Hazardous waste facility permits: regulations.

Existing law requires the Department of Toxic Substances Control, on or before January 1, 2018, to adopt regulations establishing or updating criteria used to issue a new, modified, or renewed hazardous waste facilities permit, which may include criteria for the denial or suspension of a permit. Existing law requires the department to consider for inclusion in the regulations specified criteria, including, but not limited to, the number and types of past violations that will result in a denial of a hazardous waste facilities permit. The department's regulations, known as the Violations Scoring Procedure, require the department to calculate an annual Facility Violations Scoring Procedure Score or Facility VSP Score for a permitted hazardous waste facility by adding the provisional or final inspection violation scores, as described, for each compliance inspection, as defined, conducted during the preceding 10-year period, divided by the number of compliance inspections that occurred during that 10-year period. Existing law requires the department to assign a hazardous waste facility to one of 3 compliance tiers, which consist of acceptable, conditionally acceptable, and unacceptable, based on the facility's Facility VSP Score and to take certain actions, including, but not limited to, taking steps to modify, deny, suspend, or revoke a hazardous waste facilities permit, if the facility falls within a conditionally unacceptable or unacceptable compliance tier. This bill would require the department, by January 1, 2023, to calculate the Facility VSP Score of a hazardous waste facility for the 2022 calendar year, and annually thereafter, by adding the provisional or final inspection violation scores for each compliance inspection conducted during the preceding 10-year period. The bill would prohibit the department from dividing the sum of the provisional and final inspection violation scores by the number of compliance inspections that occurred during that 10-year period. The bill would continue to require the department to assign a hazardous waste facility to a compliance tier based on the facility's Facility VSP Score, but would revise the numerical ranges for each compliance tier. The bill would require the department to revise its Violations Scoring Procedure regulations for consistency with those provisions by July 1, 2022.