Environment: Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2006.

(1) The Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2006, an initiative statute approved by the voters at the November 7, 2006, statewide general election, makes approximately $5.4 billion in bond funds available for safe drinking water, water quality and supply, flood control, natural resource protection, and park improvements. The bond act makes $60,000,000 available to the State Department of Public Health (department) for the purpose of loans and grants for projects to prevent or reduce contamination of groundwater that serves as a source of drinking water and requires the department to require repayment for costs that are subsequently recovered from parties responsible for the contamination. Existing law requires the department, in collaboration with the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and the State Water Resources Control Board, to develop and adopt regulations governing the repayment of costs that are subsequently recovered from parties responsible for the contamination of groundwater. Existing law, the Carpenter-Presley-Tanner Hazardous Substance Account Act, creates in the General Fund the Site Remediation Account, and authorizes the money in that account to be expended by the DTSC, upon appropriation by the Legislature, for direct site remediation costs. This bill would require the department to adopt the implementing regulations as emergency regulations, pursuant to a specified procedure, and would require the emergency regulations to remain in effect for 180 days after the effective date of those emergency regulations, by which time the department would be required to adopt regulations. The bill would require the regulations to include a provision allowing the department to enter into an agreement with a grantee that recovers the funds that would authorize the expenditure of the recovered funds to implement ongoing treatment and remediation activities in accordance with the purposes for which funds may be granted pursuant to the bond act. The bill would establish the Groundwater Contamination Prevention Account in the State Treasury and would require the department to deposit in that account the funds recovered from responsible parties pursuant to the payment recovery provisions in the bond act. The bill would continuously appropriate funds in the account to the department for purposes of implementing the groundwater contamination cleanup and prevention provisions of the bond act, thereby making an appropriation. The bill would authorize the department to expend up to 3% of the recovered funds deposited in the Groundwater Contamination Prevention Account to pay for the department's oversight costs. The bill would authorize the department to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the DTSC to provide oversight activities or to transfer funds from the Groundwater Contamination Prevention Account to the Site Remediation Account. The bill would appropriate the transferred funds to the DTSC for purposes of implementing the department's agreement with a grantee. (2) This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.