Legalization of medicinal and adult-use cannabis in California has fomented a surge of seed-to-sale companies angling to lure market share from a sea of customers. The water may soon be agitated, however, by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA). OEHHA is the lead California agency that oversees implementation of Proposition 65, formally known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986. OEHHA recently announced that it has selected cannabis (marijuana), marijuana (cannabis) smoke, cannabis extracts, and delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) for review for possible listing under Proposition 65 as chemicals that cause reproductive toxicity. If the Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee (DARTIC) determines that these chemicals cause reproductive toxicity based upon “scientifically valid testing according to generally accepted principles,” marijuana in its various forms will likely join a list of more than 900 chemicals known to the state to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm. Companies that cultivate, distribute, and/or sell marijuana and products containing marijuana in California would then be required to warn consumers—and possibly employees and passersby—that exposure to these listed chemicals can cause reproductive harm.
Continue Reading Proposition 65 Update: California’s OEHHA Starts Process to List Marijuana as a Reproductive Toxicant

Continuing its vanguard approach to environmental regulation, California is poised to incorporate Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL)-specific requirements into its industrial storm water general permit (IGP). TMDLs are pollutant- and water body-specific and establish the maximum amount of a pollutant a water body can receive while meeting water quality standards. Once effective, these new requirements will provide additional avenues of attack for the already active Clean Water Act citizen suit docket.
Continue Reading TMDL Limits Are Coming To California’s Industrial Storm Water General Permit

The implementation of California’s ambitious Assembly Bill 617 (AB 617) is well under way, but it is still very uncertain whether it can or will achieve its intended outcome. Despite the long process to select the initial list of communities to be included in the in the first year of CARB’s Community Air Protection Program (CAPP) (CARB’s AB 617 implementation program), the hard work to ensure AB 617 is a success remains—namely the development and implementation of the emissions monitoring/reduction plans in the selected disadvantaged communities. In the end, the biggest impediment to AB 617’s successful implementation might be the law’s own requirements, specifically its accelerated implementation schedule, which may not provide California’s air quality management districts (air districts) with enough time to achieve the law’s goals.
Continue Reading California’s AB 617: Inadequate Time?

This summer, California’s State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) adopted amendments to the Underground Storage Tank (UST) Regulations (California Code of Regulations, title 23, division 3, chapter 16). The new regulations, which become effective on October 1, 2018, impose new design and construction, upgrading, monitoring, notification, testing, inspection, recordkeeping, training and reporting requirements on UST owners and operators in California. The State Water Board’s purpose in amending these regulations was essentially two-fold: (1) to effectively make the California UST regulations just as stringent, and consistent with, the federal UST regulations (part 280 of 40 Code of Federal Regulations); and (2) to reduce the risk of groundwater contamination resulting from UST releases.
Continue Reading California State Water Board Amends Underground Storage Tank Regulations to “Reconcile” Requirements with Federal Law

Effective July 13, 2018, the California State Water Resources Control Board’s Division of Drinking Water (DDW) established drinking water notification levels of 14 ppt for PFOA and 13 ppt for PFOS, and a combined PFOA/PFOS drinking water response level of 70 ppt. Notification and response levels are non-binding, health-based advisory levels for contaminants in drinking water where maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) have not been promulgated. Establishment of notification and response levels often is the DDW’s first step toward adopting binding MCLs.
Continue Reading California Ramps Up Regulation of PFAS Compounds

In August 2016, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) adopted new regulations that replaced Prop 65’s “clear and reasonable” warning provisions. These new regulations, which allocate responsibility for providing warnings on consumer products sold in California and include new criteria for “safe harbor” warnings, become operative on August 30, 2018.
Continue Reading New California Proposition 65 Warning Regulations: What Businesses Need To Know Before August 30, 2018

California is considering the first-in-the-nation general industrial stormwater permit incorporating Total Maximum Daily Load-related numeric action levels and numeric effluent limitations. Touted as an effort to promote green infrastructure and water reuse, this proposal could revamp how industry manages stormwater.
Continue Reading A Seismic Change Is Coming to California’s General Industrial Stormwater Permit

When California Assembly Bill 617 (AB 617) was signed into law, California ambitiously announced a new “community focused” strategy to improve air quality in California. AB 617’s goal is to improve air quality in environmental justice communities through local, community specific strategies focused on the individual needs and issues particular to each community. The development and implementation of this “community focused” strategy is largely the responsibility of California’s local air quality management districts (AQMDs) because AB 617 places new, explicit responsibilities on AQMDs so that they take the lead in improving the air quality in their environmental justice communities.
Continue Reading California’s AB 617 — “Community Focused”

A federal judge blocked California from requiring Monsanto to put warning labels on its Roundup products, ruling there is “insufficient evidence” that the active ingredient causes cancer. When “California seeks to compel businesses to provide cancer warnings, the warnings must be factually accurate and not misleading. As applied to glyphosate, the required warnings are false and misleading,” likely violating Monsanto’s First Amendment rights.
Continue Reading Judge Halts Monsanto Warning Label on First Amendment Grounds

Judicial review of state agency regulatory orders in California has long been seen as an exercise in futility as state courts typically give significant deference to agency determinations. However, two recent decisions by California Superior Courts have bucked that trend and may provide renewed hope that success at the trial court level is not out of reach.
Continue Reading Scoring Gold at the Superior Court: California Water Boards’ Regulatory Authority Successfully Challenged