(a) Subject to an appropriation by the Legislature in the Budget Act of 2022 that implements a proposal to review the department‘s hazardous waste criteria, and as part of the department’s comprehensive evaluation of its criteria and guidelines for the identification of hazardous wastes and extremely hazardous wastes, the department shall include a review of its acute aquatic toxicity criterion.

(b) The department’s evaluation shall consider the continued value and necessity of the aquatic toxicity criterion, the threshold at which wastes are considered hazardous using the aquatic toxicity criterion, and the available test methods, including, but not limited to, calculation-based methods, with which a waste can be tested to determine whether it exhibits the criterion.

(c) Once the review is completed, in addition to any other output or deliverable contemplated by the department as a result of the efforts for which the appropriation has been made by the Legislature in the Budget Act of 2022, the department shall develop recommendations on next steps to consider related to the aquatic toxicity criterion, threshold, and test methods, as well as cost estimates to carry out those recommendations. The department shall incorporate its recommendations into the State Hazardous Waste Management Plan that the department is required to prepare and produce pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 25135.

(Added by Stats. 2022, Ch. 274, Sec. 1. (AB 1793) Effective January 1, 2023.)