For Immediate Release April 3, 2001

Contact: Gino DiCaro 916-498-3347

Stormwater Bill Proposes Superfluous Costs and Requirements
With Little or No Environmental Benefit

Sacramento, CA - After Senator Sheila Kuehl’s stormwater bill (SB 72) passed out of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee yesterday by a 5 – 1 vote, the California Manufacturers & Technology Association listed the bill as one of the most onerous and wasteful bills of this year’s regular legislative session.

SB 72 would replace existing stormwater monitoring programs with a one-size-fits-all program that ignores the environmental benefits of facility specific requirements and presumes that more data from already regulated industrial facilities will result in better environmental protection.

“As California businesses navigate the volatile waters of the energy crisis, this stormwater bill, without any significant improvements to water quality, brings a new and unnecessary darkness to the state’s slowing economy,” said CMTA President, Jack M. Stewart.

Among the many CMTA concerns are:

• a two hundred percent increase in the average annual sampling frequency;a
• minimum list of constituents that must be included in each sampling event in perpetuity, even if some are never detected in the facility’s stormwater;
  
• unneccessary sampling of raw materials, process streams and finished producsts;
  
• an arbitrary prohibition of Group Monitoring Plans (GMPs); and,
  
• additional costs on a small segment of the sources contributing to stormwater runoff.

“CMTA’s members view stormwater regulation as an important element of California’s water quality control program, but it is clear that the state already has sufficient existing stormwater requirements for regulated industrial facilities and this bill will only add to the cost of doing business without improving water quality,” added Stewart.

SB 72 moves to the Senate Appropriations Committee next where CMTA and its members will aggressively oppose the bill.

###