue and expire for so long. So I'm happy to report that with the draft permit proposal for the Button Willow Clean Harbors landfill that we just issued last month, that cleared the deck of the longest standing continued permits at the Department.

And that's a huge achievement for our staff. It's a big win for the communities because now there's stricter standards in the permits that facilities have to meet. And it's tied to modernizing our hazardous waste system across the state as well. We can't modernize our hazardous waste facilities if we let these permits languish.

So we're committed to staying on top of these permits, not letting them lapse. And reform gave us statutory changes that help because now permittees have an earlier deadline to submit their application a year ahead of it expiring. So. So that gives us a runway now to review.

It's a very time intensive process to review permits and go through the health risk assessment, the engineering controls to ensure that if we decide to renew a permit, because we may not if we don't see enough protections for the communities that are nearby.

Beyond our reform mandates, I do want to acknowledge as well a commitment that we made during last year's oversight hearing with regards to Safer Consumer Products Program. We made some commitments regarding priority products making progress with phasing out harmful consumer products. And we are still working towards meeting those commitments.

Safer Consumer Products Program is carefully designed to phase out or prohibit if necessary chemicals in products that are harmful to consumers. And it is a scientifically rigorous process that will prevent avoidable substitutions which could happen if that scientific research isn't conducted to fully vet those regrettable substitutions.

And it's often prime for things where there's not a readily available alternative. And so that research that innovation is needed by the SEP program.

And what we've also learned is that priority product listings, while they are a huge critical asset to the program, it's not the only way and it's definitely not the quickest way that our program has had an impact on phasing out chemicals. Oftentimes, early in the SEP process, market signals are sent to shift away from harmful chemicals.

And we've seen this happening with a shift away from chemicals and vinyl flooring and pfas in carpets and rugs, as well as pfas in textile and other leather treatments.

So using this SCP regulatory framework to prevent regrettable substitutions, SEP will continue to lead the way and spent much of last year setting a strong foundation to set us up for success.

We noticed four rulemaking packages to advance the program and its improvement to program efficiencies with amendments to the SCP framework under the new Senate Bill 502 authorities. And we clarified compliance pathways for importers of regulated products. We also added microplastics to the candidate chemical list.

And this sends a signal to industry that microplastics that are avoidable in products should be eliminated. This is a groundbreaking move that will allow SCP in the future to regulate products that contain or generate microplastics as necessary. This again is up front work that is needed to make certain that future priority product listings are successful.

So, in closing, with our commitment to timely, consistent enfor cement, to robust community engagement, to collaborative approaches, our department is positioned to enter a new era in which it leads the nation in protecting public health through environmental policy and regulations.

Our staff are relentlessly dedicated and together as a team, with the collective wisdom from our partners, the lived experiences from the communities we serve, we are committed to our mission to protect communities from environmental harm. We will continue to innovate ways to promote waste reduction and diversion, to advance safer consumer products, to remediate environmentally toxic sites.

And again, thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your support throughout this culture shift from reform. I welcome any questions or comments concerns you may have after Chair, Rakestraw makes his comments.

Thank you very much and good morning. Thank you, Chair Blakespear, Chair Connolly and Members for this opportunity to provide an update on DTSC reform and the work that Board of Environmental Safety. My name is Andrew Rakestraw and I have the honor of serving as Board Chair.

I'd like to acknowledge my fellow Board Member, Vice Chair Alexis Strauss Hacker and Board staff in the audience, including our Executive Officer Swati Sharma. I'll start by saying that I'm committed to addressing the disproportionate, toxic burden faced by certain communities in California.

I've devoted my career to building consensus on seemingly intractable issues that burden the most vulnerable in our society. I'm also deeply cognizant of the long history that led to SB 158 and that I'm building on over three years of work led by the previous Chair, Jeannie Rizzo.

I owe a debt to her, my fellow board Members, and BES staff for their work today. I'll use my remarks here to speak about the following first, the Board's mandates and responsibilities. Second, the board's role promoting DTSC's transparency, fiscal stability and accountability, including in relation to the Hazardous Waste Management Plan and performance metrics.

Third, I'll speak to DTSE's performance, including where it is succeeding and where it needs improvement. And finally, I'll end with a brief preview of the Board's work in this current fiscal year.

So, turning to the relative roles of DTSC and the board, SB158 created the board of Environmental Safety as a board with a focused oversight role of dtsc. Rather than serving as a full governing body. As a fiscal steward, the Board sets fee rates to ensure financial stability for the Department while remaining responsive to fee payers.

As a policymaker, the Board plays a role in establishing DTSC's strategic direction and holding it accountable to that direction.

As a forum for transparency, the Board helps the Department integrate the views and voices of stakeholders and the public into DTSE's decisions and as an appellate body, the Board hears and decides appeals of hazardous waste permit facility permit decisions.

So, turning to the board's mandate to ensure DTSC's transparency, fiscal stability and accountability, one of the board's primary roles is to provide the public and stakeholders with both transparency into DTSC's work and the corresponding opportunity to influence decision making through public participation in a public setting.

The primary forum for this is our regular public Board meetings, which also enable Board Members to ask meaningful questions of DTSE.

Since the last oversight hearing in August 2024, the board convened 17 public meetings in total, consisting of 14 meetings and three workshops, all in a hybrid format in cities throughout California, Board meetings feature Director Butler and other DTSC leadership.

Our meetings regularly draw over 100 participants via Zoom and in person attendance, and all documents and material are Ada compliant and available online to the public in advance of our meetings. And we provide Spanish language interpretation for all of our meetings as well.

And through our ombuds position, we ensure that public concerns or questions receive a substantive response from dtsc. Our Board staff bring deep knowledge of DTSC hazardous waste site cleanup and safer chemicals as well as Board operations, but much of the Board's work happens between public meetings through our Board subcommittees and Board Members.

Individual Interactions Board Members are very active, frequently attending conferences, Symposia, and community meetings with stakeholders and frontline community Members and touring facilities and cleanup sites across California.

For example, Board Members have met with Physicians for Social Responsibility, Los Angeles Earth Justice, Clean Air Coalition, UNIDOS Network, the California Council for Economic, Environmental Balance, National Diversity Coalition, and the Hazardous Waste Coalition, among others.

The Board has also toured many facilities such as Ecobat, FiberTech and the Button, Willow and Kettleman hazardous waste landfills, and toured cleanup sites such as Exide and the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. I'll now turn to the board's work to promote DTSC's fiscal stability, including its work on fees and fee structure.

The Board has two tracks on fees in the near term, the Board sets the annual fee rate for each fiscal year while expenditures are determined in the Budget Act. The Board sets fee rates that ensure adequate funding for the Department's programs, with a reasonable Reserve to account for economic uncertainty that cannot exceed 10% of annual expenditures.

The Board will vote at its meeting next week on the fee rates for fiscal year 2025 and 2026 for the environmental and facility fees. The Board must decrease fees since without a reduction the two accounts would be well over the 10% statutory maximum Reserve for the generation and handling fee.

The Board is considering either leaving the rate unchanged or a modest increase in the mid to long term. The Board is mandated to conduct an analysis of the fee structure and present recommendations that accomplish specific goals.

The BES Fee Subcommitee is in the early stages of its work and our objective is to recommend a funding model that sustains DTSC's operations while promoting source reduction and innovation towards more sustainable solutions. We recognize that developing a new funding model will require thoughtful analysis and will be soliciting public input more generally on fees.

DTSC is in better standing as compared to pre reform. However, the Hazardous Waste Control Account, which includes revenue from the generation and handling fee, remains in a structural deficit.

The baseline assumptions that were used to set the initial rate of the generation and handling fee in SB158 proved to be far too low, resulting in a shortfall that required loans to keep the account solvent.

We remain concerned that the generation and handling fee may need to be increased in the future to ensure that revenues and expenditures remain balanced. Of relevance here, we've also heard concerns about the prospect of any further exemptions from fees as the existing fee payer base and retains the burden for paying for DTSE's activities.

So I'll now speak to the board's work promoting DTSE's accountability. In particular, I'll focus on the Hazardous Waste Management Plan and performance metrics. SB158 gives the board three responsibilities regarding the Hazardous Waste Management Plan. First, hold at least three public hearings throughout the state to receive comments.

Second, in response to the public comments, work alongside DTSC to revise the draft plan plan and finally approve the plan at a public Board meeting. This year, the Board held four public hearings throughout the state in Fresno, Berkeley, Los Angeles and Sacramento.

Our Board's technical staff, as Director Butler mentioned, is currently collaborating with DTSC to integrate Board comments and consider stakeholder comments. A revised draft will be released in September leading up to the Board's final vote anticipated in November.

The Board is working with DTSC to ensure the Plan is comprehensive, actionable, forward looking, equitable and responsive to both emerging waste challenges and long standing environmental concerns. Board Members and the public have provided a large number of comments on the draft plan, but I'll highlight a few prominent issues here.

First, concern from many stakeholders about the prospect of disposing hazardous soil and certain municipal landfills. As Director Butler mentioned. In response to public concern, the Board voted to remove the relevant portion of the plan. Second, Board Members and the public have raised the importance of the plan, including quantitative waste reduction goals for specific waste streams.

Third, several Board Members have requested specific next steps for how DTSC will implement the plan in the current and future fiscal years. This will help hold DTSC accountable for the contents of the plan. Fourth, several Board Members have asked for a greater emphasis on environmental justice concerns.

And finally, Board Members have asked for the plan to be simpler, better organized with prioritized goals and provide the necessary data to clearly support the recommendations. Moving on to Performance Metrics the Board is working program by program to develop performance metrics for dtsc.

Our approach involves assessing key program functions while engaging with stakeholders to ensure that that our proposed metrics drive the right kinds of actions and help the Board, stakeholders and community Members understand program effectiveness. For the Hazardous Waste Management Program, the Board is nearing completion of its initial metrics.

We have worked closely with DTSE to create metrics that provide meaningful insights for stakeholders, effectively measure program outcomes, and are relevant to the regulatory requirements. The Board has just begun work on performance metrics for the Safer Consumer Products Program, including engaging with DTSC leadership and the Green Ribbon Science Panel.

Our effort will focus on how to guide, measure, and communicate the program's work and provide a benchmark to hold the program accountable externally. Pivoting to the newly formed Environmental Justice Advisory Council, I'll note that this body can complement the board's role promoting DTSE's transparency and accountability by providing a much needed on the ground community perspective.

Our Board's EJECT Subcommitee and staff have already met with the EJAC Co Chairs to explore specific areas of partnership that can promote more equitable outcomes for communities. I now turn to DTSC's performance. The board is currently in the middle of its performance evaluation of dtsc, comparing the Department's prior performance against Director Butler's fiscal year 2425 priorities.

The board expects to publicly release a draft evaluation in November. I'll briefly highlight here a few areas where DTSC needs to improve and also where it is succeeding.

Based on my view as Chair and including what I've heard from other Board Members and the public specifically, the Board has observed a number of opportunities for growth where DTSC should improve and enhance its performance. First, DTSC has faced challenges in meeting schedules for certain deliverables, such as hazardous waste facility permit decisions and implementation of SB6A.

DTSC, on the other hand, has made improvements in streamlining the permitting process and is nearly caught up in overdue permits, as Director Butler mentioned. Second, the launch of the Environmental Justice Advisory Council was slower than anticipated, leaving just one year of its operations funded.

DTSC should ensure that the EJAC has provided sufficient training and support to accomplish its mission and now that the EJAC is established, we look forward to EJAC executing on their work plan and facilitating meaningful conversations with impacted communities.

Third, as mentioned by this Joint Committee in past hearings and today, the Safer Consumer Products Program is undertaking a great deal of valuable and rigorous scientific work and has laid a strong foundation for safer chemical use in California. However, the overall pace of the program has not aligned with stakeholder expectations or demand.

Fourth, stakeholders want more accessible and user friendly data on specific facilities, enforcement actions and cleanup sites. They want to easily understand what is happening in their neighborhoods and for data to be up to date. DTSC has made some progress in this effort, for example through its interactive inspection map as Director Butler mentioned.

Fifth, while DTSC has made progress with its communication efforts, stakeholders still want to be more engaged and see their input, excuse me, considered and reflected in the final products. Sixth, the Department is without a current strategic plan as the prior strategic plan expired in 2024.

DTSC is currently developing a strategic plan and a new forward looking plan will be an important tool for guiding DTSC's future work and sharing its work and success with the public. Finally, many of these areas point to a cautious approach within the Department.

While this can lead to more careful and thoughtful decisions, it can also lead to delayed decisions and stifled innovation. I believe there's an opportunity for DTSC to take more proactive and bold actions, including in relation to the Hazardous Waste Management Plan. On the other hand, DTSC is succeeding in the following areas.

First, DTSC Senior Leadership Team is complete with a full suite of well qualified Deputy directors. I've heard both advocates and the regulated community express their strong trust in Director Butler and her team.

Second, on the Los Angeles fires, DTSC in coordination with US EPA, was swift in their emergency responsiveness and completed phase one of this unprecedented cleanup by the end of February 2025. Third, as Director Butler mentioned, DTSC issued a regulation that strengthened the collection rate and compliance for the generation and handling fee, reducing its overall deficit.

Fourth, DTSC has issued final and draft hazardous waste facility permit decisions for several complex and controversial facilities, nearly completing the backlog of long expired permits. Fifth, DTSC met their cleanup goal of 5,940 residential properties surrounding the former oxide facility.

And finally, Director Butler mentioned, DTSC's enforcement efforts have improved largely as a result of DTSC leadership prioritizing this issue. Looking ahead, the Board will focus on the following in the next several months. At the Board's meeting next week, the Board will vote to establish fee rates for the three fees that sustain dtse.

The Board will also consider approving Director Butler's fiscal year 25 and 26 priorities. At its meeting in November, the Board anticipates voting on the Hazardous Waste Management Plan. The Board is also currently in the midst of appeals for the hazardous waste permit renewal for the Fiber Protect facility in Santa Fe Springs.

As DTSC finalizes several other high profile permits, we may receive appeals from those as well. The Board is also currently responding to litigation regarding an earlier permit appealing. And of course, the Board will continue to encourage public comment and engagement in all facets of operations.

I'll end my remarks here and thank you again for the opportunity and I look forward to receiving any questions.

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate both of your testimony and found it very interesting and instructive. I wanted to so I recognize the broad range of things that DTSC is doing and Director Butler, you mentioned them and then Chair Rekstra, you also reemphasize them.

And you know, particularly some of these, the good things that are happening, good staffing, LA fire response, final decisions, backlog is getting cleared.

One of the things I didn't hear you focus on that and maybe it's an acronym that's buried underneath other things you said, but the extended producer responsibility programs, the EPR programs, I think one of the things that's really important to recognize is that we do live in an environment where our regulatory system works really closely with the industries that are regulated.

And so extended producer responsibility is saying that those who make, the companies who make and distribute products are responsible for them on the back end. And and to figure out a way to have both disposal, cleanup or a substitution of different products be driving the decision making that companies are making.

And so there are many different examples of this. And I will just note that there are certain governments, like for example in British Columbia, that are just much more advanced when it comes to extended producer responsibility in areas like solar panel recycling, electric vehicle recycling, the consumer products like household hazardous waste.

And we have had several bills, this is my second year running a Bill on an EPR program on marine flares. And some of my colleagues have also run bills that are similar. Senator Allen has had two important ones, SB501 on household hazardous waste, SB615 electric vehicle batteries.

And what we see is that the fiscal cost, the DTSC puts an enormous amount of cost on a Bill like this and suggesting that the resources and the staff necessary to get something off the ground is like just enormous.

I mean, it is striking to the offices that are running these bills and then also to the advocates who are suggesting that programs could be run in a leaner way.

And, you know, I think you see this across all parts of government and criticisms of us at the State of California particularly, but just that we can't get out of our own way, that we're so burdened by our own process, by our planning on top of planning on top of planning and outreach that's repetitive and just takes years and years to get rulemaking accomplished or some of these things to.

I mean, as was mentioned by the chair, that lead to delay and just basically inaction when we want to see action. And so I feel as if there's room for improvement here. And I wish that you, either of you had talked about extended producer responsibility. It is something that has been more centered in calorie cycle.

But because there are so many toxic materials that need EPR programs, you know, we need to have a partnership where you're either looking to Cal Recycle to help do some of these things that they already are doing, or that you're able to develop that expertise or will essentially to take this on in house.

And I just, you know, I want to ask it as a question, which is, are there ways how can we drive down the costs, you know, by either using existing resources that exist in the state, or why is it so expensive and labor intensive when you analyze it?

Because it can sometimes feel as if, when there's such a high fiscal cost put on it, with a huge number of staff that need to be hired for an EPR program that has literally one producer in it. You know, you wonder, is this an effort to not do this work?

Because there's a desire to just not have this be something that is put onto your plate? And so my question is, how can we make these programs less expensive or less labor intensive to have a more strict, streamlined, straight path to having DTSC be involved in EPR programs that are really crying out for them?

And you can both answer.

Thank you for your leadership with the marine flare issue, which is an important one to prevent the illegal disposal? And, you know, it's an explosive hazardous waste. We do have the mercury thermostat EPR program at dtsc, and it is a relatively small program.

And what we found, and we've discussed this, is the importance of the enforcement component to make EPR successful in the Long run. And that requires more resources for the Department to implement, to do the proper audits and, and that sort of thing.

Perhaps, you know, solutions that we do need to be more creative looking at is partnering with local authorities, you know, the local county coupas, for example, you know, other entities that can partner on that enforcement piece with us.

We also know, and we've been careful in how we approach the resource proposals because we know we're not going to be able to inspect every single collection point, for example, for an EPR program. And so, you know, there's other ways. Like I spoke about, you know, communicating about enforcement activities. There's outreach. Enforcement can look different ways.

And so, you know, we have been thoughtful about how we approach the resources. We are saying we need to implement these. But because we don't have an established EPR program at our Department, in order for us to get it off the ground, it will require more resources.

Okay, do you want to say anything on this topic? Okay. Yeah. I mean, I would encourage a closer partnership with the existing structures at CalRecycle. And I appreciate the focus on enforcement. I do think CalRecycle can. Could do a little more enforcement on some things.

And the enforcement is really important because if you're not enforcing, then nobody takes it seriously. So thinking ahead about that is important. But there's also, you know, it really can collapse under its own weight and not. And fail to launch, essentially. And I do perceive that that's currently what's happening across a range of things.

And I hope, you know, California, as a leader in protecting our environment, means that we need to take all of these toxic and hazardous materials seriously as something that we need to be addressing. You know, so I'll turn it over to my colleagues here. Chair Connolly, do you have any questions?

I do, and thank you as well for the testimony. I think you covered a lot of ground, wanted to drill down on a few of the topics. And Director, maybe starting with you, you referenced the important work going on in cleaning up the wildfire sites in Los Angeles.

Specifically, you stated phase two of the cleanup is almost complete. What remains from your understanding to complete.

So I understand it's substantively complete for the residential. There's still some commercial properties that need to be cleared. And now, for the most part, survivors are engaged in assessing their property condition, preparing it for rebuild. And the county recently released a blueprint to help residents step by step, how to do that.

It references our existing state standards for soil cleanup, for example, and that can be used as a guide for. For residents who are rebuilding so people are very much entrenched in the rebuilding process right now.

Yeah. So in terms of your understanding then, are these home sites now safe of toxic materials and ready to rebuild?

Yeah, so the county has done, and also universities, nonprofits have done extensive testing and offering free soil testing programs for residents. So residents, survivors have been sampling, learning on a case by case basis what their conditions look like. For the most part, those soil conditions are safe for rebuild.

But because of the vast nature, the high winds, the specific dense urban area, there are properties that may find concentrations of lead or arsenic above screening levels. And that's where, you know, the assistance of our Department from a technical perspective and the universities together with the county can assist residents in how to navigate that.

And, you know, we're recommending that survivors, if they do get elevations back, that they hire an environmental professional to make sure that they have their plot fully characterized before rebuild.

Okay. Moving on to hazardous waste fees appreciated. Your note of some changes in the budget regarding the fees. Bottom line, is the revenue coming in now matching the estimated revenue that was anticipated such that. Is the Fund now stable in your view?

Yes, it's stable. So specifically, we were previously bringing in only about 40 million. And with all the changes now, we brought in 67 million this last fiscal year, together with the vacancy reductions. Now we're stable because we reduced our total budget by 18 million, almost $19 million. So that all adds up to us. Yes. Being stable now.

And we're in a good place now where we are even able to repay most of our loan that we had, which is also good news for us. But we do have a structural deficit still. We're chipping away at. But on an annual basis we're looking.

So we're looking good. Great. Final question for you about the Safer Consumer Products Program. Several years ago in SB158, we significantly increased fees to give DTS CNF staff. Specifically, we roughly doubled the size of the staff for the Safer consumer products program, DTC.

DTSC said in budget documents that beginning in 2023, they or you would adopt five priority products per year. I believe that DTSC has only adopted three priority project, with a fourth likely this year when we should be at about 15 products by now. So if you can give us that assessment. What's happening? Is the program broken?

Can it be fixed? Is it time to evaluate whether or not we can keep this program?

Yeah. Thank you for that comment. And as we heard from Chair Rake Straw, we are receiving that feedback that it's not keeping pace with those expectations. So Perhaps I can explain what the program has been up to and where we're headed in more detail.

So these past two years have been focused on ramping up, putting those new resources to good use. The results are already visible. We have now over 40 technical scientific projects underway, which is double the number of projects that were underway in 2022.

So based on these numbers, we are projecting to regulate about 313 consumer products over the next two to three years, which will bring us in line with that total goal of noticing five listings per year. So you know, those additional resources did support the full spectrum of sep. It's not broken.

It's a very well thought out program that prioritizes the product research, rulemaking. They're supporting post rulemaking activities. There are extensive alternative analyses which now with Senate Bill 502, we'll be able to circumvent when they're not needed, which is a good development for all of us.

We provide technical assistance, compliance and enforcement and then just, you know, high level couple effective notes that the program has been able to accomplish. Up to a quarter million pounds of PFAS have been removed annually by regulating PDF PFAS and carpets.

Up to 1.3 million pounds of methylene chloride removed annually through our regulation of methylene chloride and paint. So this sheer volume of removing chemicals from the market has been effective.

I think we need to do a better job communicating these endpoints, these outcomes, especially as we proceed turning those 40 technical reports into the 13 priority product listings over the next several years so that we can get to par with what you're talking about.

Great, appreciate it. And then on permits, I believe the usual length of a permit is 10 years. However, several recent permits have been for five years. Can you tell us the rationale for issuing the permits for five years?

Yeah. So like I mentioned, some of these permits have been exposed for some time. And it's an interesting fact that originally when DTSC first started issuing its permits, when the program first started, many of them were five years or less because it was a first permit. And so in some ways these renewals are like a first permit.

And the two that we have issued for five years, which is less than the 10, has taken into account compliance history. While those two facilities are not in the unacceptable tier of our scoring program, that would trigger a path to denial.

We're looking at the very specific compliance history and we firmly believe that earlier checkpoint of five years is important to hold the facility accountable to the new standards in that permit.

Okay, great. Chair rickstroch, just a couple questions. Given your recent appointment to the board, and welcome aboard. Could you give us your first impressions of dtsc? How are things as they currently stand?

Thanks so much. Yes. I'm four months into the role, approximately, I think. I mean, the overview that I gave during the testimony, I think is my General impressions, which is that the Director here has assembled an excellent team. They've been very responsive to the board.

I've received a large number of briefings, been universally impressed at the caliber of the work. Of course, my role also is getting a broad range of perspectives and meeting with community groups, meeting with environmental organizations, meeting with the regulated community.

So, you know, I'm still in the process of synthesizing all of those, but I would say the overall, you know, first impressions are positive.

Appreciate that. And then to touch on the hazardous waste management plan, appreciate your discussion of that. You mentioned that you feel that the agency should take a more proactive approach. Overall. From our standpoint. Sitting here as part of that, is there anything you see that we in the Legislature can help with in terms of shoring that up?

And also, do you think there are any changes, particularly to the process that you see that could be helpful? And is there any role for us.

I think Director Butler will surely have something to say about that. But, I mean, I would note a good number of the goals and recommendations within the plan will require additional resources. So I would fully anticipate that the.

And I think it's indicated by an icon within the plan, but I would fully anticipate that DTSC will come back with bcps as a result of this. And that's part of the reason why the board is really kind of scrutinizing each one to make sure that it meets the statutory mandate.

And that's also part of the reason why the board has asked for kind of a hierarchy of these goals, because there's an enormous amount in there, and I think getting DTSC focused on kind of where it's going to start will be important.

On one other thing, one other thought comes to mind, which is if the Legislature has views on overall quantitative reduction goals for specific waste streams, you know, that's kind of a fledgling discussion within the plan, but if there are kind of aspirations that the Legislature has there, that would be useful to know, great.

Appreciate it. And finally, you covered the hazardous waste fees and backing up a step. I mean, if you could give us a sense, what is your overall approach to evaluating those fees?

Yeah. So the board's role is to set the fee rates for each of the three fees. And so what that necessarily involves is a really collaborative process with DTSC and DTSC's financial team, where basically they provide us with all the financials of DTSC, the fund condition statements.

We ask an enormous number of probing questions to figure out kind of how it all adds up. And then based on all of that, the board then puts forward a number of different scenarios that. I'm sorry, the board Subcommitee puts forward a number of different scenarios for the board's consideration.

I mean, I would note that the board's role is relatively constrained, particularly because there is a 10% maximum statutory Reserve set by SB158. And so as a result, the board can't kind of go in left field and raise fees dramatically when the fund is otherwise balanced.

And so that kind of narrows the options that the board Subcommitee is able to put before the board for approval.

Do you mind if the Director answers that question too about any legislative actions that could help support or accelerate implementation.

Of the plan or.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So I anticipate many opportunities, actually, to collaborate with the Legislature on this because we're essentially revolutionizing our hazardous waste system, which means our laws, and it dovetails. Back to your comment earlier about, you know, being able to recycle solar panels, also lithium batteries, all of these emerging waste streams from green energy sector.

We have statutory limitations in what we can and cannot do as far as handling those materials. And they're there for a reason, to protect health and safety.

But they're, you know, as a result of the research and innovation from the plan, we may come up with new ways to regulate certain materials that promote more recycling, reuse, waste diversion and waste reduction. So that, you know, changing our laws and regulations is going to be critical to implementing some of these changes.

The reporting, you know, frequency every three years of the hazardous waste management report, we produce every three years, and then we produce a plan every three years. And we have a very small team that is doing all of this work.

And so our ability to actually implement the recommendations is in some way thwarted by that same team having to produce the next report. Right. So we don't want reporting just for reporting sake, but we do, you know, we find it valuable.

So, you know, thinking about that reporting frequency could help us be more efficient in implementing the actual recommendations. Yeah.

Chair o', Connelly, are you finished with your questions? Okay. I'd like to go to our colleagues here. Welcome, Senator Menjivar and Senator Reyes. Senator Menjivar, would you like to go first with some questions?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know we've been having some back and forth conversation on the hazardous waste permitting, so I apologize if some of it is redundant. But first I'd like to know, Director, how we balance, and you know, Chair Connolly mentioned asking the reduction into the five years, and I get that. Right.

We want to hold these facilities more accountable. How do we balance that, knowing that there are more volume and hazardous waste and less facilities to take on that volume with the impacts that these facilities are having in the community? So there's a need for them because of the increased volume.

But the facilities that we have right now have a history, like you mentioned, of these violations and the impacts in these communities. And we have decades of community members appealing to the Department to refuse permits of these facilities. How are you balancing that? Loaded question.

Yeah, no, thank you. And that is the question for our permits. And we review a permit in terms of its engineering controls, in terms of its safeguards that it has, and it's proposing so that emissions from that facility don't go off site and don't impact communities.

And if those safeguards aren't in a permit application, we send a notice of deficiency to the permittee and tell them to fix their permit application so that they're protecting the communities and implementing the appropriate safeguards. So we use a variety of tools to ensure the appropriate safeguards are in place.

Beside engineering evaluations, we have health risk assessments that are now required for certain facilities. And with our current work implementing SB673, that will continue to strengthen the health risk assessment, which is our, you know, more objective toxicology tool to estimate if there's any potential harm through a model to the communities.

And, you know, if that health risk assessment shows an unacceptable risk, then the facility is required to take action to prevent that risk and lower it. And let's see, we use also the information that we receive from the public during the comment periods of the draft permit.

So we issue a draft first so that the public can comment and then that often results, especially in the last couple years, intangible changes to the final permit. So for fibrotech facility in Santa Fe Springs, for example, that's only 5, 500ft away from residents.

And it's very important that the facility is taking the utmost care and implementing all the safeguards possible, especially because it has a history of releases.

So the new permit that we issued would require, and it's currently being appealed right now, but if it goes into effect, it would require community air monitoring, a community health and safety plan, more rigorous engineering controls, on site health and safety training programs for the employees.

And so we've taken the chance with the new, the renewal to implement these new requirements to ensure the safety if.

Dispersions have happened like echo bat, you know, lead came into the residential areas. You just gave another example. And the permits are renewed again, how many incidents need to occur, you know, in the communities to. I forgot the phrase you mentioned that it moves it into the unacceptable tier. Can't remember that.

If facilities have had a history of hazard going into our residential communities, I guess I'm not, I'm not hearing the trigger of when it becomes serious. For me, that one incident is already serious in a community. I don't know what number we're looking for until it becomes a facility that cannot continue operating. And then that's my question.

How do you balance that or could you not make that decision because we don't have enough facilities to take on that hazardous waste. So then by default, these communities will continue to be impacted because we don't have capacity in other facilities.

Yeah. Thank you. So it's not just the specific score or the most recent incident, it's the trend. Right. So for both fibrotech and ecobat, they've had an increasing trend towards higher compliance like they are improving their compliance rates over the last several years.

If they had a trend going the opposite direction, then we most likely would have denied their permit.

Okay, so bad incident. As long as I trend up, I can have another bad incident. And then as long as I trend up again, I will be compliant.

It also depends on the nature of the incident and the specifics. We take all of the very specifics into account. And for ecobat, you mentioned that lead is going off site. And it's more of a historical concern that we have with ecobat.

And so now they have an engineering control that captures the majority of lead, so it doesn't impact the community.

Thank you, Director. Mr. Chair, you mentioned you visit facilities. You talked about performance metrics for the Department. I don't think you went into the details of what those performance metrics were. I'd like to hear a little bit more. And if the backlog, has that been addressed, is that part of the performance metrics for the Department?

Thank you very much, Senator. So for performance metrics, the board has not finalized or adopted performance metrics for any of the programs just yet. We are at the final stages for the hazardous waste management program. And that includes the draft includes considerations such as number of expired permits and the backlog and so on.

So that's, that's certainly a main consideration for the board. As I mentioned, we're also starting just now the safer consumer products program. I think we have a lot, we have learned a lot in this hazardous waste management program process.

And so I think we're aiming towards a much more streamlined process to get performance metrics adopted for all the remaining programs as fast as possible.

Is there a deadline, a timeline for that?

We don't have deadline just yet. I think we had said we're aiming by the beginning of next year for hazardous waste management program to adopt those safer consumer products. I would imagine in the first half of next year as well. And then we'll keep going through the remaining programs.

And when you visit facilities through the capacity of the board, what authority does the board have when at those facilities for any violation? Is there authority that goes, that transfers over? Is there reporting that then happens to the Department when you're on those facilities?

We don't have any specific authority in terms of enforcement or inspections or anything like that. What we are doing when we visit the facilities is we'll be meeting with the, we'll often get a tour with the facilities.

We'll meet with the facility operators, we'll meet with the impacted communities we'll try to get a full picture of the facility and its interactions and its impact on the communities. We'll then bring that back to the Board Meetings. We do have the authority to hold specific hearings on specific permitted sites or cleanup sites.

We've done that a number of times in the past. We haven't done that this year because the focus has been on the hazardous waste management plan.

But I think from my perspective, I'm hoping to use that tool in this next year as much as possible to try to drill down into sites that have specific community concerns, particular cleanup sites as well.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Senator Reyes.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. And thank you both for being here. This is so important on so many levels. And we, over the years, I've been on the Committee and have had the pleasure of talking to the directors and about the work they have done with my colleague who is here.

And we often hear that there is more and more being done. And yet our most vulnerable communities continue, as my colleague asked about, they continue to be the ones who suffer the most from this. And there has to be more that we can do.

In the background paper, it highlights that the feedback to goal one, reduce environmental health impacts by promoting environmental justice initiatives, and I quote, lacks meaningful recommendations to reduce the immediate environmental health impacts that have been raised by communities proximal to permitted facilities. I have first a request, and that request is that.

And maybe just a little odd here, but so important, so important for the community, but to request a commitment to sincerely understanding community concerns and implementing creative solutions that use a state's power and influence to solve problems for underserved communities. We need to serve traditionally underserved communities first.

And there's no question about that, because they are the ones who are suffering the most. They're the ones who get selected for those permitted waste facilities, for those permitted events that in the end harm our communities. I don't want just a pretty picture.

We want to bravely address our areas of growth so that people are safe and healthy. I wanted to begin with that. You're very new. You're fairly new to have that kind of commitment because the state is willing to. The Legislature is willing to help. You heard that from Assemblymember Connolly, from Chair Connally, from Chair Blakespear.

We're ready to help, but there have to be specific requests so that we can then step in, whether it's through legislation, through funding. Funding. You know, the funding requests come in all the time, and in the end they are approved. Who knows?

This year, right but it's extremely important that we have that commitment to protect our most vulnerable communities. And I hope that that is something that we can get from both of you.

Thank you, Senator. I appreciate that. And yes, you have my full commitment to do everything in our power to leverage the full ext of our authority to address community vulnerabilities.

And we're often challenged because our specific authority for a permitted facility, for example, is specific to hazardous waste treatment or disposal, and it doesn't encompass some of the, quote, unquote, public nuisance, although that's not an adequate word for what communities are experiencing, but that's the legal term.

We often lack that authority to address some of these more holistic impacts that communities are experiencing. And that is a significant challenge for us. You know, take for example, the Chiquita landfill situation where residents are suffering serious symptoms. And we are doing everything in our power.

We issued an imminent and substantial endangerment order, multiple orders to the facility, and the residents are still suffering. And so I do appreciate your willingness to look more closely, perhaps at our authorities, perhaps at our tools that we have or don't have to more fully holistically address the lived experience of residents.

I'll just add, I mean, I started my remarks by underlining my commitment, my personal commitment and the board's commitment to addressing the disproportionate, toxic, burden, uncertain communities.

And so that I view is one of the core responsibilities and roles of the board is to make sure that we are going out into communities, we are meeting with them, we are making sure their voices are heard and that DTSC is hearing those voices as well. So you have my commitment as well.

Thank you. And then going back to that goal one, I do ask, can you elaborate on what some of the recommendations have been so far related to Goal one? Does the Legislature need to provide more direction on how to achieve this goal?

And I will comment that it is concerning to me that this goal doesn't have any meaningful recommendations.

So through the public comment and the last hearings, we are going to be reorganizing and revising the plan to reflect more succinctly, most likely three goals instead of 10. So we're going to get very focused on waste diversion, waste reduction, protecting health.

I don't have specifics on what those recommendations will be, but I think you're echoing a lot of the feedback that we received during this public hearing process that our teams are working closely to implement in the final plan. Thank you.

Another question. Well, then I'm going to skip that particular question. I'm going to ask another one specifically about landfills. Significant issue. And it's an issue that is widespread across many areas. It appears that we need a statewide look at the landfills and a solution to preventing leachate.

It's making people debilitatingly ill. Is there something that's being done about that?

Yeah, I mean, this is the first time that I'm aware of that our Department with hazardous waste purview is getting involved in a municipal non hazardous waste landfill because the leachate is showing hazardous waste characteristics. So that alone our involvement in the situation is what we're doing about it.

To insert our enforcement authority where we can when it comes to. To statewide. We are starting to look at other landfills and, you know, having internal conversations, at least in the Cal EPA family about what we may be able to do across the board to prevent other events like this from happening. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Okay, great. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate your testimony. And we're going to move on to panel number two. So our next panel is Perspectives on DTSC Permitting and the Hazardous Waste Management Plan. We have Dawn Kupke and Angela Johnson Mazaros. So you're welcome to join us here and begin when you're ready. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Chair Blakespear, Chair Connolly, Members of the EQ and ESTM Committee. I'm Dawn Koepke with McHugh Koepke Padron. I'm pleased to represent the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance, CCEEB.

As you may recall, CCEEB is an organization that's been around since the 1970s, having been founded in part by former Governor Pat Brown with the goal of bringing together diverse set of stakeholders, public agencies, labor, as well as other environmental as well as business community folks to try to work through complex policy issues to, you know, ideally hit that balance with protecting the environment, public health, as well as our status as a leading economy.

In terms of our work on these issues, CCEEB's been pleased to be very engaged on all things Department of Toxics and certainly with the board since its inception. CCEEB sat at the negotiating table over a number of years with the Legislature, the administration, Department as part of a multi-year effort on reform.

That ultimately culminated in the passage of SB 158 in 2021. Had a number of key things included as part of that that were critically important to our CCEEB members that span a variety of different sectors, public agencies, what have you. So really appreciate the opportunity to join you today on their behalf to share some thoughts.

Not only on some of the key priorities that were included as part of the reform package, you know, but also those that continue to be important to CCEEB as we continue implementation not only with the Department, but with the board and other stakeholders as well.

As it relates to the Board of Environmental Safety, the board was something that CCEEB struggled with candidly over a number of years leading up to the reform.

But given some of the challenges that our members had faced in terms of working with the Department as well as some of the transparency concerns, we ultimately did come around to supporting the establishment of the board. And it's been a pleasure working with the chair, the board members, executive director, and their staff over many years.

As you can appreciate, these issues are very complex and warrant a level of technical and professional expertise to really work through them. And certainly that was important as part of the formation of the board that we ensured that there was expertise in these subject matter areas to avoid a board that would be focused on just, you know, political interests, what have you because of the fact that we need to balance these issues.

CCEEB and its members have appreciated the board's accessibility and openness to hearing from all stakeholders. Staff has been incredibly responsive and helpful in working through issues, hearing from stakeholders on any number of issues that is in the board's purview.

And certainly we continue to look forward to working with the board on ensuring that they're following the intent of SB 158 and its requirements, as well as ensuring that we're balancing the need to maintain important capacity in state to meet the state's hazardous management needs, as well as addressing key issues related to the fiscal health of the Department and permitting conditions.

In terms of the hazardous waste management plan, CCEEB strongly supported the inclusion of that in SB 158. It was actually something that had been required of the Department for some time but not completed.

So we were certainly very supportive of that and advocated as part of that process additionally for the development of that plan to be expedited from where the initial conversations had begun and ensure that the plan and its development would be funded through General Fund dollars. And we'll come back to that point specifically shortly.

Particularly given the important and broad benefit to the entire state. CCEEB has appreciated the time the DTSC team has taken to draft the plan. Especially given the complexities associated with hazardous waste management in California. We believe it represents an important start to laying out initial areas of focus and work to ensure more intentional, comprehensive approach to hazardous waste management in the state.

As an overarching matter, CCEEB urges the Department and the board as well as part of its work on the hazardous waste management plan and work overall to ensure risk is at the front and center and ensure that that drives a good portion of the work in this space. We're really pleased that the director and some of her leadership team have a good depth of of understanding and expertise in this.

We really think their epidemiology backgrounds, what have you, are really important to this work and really providing great value. As it relates to the significant focus on alternative management standards that no doubt you've all heard about. Certainly the board through its public stakeholder process. Importantly, CCEEB supported the concept of alternative management standards in SB 158.

That said, our intent was not that it be confined just to to soils however. It should be noted, as it does relate to soils, that soils are considered hazardous not necessarily just because of a responsible party's impact on soils at a particular site. There are also situations where soils are deemed hazardous because of naturally occurring constituents.

But when it comes to our hazardous management laws requirements, ultimately all of those types of of soils are considered the same. And so given that, that was where we came from thinking perhaps there was value in taking a deeper look at that.

But soils specifically aside, CCEEB continues to support a broader look at alternative management standards generally across all types of waste. In terms of hazardous waste classification, another key component of the plan.

While CCEEB appreciates California's prerogative to set tougher standards, its members have had concerns over many years with certain wastes that are considered hazardous here in California but nowhere else in the country.

It is for that reason CCEEB supported provisions within SB 158 that called on DTSC to review its classification of hazardous waste. And as part of that, CCEEB submitted detailed comments on this, as well as a number of other pieces of the Hazardous Waste Management Plan to the Department and the board.

Really with the focus on proposing to align classification with things that the federal government has had in place for years based on updated science, test methods, standards, as well as that that has been undertaken by other states.

So for things like the aquatic toxicity test that the Legislature pushed DTSC via legislation to update, there are other states that are farther ahead of us undertaking that type of toxicity assessment with different types of tests. We think there could be efficiencies in that rather than having DTSC reinvent the wheel, do all of its own research.

Instead, efficiencies in terms of workload, but also costs associated with that by looking to some of those other federal standards, test methods, what have you, and that of other states as well. In terms of permitting timelines and accountability.

CCEEB believes the Department has indeed made significant headway on permitting and backlogged permits, although CCEEB does remain concerned about added regulatory burden, multilayered and increasing costs, and unrelated mitigation burdens that could exacerbate a decline in permitted capacity in the state.

Further, as Department continues to embark on its efforts to fully implement Senate Bill 673, the Track 2 cumulative impacts community vulnerability regulations, that is likely inevitably to result in added compliance obligations, requirements, and in turn costs for these facilities that are already grappling with really ongoing increases in fees across the board.

So we really just encourage the Department as part of that work to really ensure risk is at the front and center with science. And that drives not only the details of that, but also the relevant impacts and mitigation efforts, what have you.

Speaking of mitigation on site mitigation and remediation, the reform package provided a number of different components of that and has been some progress, although much work remains in terms of cleanup and remediation projects, ensuring consistency.

You know, as with any agency, there's certainly staff turnover with project managers, what have you, that for many of CCEEB members who are undertaking mitigation remediation projects results in continued delays and cost increases.

That really does have an impact, not only just for those responsible parties and their cleanup efforts, but even being able to turn around that property for other higher uses, whether that's to meet our housing goals, what have you. So certainly an important issue to dive into. More work can be done.

CCEEB's even recommended looking to things like the New Jersey LRP, Licensed Remediation Professional Program, to help with concerns and challenges around staffing and help provide more continuity over time. On non-duplication.

Another issue that was included as part of the SB 158 reform was really ensuring that we're focused on avoiding duplication and overlapping responsibilities for permitted facilities across multiple agencies and really ensuring that that is also the case for various fee requirements.

Many if not all of our members are straddling multiple agencies for very similar obligations and requirements and oversight, and that does add added costs. And we're not necessarily clear that there is specific benefit versus just working on a multimedia approach that isn't actually overlapping.

And then finally, kind of diving into the topic of fees, which is certainly probably one of the most important issues for our CCEEB members. We agreed to the fee reform in SB 158, recognizing that it was critically important for DTSC to be well funded not only for its own, you know, requirements and obligations.

But also to ensure that permits would be, you know, kind of reviewed and approved in timely fashion, you know, other types of efforts that they work with the regulated community on. But that said, you know, we do have ongoing concerns about fee structure as constituted today.

While we've been working with DTSC and the board on the fee setting that was mentioned by Chair Rakestraw that the board will be undertaking here in the next week or so. For the fee setting for this fiscal year, we do anticipate largely status quo, not increases across the fee. Some decreases perhaps in the facility fee and environmental fee.

As was noted, there is a structural deficit with the generation handling fee, which is something that we are very concerned about as well as paired with many of the proposals that have come through the Legislature over the last few years related to housing.

You know, costs and generation handling fees paid by housing entities and even some energy entities who are asking for exemptions that ultimately CCEEB members and other stakeholders would be having to subsidize to ensure DTSC is whole.

And Ms. Koepke, if you could please wrap up.

Got it. So I think maybe where I will just leave it is, you know, there, as you can appreciate, a lot of threads to pull on issues related to DTSC to the board. And I think, you know, candidly thought I had a little bit more time. But nevertheless, I think, you know, what we would really like to encourage both of the committees.

And certainly in conjunction with the Department, board, and other stakeholders, is to consider perhaps over the interim, to convene a series of meetings with stakeholders, all stakeholders, to really dive more in depth on some of these issues. Because there is so much complexity, so much detail that we're barely able to scratch the surface on.

But in the near term, we'd like to really emphasize the importance in the near term specifically on the fee setting side of things, as this is not a sustainable structure. And we really would encourage the Legislature to consider some General Fund support.

Especially for things like the hazardous waste management plan components and other issues and efforts that have kind of broader state policy goals and benefits associated with them. So with that I'll leave it there. Really appreciate the time.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much for inviting me here to discuss DTSC. I'm Angela Johnson Meszaros. I'm a senior attorney in the Community Partnerships Program at Earthjustice. Our team represents frontline community leaders demanding safe, just, and healthy environments in which their communities can thrive.

My appearance here today is not on behalf of a client, but rather as an informed participant in the work to push DTSC to protect people and the environment from unjustified and unlawful threats posed by the creation, use, recapture, and disposal of hazardous substances. The questions and observations of those most impacted by a situation are generally the most instructive.

I invite you to consider these three. What do you tell your children? You don't breathe. That's the only way we can protect you. Ask Richard Kamimura at a hearing in 2018 for a still delayed permit decision for a facility with a decades long history of violating hazardous waste management laws. Mr. Kamimura passed away this year, yet his words and his deeds still push this work forward. How can I justify this to my firefighter's wife? What if he would have died?

Wondered Lt. Eduardo Ibarra while he was reflecting on the risk that he and his firefighters faced responding to yet another fire at a scrap metal recycler. The regulators, they backed down. That's really our biggest problem. Observed Rebecca Maya Velasquez when reflecting her engagement with DTSC.

DTSC has a unique and critical role in the landscape of protection of health and the environment because its work is cross media and cradle to grave. DTSC's mandate is to keep its focus on the long term changes that are needed to eliminate hazardous substances while ensuring necessary short term protections are in place to keep us safe.

But it feels like DTSC still hasn't found its way. Today's hearing is called for in SB 158 so that this body can hear about and consider the progress DTSC has made in addressing long standing, clearly identified challenges that this bill sought to address.

And while I'm not going to say that nothing has happened since 2021, I will say that the challenges of yesterday persist. Or as my grandmother might say, just doing anything isn't the same thing as doing something. DTSC, it seems, does not share our feeling of the fear urgency of now, a phrase that Dr. Martin Luther King used to call for immediate and decisive action needed to address critical issues.

In the context of our critical issues, SB 158 was a culminating legislative moment in a 15 year long effort to push DTSC to respond to questions and observations from people who need DTSC to be timely, effective, and protective in its work. In a 2013 report titled Permitting Processes Review and Analysis is Important because it described many of the challenges that we are still grappling with today.

For example, that report found that permitting decisions were not made in a timely way. Then 25% of the facilities were operating with expired permits. The report recommended increasing permitting staff to 35 to handle the workload, including the backlog. Now the permitting division has 73 positions and DTSC reports that 20% of the facilities are still operating on expired permits. The four most longest delayed permits expired a decade ago, 2015.

But beyond, 2013, 2006, and 1996. These long delayed decisions are not a backlog. They are institutional failures. And DTSC is stuck. And as a result, communities are stuck with the facilities that endanger their health and safety. This is urgent. The ongoing failure to adopt the regulations mandated by SB 673 is another instance of the same kind of failure.

In 2015, in response to the 2013 report and the ongoing Exide disaster, the Legislature required DTSC to to adopt permitting regulations and reforms. DTSC did some of what SB 673 mandated, but not the parts that directly protect people from the facilities that are too lawless, too close, or too dangerous to continue to ignore. Here again, DTSC is stuck. And again, communities are stuck with these facilities. This is really urgent.

Some argue that it's critical to to balance the benefits of purportedly uncertain protections of public health against the calculatable costs of managing hazardous waste. That, however, is not right. First, there's absolutely no doubt that the substances we're talking about here are hazardous.

But second and critically, the proper balance isn't the cost to businesses operating in the state on one side and protections to health and the environment on the other. Rather, the proper balance the effective management of hazardous substances versus the ineffective management of hazardous substances.

Effective management of hazardous waste means, at a minimum, source reduction, permitting protections that eliminate emissions, and consistent, strong enforcement that ensures that operators take protective make protective choices before they're caught. This is how we eliminate tragedies like that unfolding at Exide. The people of California has spent nearly $1 billion on that cleanup.

It has absorbed massive institutional bandwidth and resources at DTSC, and the health cost to people and proximity to that site are incalculable. And it's not clean. Even if the proper balance were environmental costs versus economic costs, the scale is wildly out of balance.

Ineffective management of hazardous sublimation substances is extraordinarily expensive, both in the terms of the suffering that it causes and in the dollars it takes to address it. Imagine, just for a moment, a world in which we invested $1 billion to eliminate emissions of hazardous substances on the front end. The reality is that the people of California are paying for ineffective management of hazardous substances with our dollars and with our health.

In a nod to regulated entities, I'll note that that fees are a critical tool, but need not be the only tool to pay for these costs. That the regulated entities must acknowledge the obligation to spend the money necessary to eliminate emissions of hazardous substances into our air, our water, our soil, and our bodies.

And in reality, we have a long way to go before we need to be concerned that DTSC's regulations are too protective or too costly. The regulated entities should not be free to simply rid themselves of costs that are rightfully theirs. And we cannot cap our investment in the effective management of hazardous waste at what the regulated communities are willing to pay. So the Legislature has a critical role in bringing needed clarity to DTSC's urgent work.

Comprehensive, clear, and protective regulatory structures create a business environment in which safe operators have clarity, unsafe operators are held accountable, and the public health and the environment are protected. And this is the win, win, win outcome that DTSC must strive to pursue. But right now, DTSC is not leading us on a path to a circular economy.

It is stuck in a status quo of recurring disasters. And we do not share the Director's confidence in the path that set out in the hazardous waste management plan. The way forward is not and cannot be the annual tisk tisk about DTSC's ongoing challenges or to hope that a board that lacks or fails to use a legislative authority will change the status quo at DTSC. The work that DTSC holds is simply too critical and it's too urgent.

Rather, now, four years after the adoption of SB 158, the Legislature must return to its focus, return its focus to the challenges the DTSC continues to face and to use those tools and that uniquely belong to the legislative branch to reshape and redirect the work that's happening at the Department. Because today, like every day, legislative oversight matters.

Perhaps through oversight hearings, the creation of a joint legislative committee or both, Members of this body can focus on developing the needed solutions to move us beyond rehashing DTSC's long troubling history of challenges. And working with frontline leaders, we can chart the next steps that will move us forward.

I implore you to talk with people impacted by the consequences of the creation, use, recapture, and disposal of hazardous substances. Go to those places, see those faces, hear those voices. Lean into the solutions that those who have the most at stake are calling for. Take on the courageous act of leadership.

Work with us to build the institution or institutions that are necessary to protect the public health and the environment from hazardous substances and to restore that land that's impacted by environmental contamination. I call on you to increase, to embrace the challenge of ensuring that DTSC changes real people's lived experiences for the better. Because this is urgent. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you to both of you. I will turn it to my colleague, Chair Connolly, for questions.

Appreciate the testimony from both of you. Ms. Koepke, starting with you, a couple follow up questions. It's been a number of years since DTSC began reform on its permitting processes. From your perspective, have you seen improvements to the permit process and are there areas that could use further improvement?

Appreciate the question. Indeed. So I think from our members' perspective, yes, improvements to be sure. You recall, SB 158 altered the timelines for beginning the permitting process really to, for one, you know, try to address backlogs, but also to try to avoid, you know, kind of long continuations in permits.

And so we have seen kind of that playing out effectively. Additionally, I will say we do have a few members within CCEEB who are permitted facilities that are going through permit renewals right now. And one of the things I think think that has been something that we've heard from our members and seen ourselves that we think has been really effective is in those communities where these facilities operate.

The Department has now started bringing other agencies and departments, air districts, you know, maybe CalRecycle, you know, OEHHA, the Air Board, what have you, all together for those types of community meetings, which I think has really been beneficial.

Historically, I think there's been challenges at community meetings on these types of permit facility renewals where it's just the Department trying to speak to that, the facility trying to speak to those components where you have community members raising concerns about various issues that are not within the purview of the Department. But there is really historically only just been well that's not our authority. You need to go talk to so and so.

What we've seen is that the Department's become really good at bringing other agencies and departments together so that the community can hear from them directly and immediately versus just kicking the can down the road saying you need to go talk to the air district about this. That's their job.

Now they have the air district at these meetings, which is getting the community real time feedback about their concerns and helping to also in the process, we think... You know, I don't want to speak for the communities.

But we think and hope that that's also helping to educate all stakeholders about who has what responsibility for what aspects of concern in and around facilities that may not even be the facility's own, you know, kind of responsibility or impact what have you.

So I think that's been from what we've heard, really helpful and I think certainly a good practice to continue across their permitting activities. In terms of, you know, things that I think could continue to be improved.

I think, you know, some of the timelines certainly, but also the costs associated with this. For a couple of the primitive facilities that are going through that process now, they're not only paying fees for the facility fee as required under the the new structure fees under 158, but also the permitting process fees as well as the compliance and implementation related costs associated with that.

Now let me be clear. CCEEB nor its members are suggesting that they shouldn't be paying their fair share of this. But those additional added costs are really pushing the limits on what these facilities can bear. And so I think there is value and taking a look at those processes and those costs to see are there efficiencies that can be garnered.

Are all of the different steps, requirements, what have you, really critical and important for protecting communities and the environment or are there things that perhaps, you know, perhaps could be reconsidered that don't necessarily correlate to those types of protections but still can ensure that that exists and still have that DTSC oversight and engagement.

Appreciate that. Turning to the hazardous waste management plan. I understand you were involved in discussions kind of leading up to AB 1 or SB 158. Do you think DTSC is on the right track with the plan? What do you see that could be added upon or improved with that?

Yes, I appreciate that. I think DTSC has a tough job in, you know, pulling this plan together. SB 158 called for a number of different pieces in terms of, you know, what the plan would entail. And those aren't small, you know, easy threads to pull or solutions to be found. So I think it is a serious challenge.

I think they have done a good job of putting forward, you know, kind of a first, you know, draft that certainly kind of gives some insight into where they think perhaps they can make some progress. So I think that is good.

I think there will be more work needing to be done, more details about how you roll out some of these components and pieces of that. And other things that perhaps are just going to take more time to really dig into in terms of, you know, educating all stakeholders, better understanding what opportunities there are, what, you know, limits there are to what people are willing to entertain.

And then above and beyond that, again, I think just going back to my comments about funding. Many of the pieces of that hazardous waste management plan do have broad implications from a state policy perspective as well as benefits across various stakeholders, sectors, state agencies, what have you.

And so we'd really encourage again, ongoing consideration of not just continually increasing the fees on regulated fee payers to fund all of that work, which is incredibly substantial, will take many, many years to complete. Even what's in that plan, much less anything that's not.

So we really think we need to have a conversation about some General Fund support for that. Recognizing we do have some fiscal issues at the state level, we think additional funding outside of fee payers is going to be critical for that. But certainly CCEEB does absolutely commit to being engaged and being solutions oriented on that going forward.

Great. And just a couple questions, Ms. Meszaros. Do you have any suggestions on steps the Legislature can take to help DTSC's programs? I think you were teeing that issue up and thought we'd give you that opportunity.

Teeing it up? Me? No. Yep. So as I was thinking about today's conversation, I think that there are two things that are equally true. First, there are lots of things that need to be addressed at DTSC and the Legislature definitely holds an important part of that.

And there's so much still to dig into and understand before we can develop those solutions. So here's what I really think needs to happen. I think that DTSC is not making the strides that it ought to be taking in order to get us where we need to go.

And I think that we need to spend some focused time really thinking, thinking about what comes next. DTSC is stuck in a rut. And where the Legislature, I think, is really effective is making policy decisions that end up in agencies being stuck in ruts.

So what we see in the hazardous waste management plan, for example, is a fundamental conflict between the question of should we use, should we step away from California's leadership in hazardous substances in order to minimize cost or speed things up or some such things. Or should we lean into our leadership, acknowledge that matching with the federal government is not a good choice? It probably never was. It certainly isn't now.

And should we, instead of going on it on a path of deregulating hazardous waste, should we really just draw a line in the sand and say we're going to prioritize the elimination of hazardous substances. We're going to figure out the structures and the payments that allow that to happen and then make that DTSC's very clear mandate.

So where the Legislature is important is in weighing and laying out those policy choices. And I really think that part of what's happening here is this tension about the cost and the benefits has tilted too far toward cost, in part because grappling with the benefits can feel complicated.

But as the dollars stack up in our chase to then fix things that have gone wrong because we made the fundamentally wrong choice, then we can see that what we're saving is not money. And what we're giving up are people's lives, their quality of life, and the feeling that their government is responsive to their questions and their needs. And those three things are important.

Thanks.

Okay. Thank you. Well, we appreciate both of your testimony. And we have a third panel, so we're going to move on to that now. Thank you so much. So our third panel is perspectives on source reduction and toxics in consumer products. And we will welcome forward Avinash Kar, Nicole Quiñonez, and Ivana Castellanos. And you're welcome to sit down and begin when ready. And you each have seven minutes. Thank you.

I thought I was going live. You want me to go first? All right. Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Avi Kar. I'm a senior attorney and senior Director for toxics at the Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC.

We're facing an onslaught of exposures to harmful chemicals, and the Safe for Consumer Products program has a critical role to play in protecting public health by reducing the use and release of harmful chemicals. To reduce both exposures and cleanup burdens as we go forward.

One of the best ways to address harmful chemicals is to not have them out there in the first place. And that's exactly SCPS remit. While the program has made some important progress on that front, it has not made nearly enough progress. The program needs to do a lot more to deliver on public health.

Part of its premise, part of the promise of the program was that it would swiftly and efficiently deal with harmful chemicals. But that hasn't really come to pass. They have largely been very slow and inefficient, and we'd like to see that improve as we go forward.

While the program has been successful in identifying and in listing problematic chemicals, it has had a lot less success at reducing the use of those problematic chemicals, at least to date. I'll start with the successes.

There's a lot of great staff at the program and they have had a lot of success in creation of the candidate chemicals list, in work to develop the scientific approach to addressing class of toxic PFAS chemicals, and the recent proposal to list microplastics.

These are ubiquitous pollutants that SCP has been bold enough to take on that require scientific expertise, and they've addressed the scientific questions in a thoughtful way. These demonstrate a public health mindset and a willingness to focus expertise on cutting edge problems and showcase the program's potential.

That said, in the 15 years since its inception, the program has a worryingly small track record on reducing use. The alternatives analysis process has been incredibly slow. By my count, they have only completed eight product chemical combinations and not all of them have been finalized to regulatory action.

Only six more chemical combinations are in the later stages of being listed, several of which arguably are add ons to completed adoptions and could have been combined into earlier processes rather than being dragged out into separate processes. Even for the finalized product chemical combinations, the program's auctions have often been narrower than warranted.

For example, on spray foam insulation, even though there are numerous cost effective and even cheaper insulation alternatives to spray foam available that work just as well or better, the program failed to end the use of these harmful products where it could and instead focused on requiring contributions to a research Fund.

The amounts added up to an inconvenience for the companies involved, given the resources that could have been done done better. In another example, instead of addressing multiple problematic chemicals in the product at the same time, the program has often spread that work out.

So we saw action on methylene chloride in paint strippers, and now we're seeing action on methyl pyrrolidone in a separate process on paint strippers. These give the illusion of more activity than there really has been at times. And there are some tools available to the agency that it can hopefully, hopefully use to speed up things.

There was reference made to SB 502 earlier and that passed in 2022 with the goal of addressing some of the structural roadblocks that we see for the Safer Consumer Products Program. These roadblocks were identified on a report on the program's 10th anniversary.

And to address the roadblocks, SB 502 provided clear authority to get data on products from manufacturers and it created an expedited alternative pathway for time consuming alternatives. Analys when studies of alternatives already exist. We think these have the potential to speed up the work at the agency.

Unfortunately, the agency has been very slow to get out of the blocks. Regulations to implement SB 502 have only just been proposed this year, three years after the law passed. We are eager to see whether and how the program will use the authorities in SB 502 to speed up action, but it has been very slow.

We all see the potential of the program. That's why we worked with people like Ms. Quinones to pass SB 502 and in attempts to improve the program. But the program needs to start delivering more faster to deliver on its promise.

We think the program should explore whether there are opportunities to streamline and speed up action and improve its results by both modifying its existing regulations and its processes. Sometimes there's an inordinate amount of process where you get a draft and then another draft and then a proposal and so forth, and things drag on.

Secondly, we think the program should also move more quickly to leverage and take advantage of the improvements in SB 502. And I also want to refer to something that the chair said earlier about the fiscal impacts and the way the agency addresses those.

I think there's an opportunity to better see the benefits that could come from the efforts that are being put forward in policy and not lose the forest for the trees in the meantime.

I also think the Legislature continues to have a key role to play first, especially when the science on chemicals and on alternatives is clear, the Legislature can continue to act, allowing the programs limited resources to be best focused on issues that can benefit the most from the agency's scientific expertise.

An example is a Bill that we are sponsoring and that is currently before the Legislature, which is SB682, which would phase out unnecessary uses of PFAS forever chemicals in six categories of products which have already been phased out in other states and where DTSC has already articulated the need to regulate PFAS as a class.

A second possible area for legislative activity is the program has new enforcement authorities under AB347, which passed last year. This allows the agency to enforce laws phasing out PFAS in various product categories, but it's awaiting appropriations to get that enforcement and that implementing regulations.

Moving along, the Legislature should act to fund AB347 so that the program can fulfill its legislative mandate. AB347 also sets up an enforcement structure that other laws, future laws, can leverage. It's a worthwhile investment that will pay the state back and improved compliance and public health. So we think that's a possible area of activity.

The last area that I want to focus on is that the program has also stated that the authorities it has under the state for consumer products programs are not well suited to regulating harmful chemicals like like PFAS forever chemicals which are so widely used. To our knowledge, PFAS are known to be used in over 200 product categories.

Addressing one product category at a time will be here for decades, if not more. And so the resources that would go with that approach would also be immense. This is why we supported the essential to use approach that was earlier reflected in 682.

This year the Bill has had to be narrowed, but it's an opportunity for the future for the Legislature to contemplate alternative models for regulating ubiquitous chemicals that are used so widely and for which I don't think the SCP program is really designed. So with that, I'll pass it to my colleagues. Thank you.

Hello. Thank you for having me on this panel today to share a little bit about the perspective of product manufacturers as it relates to source reduction, household hazardous waste, and the safer consumer products program. I am Nicole Quinonez.

I represent the Household and Commercial Products Association, whose members produce a variety of products that are used in homes and businesses, representing the entire supply chain from ingredient manufacturers to the finished product manufacturers. Some of their products include disinfectants, cleaning products, pest control solutions.

We like to say anything you would find under the kitchen sink or out in your garage is probably represented by our membership. First, I'll talk a little bit about household hazardous waste and source reduction. Our Members certainly recognize the importance of source reduction.

When that is feasible and when chemistries can't be replaced or all hazards avoided, proper management of products when they are ultimately wasted is certainly paramount.

You know, the waste management plan at 1.0 did highlight the opportunity to update the aquatic toxicity test, which in its current form in our experience really leads to an over categorization of household hazardous waste resulting in a number of products being unnecessarily managed as hazardous waste.

So updating this test method would lead to a more accurate representation of the hazardous waste products out there and source reduction of that stream, the products going to hazardous waste. And this is just one example of the kind of work that we think the Department it would be valuable for the Department to conduct.

And we believe the fees that are already paid for by businesses could go to conducting this important work and would encourage that to move forward. HCPA is also working diligently with Senator Allen's office and stakeholders on SB 502, which Chair Blakesburg mentioned earlier.

I'm sorry, SB 501 as we try to explore strategies to improve the household hazardous waste management in a way that incentivizes source reduction but also keeps costs low for everyone from the state, you know, local governments who are collecting the products for companies who are funding these sorts of programs.

Again, as the Chair mentioned in her comments earlier. So we will certainly continue to have these conversations over the fall recess. And I just highlight it because I think it speaks to the way HCPA and our Members try to take on these complicated issues. We try to come to the Legislature with solutions.

I, you know, have had the pleasure of working with Mr. Carr on several topics over the years being one of them. But I also just wanted to mention that we worked on and negotiated the cleaning products Right to no act in 2017.

And the goal of that Bill and what has happened is requires the ingredients of cleaning products to be on the label, so giving not only consumers more information about the ingredients in their products, but also, you know, the folks that work at DTSC who are doing the Safer Consumer Products Program and have pointed to needing that information to do their work.

So I think that has been beneficial. And then I'll just note, while it predates my time representing hcpa, they were one of the leading trade associations that negotiated the founding legislation that created the Green Chemistry Program and did support that Bill. So we certainly have a vested interest in the success of the Safer Consumer Products Program.

So transitioning to that program specifically, I just want to say, you know, HCPA as well as I think of a lot of other trade associations, manufacturers do have a really productive working relationship with DTSC staff.

They've always been open and willing to have conversations and they're very interested, I think, in better understanding how industries use particular ingredients, wanting to learn about our challenges when it comes to sourcing different ingredients or reformulating. And it really has helped inform their research and their process when they're developing those background documents.

And just to be clear, even though we have a good working relationship, we disagree with them very often.

Just, you know, take a look at all the comment letters we filed over any given regulation and you'll see that we don't always see eye to eye, but the importance is that positive discourse and the openness that they have for all stakeholders to continue to advance the program.

So as it's been mentioned, obviously the SEP is intended to guide our industries to remove or replace ingredients that may have negative health or environmental impacts and avoid regrettable substitutions. I know we've heard, heard a lot about that today, but also I'm sure you've all heard a lot about that over your time in the Legislature.

But it really is what was at the heart of the initial vision of the program to take that scientific and holistic approach to ingredient policy so that hopefully the Legislature wouldn't be asked as often to decide or make determinations on these very complex questions of whether an ingredient in a product poses an unreasonable risk.

Which just brings me to a very quick aside regarding the risk versus hazard approach.

I know that gets talked about a lot here and just that, you know, the hazard refers to the potential of a chemical to cause harm, but almost everything, you know, has a hazard from, you know, water, H2O, oxygen, essential vitamins, things that we would agree are healthy for us in the right levels and necessary for our survival.

But those things have a very low risk of creating, or I should say such a low risk that we've all decided obviously, you know, any potential adverse effects are outweighed by the benefits. And a hazard.

While a hazard based approach focuses on a chemical's potential for harm without considering how much or how often people are exposed to it. While a risk based approach really integrates both the hazards of the chemical and the likelihood of exposure.

So looking at the real world scenarios and how those evaluating those potential dangers, and I just bring this up not to debate whether California's Chemical policies should be risk or hazard based, but to demonstrate just how complex and nuanced these policies are, which a large reason again is why the Legislature directed DTSC to create the Safer Consumer Products Program so that their scientists could dig into the science behind ingredients.

Consider the nuances and the trade offs when one ingredient is replaced with another or an ingredient is taken out of a product and all of the in between are banned altogether, which is all within their regulatory authority.

And I really today just wanted to focus my time on trying to understand or explain how we can urge the Legislature to rely a little bit more on the Safer Consumer Products Program so that the toxicologist, the chemists, the environmental scientists are determining the sound policies for California while keeping them extremely protective of the human health and the environment.

So first, you know, my point, which has already been talked about, is just the signals that the program does send to the manufacturers, both through the candidate's chemicals list and the priority products work plan.

So industry gets a good idea of what they're going to look at in the future, and it really allows them to start what is a very long process.

We've talked about how long an alternatives analysis can take, but the process internally of looking at alternative ingredients or will the product perform as well without certain ingredients also takes time. And a lot of our manufacturers, they're going to ingredient suppliers.

And so sometimes this process means going to your suppliers and then coming up with new solutions or new ingredients, and so working through those complexities. But those signals are extremely important. They are hard to quantify, unfortunately, but they are there and they're impactful. Secondly, it's just science takes time.

And I understand how frustrating it can be for the Legislature and the advocates sitting beside me over the pace of progress. And I think somewhat born out of this frustration, but not entirely. We have seen an increase in chemical ban bills year after year, you know, likely as a result, but, you know, it's not surprising.

I think we can all appreciate that a regulatory agency will take a longer time to study an ingredient, consider if products with those ingredients pose a risk to Californians. You know, put their background information together, get feedback from all the stakeholders and really do their process.

That's going to take longer than the 10 months it takes to to introduce a Bill and ultimately have it signed by the Governor. And I'll just say, I promise that industry does not look at the Safer Consumer Products Program as a delay tactic, but we do think faster is not always better.

There will always be trade offs from the policies enacted, but it's Hard to study those trade offs during the legislative session. So I guess my question to the Legislature is, is there a reasonable amount of time for DTSC to do their evaluation? Am I getting that? Okay, then I will finish up and I'll just ask.

You know, my big point is about. Or my last point is on the big stuff. You know, I think the backgrounder does question whether DTSC or puts it out there, whether they could do, you know, real PFAS regulation or, you know, work on microplastics. These ingredients that, you know, touch a lot of products are used very differently.

But I guess our pushback would be these are exactly the types of policies that need DTSC's expertise. Again, it would be extremely challenging to craft this legislation, you know, without their expertise.

So, you know, I think with that we would just conclude, you know, before turning to legislation, how can we allow the safer consumer products to do the work that you all have designated them to do, which is science driven, transparent, and protective of the health and the environment? Thank you.

Hi, Good morning. I want to thank the Members for the opportunity to speak today. I'll be focusing my comments on gaps and challenges and potential opportunities for DTSC as it relates to source production and pollution prevention. But first I want to remind us about the urgency of the challenges we face today.

The use of toxic chemicals continues to impact the health of Californians, particularly for environmental justice communities that experience the highest burdens of pollution. From extraction to manufacturing to product use, to recycling to disposal and everything in between, environmental justice communities live at the front lines and continue to experience devastating consequences to their health.

Simultaneously, the state is finding it more and more difficult to manage the hazardous waste it generates. DTSC acknowledges in its draft Hazardous Waste Management Plan that source reduction is the most preferred strategy in managing waste and ultimately to reducing health impacts to communities. But it's not enough to simply acknowledge source reduction's importance.

The agency must do the difficult work to reorient its work to prioritize source reduction across its programs, beginning with strengthening the Hazardous Waste Management Plan with meaningful, measurable goals and actionable recommendations to reduce use of toxics and hazardous waste generation at the source.

And I think it's important to remember that while other waste reduction efforts, including certain kinds of recycling, may have a role in a broader hazardous waste management and transition strategy, these do not directly reduce the use of toxics and generation of hazardous waste upstream at the source where it is most effective and most needed.

We need strong regulatory authorities and perhaps more importantly, willingness to take bold actions that advance source reduction Next, I'd like to discuss some of the past and current source reduction activities at DTSC. From the 1980s to 2013, DTSC had its own pollution prevention program.

That program's activities typically focused on voluntary activities with a narrow set of specific industries. The program did see some benefits, including stronger expertise within DTSC staff on industry specific source reduction strategies, but with its limitations, the program did not ultimately lead to large volumes of reductions in generation of hazardous waste.

The pollution prevention program was sunset in 2013 to give way to the establishment of today's Safer Consumer Products program. Identifying and encouraging safer alternatives in consumer products is a key part of source reduction and an important regulatory role for dtse.

But there may be ways for safer consumer products to be more effective in its work, and there are additional opportunities for source reduction and pollution prevention that go beyond safer consumer products existing scope in terms of increasing safer consumer products effectiveness.

There's already been some discussion, so I won't spend too much time here, but I do echo concerns about the slow pace of progress within these processes. There is so much that is already known about these chemicals and their hazards and we must find ways to leverage this existing knowledge to take regulatory action to protect health faster.

We also need stronger regulatory mechanisms to identify and support innovation of safer alternatives, bringing those alternatives to market and improving accessibility and widespread adoption of safer alternatives.

In addition, in situations where manufacturers move to proactively remove a candidate chemical from their product to avoid triggering the regulatory process, it would be beneficial to still gain insights into how the product was reformulated to maintain awareness of what's in these products and potential regrettable substitutions since the alternatives analysis process which would have provided that information about substitutes was not triggered.

There are also some source reduction strategies that may not fit into safer consumer products existing specific focus on consumer products, but are important for DTSE to consider and incorporate in addition to chemicals in the product itself, there may be some chemicals that are used in the manufacturing processes that safer consumer products may not target.

For example, industrial solvents that are used in manufacturing processes to dissolve or dilute other chemicals in addition to the chemicals used in products. The design of products and designing products to be easily broken up into its various components for end of life may offer opportunities to reduce waste.

DTSE would also benefit from regularly collecting data on use of hazardous chemicals and purpose of those uses as well as better data on hazardous waste generation.

The Agency should collaborate with the public, scientific, academic and those with industry specific expertise to identify what data would be the most useful to provide detailed insights for the development of strategic priorities and to allow for improved tracking of progress over time and to develop data systems that allow for faster real time analysis, which has been a problem in the past.

DTSD's regulatory role could also include things like mandated training on source reduction strategies for those who use hazardous chemicals and generate hazardous waste and provision of industry specific technical assistance for businesses to develop actionable source production plans. Lastly, DTSC should do significantly more to identify, assess for safety and strongly incentivize or require safer alternatives.

In closing, we know and DTSE seems to be in agreement that source reduction is the most effective strategy to reduce exposures to toxic chemicals and hazardous waste and to reduce the enormous burden of managing dangerous hazardous waste.

The problems we face related to toxic exposures and generation of hazardous waste are urgent and they demand that we move beyond merely expressing or discussing these concepts. We need DTSE to develop the willingness to take proactive, bold action to reduce hazardous waste at the source and protect environmental justice, Communities and public health. Thank you.

Okay, great. Well, thank you very much to the three of you. We really appreciate your testimony. I think we're going to move to public comments at this point. We are aiming test this be concluded by 12. So we thank you again for your contributions and if you have public comments, please come forward to the microphone.

And if you could make your comments concise and brief, we would appreciate it. So please come forward if you'd like to make a public comment today. Thank you. Go ahead.

Thank you very much. Nancy Buermeyer with Breast Cancer Prevention Partners. We're a national organization working to reduce exposure exposure to chemicals linked to the disease. We were part of creating the Safer Consumer Products Program.

We share some of the concerns expressed not only by the Committee but by our colleagues about the slowness of the project, of the progress, but also encouraged by the Director's comments, also encouraged that the board is going to be doing specific metrics and we look forward to working with the chair and their staff on that piece.

We want to encourage the Department and the program to be very proactive and to quote my colleague, bold and really stretched to take full advantage of the authorities given it by SB 502.

And finally, while five priority products per year is an important goal, given the broad range of priority of products that we are sold in the state and the incredibly large number of chemicals that are in them, that can't be the only thing we do. The Legislature still has a role to play.

We don't need a crew of toxicologists to tell us that PFAs are bad for us, we know that we don't need the expertise of the program to tell us PFAS in dental floss is a bad idea. That's the role that you all have to play.

And as much as I enjoy working with Nicole Quinonez on many projects, this is not one where we agree. So I just encourage you to continue to take action where it's appropriate, where the science is clear, the hazard and the risk is clear. And, and it makes sense.

And in the meantime, we will continue to work with the program to get them to be as efficient and as effective as possible. Thanks

Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you for this hearing. My name is Heidi Sanborn. I'm the Executive Director of the National Stewardship Action Council. And we advocate for a responsible circular economy. I've been a regulator, a calrecycle, a consultant and an advocate of 35 years.

And I can say now I really focus on producer responsibility, particularly for household hazardous waste is our biggest focus now. And DTSC has not had a history of working with household hazardous waste. They've really worked mostly with industrial waste. And so one of the problems that has been historic is the difference between CalRecycle's responsibility and DTSC's responsibility.

And I think that needs to be clarified still because CalRecycle has household hazardous waste grants. They do some things in oil, they do some, some things in this area, but yet DTSC is ultimately responsible. Who's really in charge of this category? I think that should be finalized and made very clear to everyone.

DTSC has been historically, according to all the people I talk to, getting permits, a very difficult agency to work with. They lack out of the box thinking. The regulatory process is very time consuming and costly and the permits take forever to get.

And what this has led to is that California is very policy heavy, but we drive facilities out of state for recycling and managing our own waste. And I don't think that's the goal of our state. And we'd like to keep the jobs here as well.

Even though I'd rather turn off the spigot and not have all this hazardous waste to begin with, which is another one of my comments is that, you know, I really think the hazardous waste management plan did not focus enough on source reduction and actually getting the spigot turned off, which is far more cost effective than trying to clean up the mess and mop.

They also in the hazardous waste management plan have a subtitle of A Modern Approach towards a Circular Economy. I had to say at the public curing, it is not a circular economy plan at all. In fact, it gives circular economy plan a bad name because I advocate for a circular economy which is three things.

Source reduction first, then keep materials in motion and recycle them and then dispose of or clean up natural systems at end of life. And that plan is not all those things and it's certainly not on prevention. And I can tell you we take study trips, the Recycling Challenge study trips.

And we went to Calgary last year and saw how they actually clean and remediate soils and put them back out in use, not just landfill them, which is something I didn't here discussed at all quickly on the Aqua Talks Bill. I was the sponsor with Dr. Quirk and that was in 2022.

We totally agree with Nicole Quinones that we need to get that aquatac test gotten rid of. We don't need to kill fish and spend all the time doing that in order to determine if things are toxic. We just need to get the other.

I think it's 48 states that have this computational toxicology just copy what they're doing and do it ourselves. We're actually one of the last states to adopt that. So with that, thank you very much. Pretty much appreciate it.

Hi, good morning. My name is Melissa Bumstead and I represent Parents Against the Santa Susana Field Lab. That's hard to see. But that's my daughter right there. And these are some of the other children from my community who have suffered cancer.

I started the Change.org petition for the SSFL Santa Susana Field Lab cleanup which now has over 760,000 signatures. I'm here today because my community very fortunately was able to raise the funds to send me. And I realized my testimony is costing my community about $3aminute. So I will keep my comments as brief as possible.

I was, I'll say quickly that I was disappointed that this is not a hybrid meeting as it disqualifies many community Members from sharing their public perspectives about the dtsc, which we are heavily impacted by. And we are also overburdened with medical costs. But my community has prioritized me being here today to have a voice for our community.

The DTSC continues to staunchly uphold their claims that contamination from the Santa Susana Field Lab, which is one of California, California's most toxic and radioactive sites, does not come off site. And if it does, it is incapable of harming the residents, despite their own research, independent studies and data from sister agencies.

As I mentioned, my daughter is one with more than 80 children that we know of and that's Just self reported data that have developed exceptionally rare and aggressive cancers who are living only within miles of the site. Children and adults are being harmed.

So still last week I learned of three more children in my community who were recently diagnosed with exceptionally rare and almost always fatal cancers. Instead of Prioritizing the cleanup, DTSC's most significant action for the Santa Susana Field Lab last year was securing $2 million not for remediation, but to defend itself in court. From my community's lawsuit.

DTSC violated CEQA by approving a deal that allows Boeing to leave more than 90% of the contamination in place on the site permanently near our homes. They intend to open it as a public park after we hope that a ruling in our favor will give us again the complete cleanup that we have waited nearly two decades for.

My community's voice is excluded from DTSC's decision making. We come to all the hearings. We jump through every hoop. We cross our T's, we dot our I's. Still, we are not being part of a meaningful change within this cleanup process.

Independent and peer reviewed science is always dismissed in favor of studies paid for by the responsible parties which protect profit over people. The Board of Environmental Safety has created a Subcommitee to listen to us. And we are very grateful for their time. But the BES has minimal power to act.

That is why our community is suing the dtsd. And that's why I'm here today. Because we have very few opportunities to have our cries heard for justice and protection. So I would urge this Committee to hold regular community community hearings on DTSC reform. Once a year is tough for us.

I mean we, we do everything we can to be here. I was also told by our staff last year when we missed the meeting, they had no resources to create an email list for us to be alerted about these hearings. It was not put on DTSC or the BES website.

So we were very fortunate to find out about this meeting. Found out about it Monday. My community had raised the funds by Tuesday and I was here.

I would also ask that a hybrid participation option be included because as far as I can tell, I see one other community member that I recognize who actually live near these contaminated sites. It is very hard for us to be here.

I would also ask that the Board of Environmental Safety's purview be widely expanded to give them the authority to actually make a difference. We like the Board of Environmental Safety. We feel that they have a good independent perspective on what is happening with the Department of Toxic Substance Control.

But they have very little authority to make those changes, at least from my community's perspective.

And one thing that would be incredibly helpful for my community and communities like mine is to require the DTSC to create a portal so that independent experts can submit scientific studies and reviews that have to be incorporated into the data set of the dtsc.

For example, the Water Board has Boeing has had over $1.0 million of fines for polluting the LA river, but even though it is a sister agency, the DTSC is able to say that contamination does not come off site, even though we have lead 12 times the legal limits coming into the LA river from the Santa Susana fill up.

The DTSC is acting as an independent world country. They do not, there's very little authority to get them to change course in a meaningful way. They do not incorporate independent data, peer reviewed data, federally funded data. They don't even incorporate sister agency data.

So that is hard for me as a community Member to try to get them to change course on these cleanup plans when they won't incorporate data except if it's paid for by the polluters. So a portal for independent data would be a huge meaningful change for my community.

Without these reforms, our children will continue to pay the price for DTSC's failures. Thank you for allowing me to speak.

Good morning Chairs. I'm Christine Wolfe with WM, formerly Waste Management.

We own and operate the Kettleman Hills facility, one of the two hazardous waste landfills in California, so are regulated by the Department and have seen a lot of improvements in the Department over the last couple of both since SB 158 was enacted, as well as the appointment of Director Butler.

So appreciate that we're moving in a positive direction, but just want to echo some of Dawn's comments about the need for the committees potentially to continue to make sure that we're having ongoing conversations about the long term fiscal sustainability of the Department. I think we're seriously concerned as the largest facility fee payer in the state.

We pay over $1.0 million a year to dtsc. We also have very significant costs related to the permit and compliance which we take very seriously.

We have the best compliance score of any facility regulated by DTSC in the state and are proud of our environmental record in protecting the public and providing a safe in state location for disposal of hazardous waste and think that that's a really important part of implementing the Hazardous Waste Management Plan and ensuring that DTSC can be successful.

But recognizing that the generation and handling fee in particular has been a point of consternation for a lot of our customers that there have been multiple asks for exemptions from the generation and handling fee. To look at that more holistically that it may have impacts on housing development and renewable energy development in the state.

Really encourage the Department, the Legislature, to make sure that there's ongoing conversations so that we know that if there are changes to the fee structure that the existing fee payers aren't, don't have to take on the burden of those fees because that's not sustainable for the long run, particularly for a lot of the ambitious programs that the Department wants to undertake as outlined in the Hazardous Waste Management Plan.

So thank you very much.

Good morning. John Kennedy with the Rural County Representatives of California.

We represent 40 of the state's 58 counties and our Members as well as the other counties operate almost 200 household hazardous waste collection facilities throughout the state where we take hhw, a subset that's not subject to federal RCRA regulations and try and properly manage and dispose of those commodities.

DTSC is in a very tough position, an incredibly complex regulatory environment with different federal and state regulatory requirements. Sometimes we don't make things easy for ourselves. Some of the challenges that we face, as you heard, an over categorization of what constitutes household hazardous waste.

So I agree we need to go back and look at test refinements to make sure that our toothpaste, our shampoos and other consumer products aren't regulated as hazardous waste when we apply them to our bodies. The costs that we face as household hazardous waste facilities are exorbitant.

Oftentimes we'll have to transport our materials out of state, halfway across the country for proper management and disposal. Sometimes the cost of managing those products reaches or exceeds the cost of the consumers at the retail sale.

Especially for Knox cylinders, something that may cost 30 to $40 online on Amazon, will cost US$60 to $70 to manage the empty container at the end of its useful life. Additionally, we've got really complex management standards and requirements. A couple examples, treated Wood waste. This was a struggle we dealt with several years ago.

Haven't had the issues that we had back then with vetoed legislation, restrictions on when these materials can come in contact with the ground. We're talking fence posts, materials that are embedded in the ground for 3040 years sometimes. And yet as facilities, we are precluded from from having them come into contact with the ground.

We're limited on how long those materials can be managed on site. And thankfully we now have alternative management standards that were recreated through special legislative processes. So thank you for the Committee on that.

Additionally, requirements on treatment of hazardous waste, household hazardous waste, really anything that physically changes the characteristics of that hazardous waste is determined to be treatment which requires special permits. We are concerned that that extends to things as simple as cutting a cord on an electronic device, removing batteries that are embedded in products.

These are common sense things that we can do as HHW collection facilities safely with proper training and oversight by LEAs where we can help DTSE achieve some of their ambitious requirements for reducing the amount of waste that's disposed, increasing response, recycling, things like that. So I agree with other stakeholders.

We hope that we can continue conversations with regulators, with stakeholders and with the Legislature to move the needle and really facilitate some creative thinking to improve management, increase recycling and reduce disposal of hazardous waste. Thank you very much.

Hello, I'm Aleja Kretcher with Communities for a Better Environment. We're a community based environmental justice organization. Since the passage of SB 1158 DTSC has not made good on their commitments to our community Members. I work directly with residents who live right next to the EXIDE facility.

I also work with residents who live right next to a former metal recycler in Southgate in LA. These residents organized for years to shut down the metal recycler because of extremely high levels of arsenic and lead were leached into that community. Finally it was shut down and DTSC was tasked with the cleanup. Enter SB158.

From a community standpoint, we're thinking, okay, we have this legislation, we have the bes and we have a new EJAC to facilitate a cleanup that's considerate of the community. Instead all we got was an extremely limited and speculative cleanup plan that failed to consider any of our community comments.

Then we get DTSC deciding to file an exemption from CEQA limiting proper environmental review and shutting our community out of the process. The process by which a metal recycler is being replaced with a storage facility and a polluting auto repair shop for large trucks.

We've gotten fluff language from DTSC in meetings and in the Hazardous Waste Management Plan about environmental justice. But on the ground we've only gotten the status quo. Thank you.

Hi, I'm Scott Andrews. I'm representing the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, also community based environmental justice organization. Just want to speak briefly about a class of hazardous waste that's actually not considered hazardous waste, which is metal shredder feedstock.

It currently is exempt through an F letter that was created decades ago by the industry saying that they're not a hazardous waste because this has value. But just as waste water has value these days, methane, fertilizer or other things, wastewater is certainly considered a hazardous waste.

And we believe that the metal shredder feedstock should be considered a hazardous waste and treated as such. And there's currently a Bill going through the Legislature, SB404 that would permanently give this exemption to this industry that is known to be highly polluting handled hazardous waste.

And we would love to see this feedstock treated as such when it's transported to the facility, held at the facility and treated at the facility. Thank you very much.

Chair and Members Jerry Desmond, on behalf of Recreational Boaters of California, just to emphasize one of the issues that the Chair mentioned at. The beginning of the hearing of the. Challenges of EPR in specific situations such as marine flares, and to encourage consideration of ways to expedite the process in. Situations where, like marine flares, there's probably.

One manufacturer explosive, it has to go to another state or the costs go up on the stakeholders that have to use or want to use those flares for safety out on the water.

And we're hoping that perhaps there are ways to come up with expedited approaches in those kinds of situations so that the accomplishments and the goals of EPR can be accomplished at the same time you can have a product that's safe for consumers. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Thomas Helm. I am the co founder of Valley Improvement Projects, an environmental justice organization and also the coordinator of the California Environmental Justice Coalition, which has almost 90 members throughout the state. It's been around for over 10 years now.

We came together as a coalition primarily because many of the organizations involved have had long, decades long issues with dtsc. I want to echo the comments made by your fellow environmental justice voices from Ms. Johnson, Mazeros, Ms. Castellanos and Ms. Bumstead about access and transparency in general at DTSC.

We've dealt with over the years issues with racist permitting processes where folks were thrown out of hearings because of speaking Spanish, faked soil samples, decades long permitting delays, delayed civil rights and cumulative impacts policies, delayed implementation of source reduction and remediation strategies, and instead we have seen capitulation to industry and continued attempts to dump on environmental justice organizations.

We are glad that there have been some reforms. We've met with the Beast DES who has listened to certain environmental justice concerns around the hazardous waste management plan. But we still have a variety of other concerns.

We know that there is now an environmental justice Advisory Committee, but from somebody who has served on two advisory boards in California, we are often not listened to and kept to the advisory right and are left mostly powerless. We've met several times over the last 10 years with DTSC, DTSC staff, DTSC leadership.

We've recently met with Members of the BES and the EJAC and we are always open to have further meetings. But you know, we've had meetings 78 years ago and we just recently had meetings where we're talking about the same old issues. And we don't always just need more meetings. We need actions.

In places like Laytonville, which we recently met about and discussed the waste dump there where dozens of people have gotten cancers, rare cancers and other diseases. You've heard about North Whittier and Avocado Heights, Southgate, Kettleman City, Button Willow, West Oakland, Modesto and Stanislaus County, Santa Susana Field Lab, Bayview, Hunters Point, Richmond, Treasure Island.

Places where there's going to be sea level rise and toxic sites that not being taken into account in the studies and reports and many, many other environmental justice communities that are part of CEJC and that we've met with DTSC about over the years.

So we know we need action in these places and at these sites and we need to make polluters pay. We heard about EPR programs. We don't want EPR programs that are run by the polluters where they drag their feet and maximum penalties and fines and punishments are not usually levied against them. Thank you for your time today.

It's an honor to be with you. Senator Blakesbier. Two days in a row now. I was at the press conference yesterday and Have a good day. Thank you.

Okay, well, thank you very much. I appreciate all of the participants who came today to speak during public comment. And I want to say again a big thank you to our panelists for the testimony, testimonies that they shared today. We very much appreciate your participation. And with that, the joint oversight hearing is adjourned.