We need your help! In the last week of the legislative session, polluters may be getting a big gift if last minute legislation is not amended.

Californians can look forward to hazardous waste being “left in place” instead of removed and sent to specially constructed and licensed facilities under last minute amendments to Speaker John Perez’s Assembly Bill 1330. The legislation now calls for meeting environmental targets by “reducing the disposal of hazardous waste.”

That’s like “cleaning up” Prince William Sound by letting Exxon leave oil in the Bay.

Will you help us stop this outrageous power grab by polluters by calling on your legislators for amendments today?

The toxic amendment appears to be the brain child of polluters and Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) Director Debbie Raphael. The DTSC has been the subject of whistleblower and consumer complaints that it is falling down on the job, but the last minute amendments would let polluters have a pass on cleaning up their pollution. Among the beneficiaries are Boeing, Chevron, KB Homes, Lockheed Martin and Waste Management, all prolific donors in Sacramento.

No doubt major industry players from Boeing – with its radioactively contaminated Simi Valley land – to KB Homes – and their plans to build on radioactive sites next to industrial factories without adequate clean up, are rubbing their hands together. This legislation disposes of the need for disposal, saving them millions of dollars and making official what the DTSC has already been quietly sanctioning.

Waste that is not removed continues to expose the public to toxins via different pathways from breathing it in to ingesting it through food or water.

Please take a minute to weigh in with your state lawmakers and stop this power grab by polluters.

Posted by Liza Tucker, Consumer Advocate and Author of the Golden Wasteland Report. For more information on Consumer Watchdog and our Toxics Watchdog project, follow us online on Facebook and Twitter.

I haven’t done my random bill blogging for a while, so I fired up the ol’ (and by ol’, I mean circa 1996) Senate website.  I tried to be as random as I could be and chose 1279.  Of course, that was too high to get a Senate bill, so I was stuck with only one choice: AB 1279 by Assembly  member Bill Monning (D-Monterey).

AB 1279 is a short bill.  So short, in fact, that it is likely just a placeholder bill for a program to be later defined.  Here’s the entirety of it as it currently stands:

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

 SECTION 1.  It is the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation that would fund salmon restoration projects.

I suppose I agree with the merits of the sentence, despite any issues with the budget.  Both the environmental and financial impacts of the death of the salmon are enormous. So, go salmon restoration.

If anything, I suppose this can be a testament on some legislative principles. First, there’s the gut and amend process.  Basically this allows one house to pass an innocuous measure like this, and then either stick in a real bill in its place on the subject matter at hand or an entirely new bill. It’s not necessarily the most transparent process, and shouldn’t be used on a regular basis.  However, it can be used to help with some important legislation.  Marriage equality comes to mind.  When the Assembly did not have the votes to pass then Asm. Leno’s marriage equality bill, a bill passed by Asm. Yee was gutted on the Senate side and replaced with the civil marriage language.

While this could, in theory, be a holding bill for some legislation to be passed in the normal course of business, the bill deadline for all policy committees in the Legislature to pass out bills that will have a fiscal impact on the state is this Friday.  If Asm. Monning really wants to fund salmon restoration, he would need a real bill pronto.