AB2022 (Gordon)Page 1 of 3
SENATE COMMITTEE ONENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
SenatorWieckowski, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular
Bill No: AB2022
Author: / GordonVersion: / 3/31/2016 / Hearing Date: / 6/15/2016
Urgency: / No / Fiscal: / Yes
Consultant: / Rachel Machi Wagoner
SUBJECT: Advanced purified demonstration water.
ANALYSIS:
Existing federal law:
1)Authorizes the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act, to regulate bottled water products that are in interstate commerce.
2)Authorizes the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), under the Safe Drinking Water Act, to set national health-based standards for drinking water to protect against both naturally-occurring and anthropogenic contaminants.
3)Requires, when US EPA sets a new standard for a contaminant in drinking water, that the FDA must establish a new standard for the same contaminant in bottled water or find that US EPA’s new standard is not applicable to bottled water.
Existing state law:
1)Authorizes the Department of Public Health (DPH) to license and regulate manufacturers of bottled water and vended water. Establishes requirements for bottled, vended, hauled and processed water.
2)Requires, as a condition of licensure, water-bottling plants to annually prepare a bottled water report, including disclosure of the source of the bottled water, and to make the report available to each customer.
3)Requires the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) to maintain a drinking water program.
4)Declares that a substantial portion of the future water requirements of this state may be economically met by beneficial use of recycled water. Finds that the utilization of recycled water by local communities for domestic, agricultural, industrial, recreational, and fish and wildlife purposes will contribute to the peace, health, safety and welfare of the people of the state.
5)Requires the SWRCB to establish uniform statewide recycling criteria for the various uses of recycled water where the use involves the protection of public health.
6)States that although there has been much scientific research on public health issues associated with indirect potable reuse through groundwater recharge, there are a number of significant unanswered questions regarding indirect potable reuse through surface water augmentation and direct potable reuse.
7)Defines “direct potable reuse” as introducing recycled water either directly into a public water system or into a raw water supply immediately upstream of a water treatment plant; “indirect potable reuse for groundwater recharge” as using recycled water to replenish a groundwater basin or an aquifer that has been designated as a source of water supply for a public drinking water system; and, “surface water augmentation” as placing recycled water into a surface water reservoir used as a source of domestic drinking water supply.
8)Requires SWRCB, by December 31, 2013, to adopt uniform water recycling criteria for indirect potable reuse for groundwater recharge.
9)Requires SWRCB, by December 31, 2016, to develop and adopt uniform water recycling criteria for surface water augmentation.
10)Requires, prior to adopting water recycling criteria for surface water augmentation, SWRCB to submit the proposed criteria to the expert panel, which is required to review the proposed criteria and adopt a finding as to whether, in its expert opinion, the proposed criteria would adequately protect public health.
11)Prohibits the SWRCB from adopting uniform water recycling criteria for surface water augmentation unless and until the expert panel adopts a finding that the proposed criteria would adequately protect public health.
12)Requires SWRCB, on or before December 31, 2016, to investigate and report to the Legislature on the feasibility of developing uniform water recycling criteria for direct potable reuse.
13)Requires the SWRCB, in conducting the investigation on direct potable reuse, to examine all of the following, among other criteria:
a)The availability and reliability of recycled water treatment technologies necessary to ensure the protection of public health;
b)Multiple barriers and sequential treatment processes that may be appropriate at wastewater and water treatment facilities;
c)Available information on health effects;
d)Mechanisms that should be employed to protect public health if problems are found in recycled water that is being served to the public as a potable water supply; and,
e)Monitoring needed to ensure protection of public health, including, but not limited to, the identification of appropriate indicator and surrogate constituents.
14)Requires SWRCB to convene and administer an expert panel to advise it on public health issues and scientific and technical matters regarding development of uniform water recycling criteria for indirect potable reuse through surface water augmentation and investigation of the feasibility of developing uniform water recycling criteria for direct potable reuse.
15)Delineates advanced treatment criteria for oxidized wastewater. (CCR, Title 22, §60320.201)
This bill: authorizes the distribution of advanced purified demonstration water for educational purposes and the promotion of recycled water. Specifically, this bill:
1)Authorizes the operator of an advanced water purification facility (facility) to bottle (up to eight ounces) and distribute the water if it meets or exceeds all federal and state drinking water standards and goals.
2)Establishes bottling and labeling requirements.
3)Prohibits a facility from bottling more than 1,000 gallons of water per calendar year.
4)Requires the facility operator to establish a collection and recycling program for distributed bottles.
5)Specifies that a violation of these provisions does not constitute a crime, but clarifies that the bill does not exempt a facility from any federal standard for bottling water.
Background
1)Recycled water: Water recycling is reusing treated wastewater for direct beneficial or controlled purposes, such as for agricultural and landscape irrigation, industrial processes, toilet flushing, and replenishing groundwater basins. According the US EPA, recycled water can satisfy most water demands, as long as it is adequately treated to ensure water quality appropriate for the use. In addition to providing a dependable, locallycontrolled water supply, water recycling can provide environmental benefits. By providing an additional source of water, water recycling can decrease the diversion of water from sensitive ecosystems. Other benefits include decreasing wastewater discharges and reducing and preventing pollution. Recycled water can also be used to create or enhance wetlands and riparian habitats.
2)State water recycling policy: In 2009, the SWRCB adopted Resolution No. 2009-0011 to update the state's water recycling policy. This state policy includes the goal of increasing the use of recycled water in the state over 2002 levels by at least 1 million acre feet per year by 2020 and by at least 2 million acre feet per year by 2030. State law recognizes that the use of recycled water for indirect potable reuse is critical to achieving the SWRCB’s goals for increased use of recycled water for the state. State law also declares that the achievement of the state's goals depends on the timely development of uniform statewide recycling criteria for indirect and direct potable water reuse. State law states that although there has been much scientific research on public health issues associated with indirect potable reuse through groundwater recharge, there are a number of significant unanswered questions regarding indirect potable reuse through surface water augmentation and direct potable reuse.
3)Recent legislative and regulatory action on recycled water in California: SB 918 (Pavley, Chapter 700, Statutes of 2010) revised the state's approach to regulating recycled water by requiring DPH to establish uniform statewide recycling criteria for each use of recycled water where the use involves the protection of public health. In 2014, all authority and responsibility for the state's drinking water programs were transferred from DPH to SWRCB, including the recycled water program (Health and Safety Code §1116271).
SB 918 requires SWRCB(formerly DPH) to take action on three uses of recycled water. First, it required the SWRCB, by December 31, 2013, to adopt uniform recycled water criteria for indirect potable reuse for groundwater recharge. The SWRCB has developed uniform regulations authorizing the use of highly treated wastewater for groundwater recharge, if specified requirements are met, including a requirement that the treated wastewater must have a residence time in the ground of at least two months, before reaching drinking water intake pumps. These regulations went into effect on June 18, 2014.
Second, SB 918 requires the SWRCB, by December 31, 2016, to develop and adopt uniform water recycling criteria for surface water augmentation. The law also requires SWRCB to convene and administer an expert panel to advise it on public health, scientific, and technical matters regarding the development of uniform water recycling criteria for indirect potable reuse through surface water augmentation. The SWRCB reports that it is currently working with the expert panel and it is developing regulations for surface water augmentation with recycled water. It is on target to adopt these regulations by December 31, 2016.
Finally, SB 918, and later SB 322 (Hueso, Chapter 637, Statutes of 2013), require SWRCB, by December 31, 2016, to investigate and report to the Legislature on the feasibility of developing uniform water recycling criteria for direct potable reuse. Statute requires SWRCB to examine specific information, including the availability and reliability of recycled water treatment technologies necessary to ensure the protection of public health; barriers and treatment processes that may be appropriate at wastewater and water treatment facilities; available information on health effects; mechanisms that should be employed to protect public health if problems are found in recycled water that is being served to the public as a potable water supply; and, monitoring needed to ensure protection of public health. The law also requires SWRCB to convene and administer an expert panel to advise in the investigation of the feasibility of developing uniform water recycling criteria for direct potable reuse.
SWRCB has convened and is currently working with the expert panel, and expects to release the required report on direct potable reuse of recycled water by December 31, 2016. There is some concern about allowing the bottling and direct drinking of treated recycled water prior to the release of the SWRCB’s report on the safety of the direct potable reuse of recycled water.
4)Recycled water for direct consumption: In California, SWRCB’sDivision of Drinking Water (DDW), in conjunction with the appropriate Regional Water Quality Control Boards, which are the permitting authorities, are responsible for evaluating the treatment, production, distribution, and use of recycled water. DDW does not regulate public consumption of treated recycled water from projects that do not meet the definition of a public water system per CCR, Title 22, Section 64400. The SWRCB has not approved the use of any recycled water, including advanced purified drinking water, for direct potable reuse. The US EPA does not have regulations for treating wastewater to drinking water quality; they leave it up to the states to do so.
While the SWRCB does regulate recycled water, it does not regulate bottled water or vended water -- these are regulated as food by DPH's Food and Drug Branch. It is unclear how bottled advanced purified drinking water would be regulated under the California bottled water law.
5)Concerns about recycled water for direct consumption: While recycled water has potential for providing solutions for the state's limited water resources, recycled water regulations are currently being developed and potential human health impacts of the direct consumption of recycled water are being studied. Numerous contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products (antibacterial soaps, sunscreen, bath gels, etc.), flame retardants, and other constituents of emerging concern, are more likely to be present in municipal wastewater than in other water sources. Although they typically exist in small concentrations, there is growing concern about the impact of constituents of emerging concern, and other unregulated compounds, on public health and the environment. Since there are currently no state or federal drinking water standards for these constituents, allowing the direct consumption of treated recycled water, as opposed to consumption after a spatial or temporal buffer as is required with groundwater or surface water recharging, may be cause for caution.
6)Orange County Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS): Operational since January 2008, Orange County's GWRS is the world’s largest advanced water purification system for potable reuse, producing about 100 million gallons a day of highlypurified potable water. A joint project of the Orange County Water District and the Orange County Sanitation District (which are also jointly sponsoring this bill), the GWRS takes treated wastewater from the Orange County Sanitation District and treats it further using microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet light with hydrogen peroxide. According to the Orange County Water District, the product water is near-distilled-quality. Currently, roughly half of the purified water from the GWRS is injected into Orange County’s expanded seawater intrusion barrier. The remaining water is piped to percolation basins in Anaheim where the water filters through clay and rock into groundwater aquifers. There, the water blends with the existing groundwater before it is used as drinking water for northern and central Orange County residents.
Treated water samples are currently offered to visitors at the GWRS. The Orange County Water District states that while the advanced purified water that they produce meets or exceeds all state and federal drinking water standards, it still faces a tough battle with public perception. They argue that the sampling of advanced purified water is seen as one of the most effective ways of educating policymakers and members of the community about the safe purification process for this growing source of water supply. They contend that public understanding of the purity of this water is seen as a key requirement for more widespread acceptance of potable reuse in California.
Comments
1)Purpose of Bill. According to the author, with the use of advanced water purification technology, billions of gallons of water that would otherwise be wasted and sent to the ocean can be reused as a safe and reliable source of new precipitation-independent water to help fulfill California’s ever-growing demand. Currently, only someone visiting a facility may sample the water.
This bill allows the bottling of small amounts of advanced purified water to expand educational opportunities to Californians who don’t have the opportunity or means to visit facilities. According to the author, this water will not be sold; instead, it will be used to demonstrate to a broader audience the cutting-edge technology used to purify wastewater to near-distilled water quality.
2)Analyzing and preparing for the unanticipated. Both the federal and state Safe Drinking Water Acts are structured to set standards for known contaminants that impact source waters– not emerging issues. Recycling water creates a new issue. Recycled water is wastewater that goes back into productive use. Waste water will have been far more likely if not definitely contaminated with constituents that do not have standards set in statute or regulation for treatment. For example, pharmaceutical constituents are still evading waste water and water recycling facilities from successful complete removal of all pharmaceutical constituents.
In an article published in the Washington Post on June 10, 2016, the author states that “For all the pathogens and chemicals monitored by the federal government to protect drinking water, a far broader universe of ‘emerging contaminants’ is going unregulated.”
The Environmental Protection Agency keeps tabs on scores of substances that have surfaced in water systems around the country, with the aim of restricting those that endanger public health. But partly because the rules that the agency must follow are complicated and contentious, officials have failed to successfully regulate any new contaminant in two decades.
Only once since the 1990s has the EPA come close to imposing a new standard — for perchlorate, a chemical found in explosives, road flares, rocket fuel and, it turns out, the drinking water of over 16 million people.
The years of inaction, critics say, have left many Americans at potential risk from substances that few even realize might be in their water in the first place.”
Recycled water may exacerbate this situation because these emerging contaminants are completely unregulated at this point.
In a recent study published inEnvironmental Science & Technology researchers found that anticonvulsive epilepsy drug carbamazepine, which is released in urine, can accumulate in crops irrigated with recycled water and end up in theurineof produce-eaters not on the drugs. The study validates the long-held suspicion that pharmaceuticals may get trapped in infinite urine to food to urine loops, exposing consumers to drug doses with unknown health effects.
While the amounts of the drug in the patients’ urine were four orders of magnitude lower than what is seen in the urine of patients purposefully taking the drugs, researchers speculate that the trace amounts could still have health effects in some people, such asthosewith a genetic sensitivity to the drugs, pregnant women, children, and those who eat a lot of produce, such as vegetarians. And with the growing practice of reclaiming wastewater for crop irrigation—particularly in places that face water shortages such as California, Israel, and Spain—the produce contamination could become more common and more potent, the authors argue.