Water Pollution Bill OKd by Panel

Legislation that would establish mandatory fines for coastal polluters cleared an Assembly committee Tuesday after the author made drastic last-minute changes to appease Los Angeles legislators on the panel.

The Assembly Ways and Means Committee passed by a 13-6 vote a measure by Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara) that would require local water quality control boards to impose fines on water polluters.

The bill would mandate fines of at least $100 a day for the duration of a “harmful” spill and would require boards to publicly justify their actions if lower fines are levied. Spills resulting from unavoidable circumstances such as natural disasters would not be subject to fines.

Current law sets only maximum fines against polluters.

“This bill is the result of my frustration with the regional water quality control boards not being tough enough, or not being tough at all. No penalties are being imposed at all in certain instances,” said Hart.

Hart said after the hearing that he reluctantly eliminated a controversial provision that would have mandated a minimum fine against polluters of $1 per gallon of spilled material. He said he made the change to win the votes of Los Angeles and San Diego Democrats who had been heavily lobbied to defeat the measure.

“The gallonage (issue) was made very significant due to the heavy lobbying effort by the sanitation districts,” Hart said. “It is now less than half a loaf, unfortunately, because we were forced to reduce whatever deterrent we had by more than half.”

Sanitation groups, including the Los Angeles County sanitation bureau, and state oil industry lobbyists had strongly protested the per-gallon fine. They said such a penalty could potentially result in fines of hundreds of millions of dollars for spills that often are mostly water.

“Recently one of our large agencies had an 8-million-gallon spill with little adverse impact,” said Mike Dillon of the California Assn. of Sanitary Agencies. “If this bill had been in effect, the fine would have been $8 million.”

Several opponents contended that the present system of cleanups and fines works well and--as one said--”if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But Hart replied, “If you take a look at Santa Monica Bay and some of the problems we’ve had with sewage and pollution, you can see it is broke. We need to send a clear and strong message to the agencies that are involved in polluting.”

The bill now goes to the Assembly floor.