California Health and Safety Code 116366 – (a) No public water system, or its customers, shall be …
(a) No public water system, or its customers, shall be responsible for remediation or treatment costs associated with MTBE, or a product that contains MTBE, provided, however, that the public water system shall be permitted as necessary to incur MTBE remediation and treatment costs and to include those costs in its customer rates and charges, necessary to comply with drinking water standards or directives of the State Department of Health Services or other lawful authority. Any public water system that incurs MTBE remediation or treatment costs may seek recovery of those costs from parties responsible for the MTBE contamination, or from other available alternative sources of funds.
(b) If the public water system has included the costs of MTBE treatment and remediation in its customer rates and charges, and subsequently recovers all or a portion of its MTBE treatment and remediation costs from responsible parties or other available alternative sources of funds, it shall make an adjustment to its schedule of rates and charges to reflect the amount of funding received from responsible parties or other available alternative sources of funds for MTBE treatment or remediation.
Terms Used In California Health and Safety Code 116366
- Department: means the state board. See California Health and Safety Code 116275
- Person: means an individual, corporation, company, association, partnership, limited liability company, municipality, public utility, or other public body or institution, including the United States to the extent authorized by federal law. See California Health and Safety Code 116275
- Public water system: means a system for the provision of water for human consumption through pipes or other constructed conveyances that has 15 or more service connections or regularly serves an average of at least 25 individuals daily at least 60 days out of the year. See California Health and Safety Code 116275
- State: means the State of California, unless applied to the different parts of the United States. See California Health and Safety Code 23
(c) Subdivision (a) shall not prevent the imposition of liability on any person for the discharge of MTBE if that liability is due to the conduct or status of that person independently of whether the person happens to be a customer of the public water system.
(Added by Stats. 1997, Ch. 816, Sec. 6. Effective January 1, 1998.)