It always starts in California. That’s true of many of society’s trends.

But those involved in water treatment also look to the Golden State as a leader, foretelling what could happen in other places. People in the industry say regulators in many other states have continued to get their cues from California’s state and local regulatory activity.

Could what happens in California also affect your state?

California matters, because it’s the most populous state, with more than 37 million people, or 12 percent of the US total. It has three of the nation’s 10 most-populous cities (Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose). It also has a diverse natural landscape, one of the world’s largest economies and very active environmental and consumer watchdog groups.

One of the most-watched California issues is salinity. As this issue of Water Technology^® went to press, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was considering signing a new state law, known as AB 1366, that would give local water and wastewater agencies more power to ban salt-regenerated residential water softeners.

Multiple issues
Salinity is not the only issue there. California is also known for its aggressive regulatory approach in other areas that affect — pro and con — water treatment dealers, distributors and manufacturers.

Among them:
• Drinking water contaminants: California is often a leader in contaminant regulation, setting or recommending maximum contaminant levels for public water systems, levels that are more restrictive than those set by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and by all but a handful of other states.

• Product certification: California requires state certification of drinking water treatment devices that make health-related performance claims. Although it is starting to accept third-party certifications as equivalents, it still requires that manufacturers go through a state application process.

• Consumer laws: One California regulation allows a three-day cancellation period, at no cost to the consumer, following the signing of a purchase contract for household products worth $25 or more if they are sold at a home or otherwise outside the vendor’s place of business.

• Water reuse: Californians point with pride to various facilities they have built or are planning to treat and recycle wastewater or “gray water” and send it back into groundwater reservoirs. It’s becoming a necessity in the water-short state. It’s both a challenge and opportunity for the water treatment industry, which can provide reuse technologies but must also consider what those devices are discharging into wastewater.

Any water treatment company doing business in California can probably cite other examples.

“The laws here are very strict,” says Bart Richey, co-owner of B&D Quality Water, Inc., a dealership and RainSoft distributor based in Fresno, CA. “Other RainSoft dealers [outside California] have told me they couldn’t be in business if they had to do business in California.”

Richey adds, “It’s a very consumer-oriented, environmental-oriented state.” Using the salinity issue as an example, he says, “There are other states waiting to see what happens.”

Salinity is on everyone’s front burner now. “Salt discharge will be the issue that pushes east from California,” says Sam Karge, global director of marketing for Pentair Residential Filtration, the Milwaukee-based manufacturer, and chair of the WQA’s Government Relations Committee.

Outside looking in
One regulator outside California is Lori McDaniel, environmental program supervisor for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (IDNR), that state’s water quality agency.

Iowa is now going through the approval process for its own new salinity discharge regulation. McDaniel says regulators from other places, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Canada have been watching what happens in Iowa and in California.

David Loveday, government affairs director for the Water Quality Association (WQA), said Iowans have told WQA that “30 or 40 other states” are watching the California and Iowa situations closely. Peter Censky, WQA’s executive director, also said, “There was reference in Iowa to the Santa Clarita (CA) situation.”

(In Santa Clarita, residents in a local referendum last year voted for a softener ban, in large part based on statements from their wastewater agency that failure to ban softeners would require building new wastewater treatment plants at high cost to taxpayers. Agency officials then said after the vote that they would probably have to build the new plants anyway.)

Science a big factor
Iowa is an example of how other states, as they develop their own rules, don’t have to mimic California.One complaint from the industry about the new push to ban softeners in California has been that recent proposed legislation there hasn’t required local water/wastewater agencies to generate a sufficient scientific basis for banning softening.

McDaniel, the Iowa environmental official, says her state did an extensive review of scientific literature as well as its own tests to come up with proposed maximum levels for chlorides and sulfates. The main goal was to protect aquatic life downstream from wastewater plants.

“The positive feedback we have received from the regulated community is that it’s scientifically based. They really appreciated that,” McDaniel says.

The Iowa proposal takes into account the fact that water in many parts of Iowa is very hard and that chloride and sulfate toxicity varies with hardness.

WQA’s Loveday says one positive feature of the Iowa proposal is that it is site-specific: A wastewater agency having trouble meeting the new chloride or sulfate standards would have site-specific water tests conducted, and the state would then come up with a management plan for that area. He says Iowa officials were also flexible and appreciated input from the industry.

Karge says of the Iowa process, “They’re not out there to villainize softeners yet.”

The Iowa Environmental Commission was to rule on the proposal by mid-September; if approved there, it was to go to the state legislature for enactment.

Fight will go on
The Iowa example may be an alternative to what appears to be the “one size fits all” approach California is taking to chloride/salinity issues and perhaps others. The most recent California bill, AB 1366, was modified from what the WQA’s Censky calls the “extraordinarily bad” original bill sent to the legislature. He says that bill allows local agencies seeking softener bans to sidestep scientific studies and local referenda, as previous law had required.

With input from the industry, Censky says, legislators were persuaded to include language (but not requirements) in AB 1366’s text referring to more efficient softener equipment. Another modification requires that an agency proposing a softener ban must go through a formal public hearing process.

Still, Censky says, “It’s not a perfect solution, not by a long shot.” If the bill becomes law, he says, the industry will seek further modifications next year. He says there is some consolation in the fact that “most of the other states we’ve talked to say they’re not going to go as far as AB 1366.”

Censky says further of California: “All of these issues are not new. They’ve been lying below the radar. But with the new administration in Washington, there’s a sense that the regulatory environment is becoming more active everywhere.”

Another California issue that has challenged the industry this year, he points out, is its attempt to create new lead-content standards for drinking water system components, to supersede earlier requirements.

Drought a big driver
The professional lobbyist in Sacramento for the WQA, the Pacific Water Quality Association (PWQA) and the state groundwater association is Pete Conaty, of Pete Conaty & Associates. In a September interview, he preferred not to comment about still-undecided issues, but he had some observations about water regulation in California generally.

“Driving everything having to do with water in California is the drought,” he said. “The water in the earth here in many places is very high in salinity already. And I think it’s driving things toward heavier-handed environmental regulation.”

In states to the east, Conaty predicts that carbon footprint and greenhouse-gas issues will increasingly have an impact.

Experience tells Conaty that small businesses in any state can affect legislation by banding together and making their case. He also thinks businesses can have an impact in the post-legislative stage, when regulatory agencies draw up specific rules to implement laws.

Bad time for a heavy hand
For Southern California dealer Greg Hudson, president of RainSoft of the Southland, based in Victorville, CA, this is the wrong time for California or any other state to lay on a heavy regulatory hand, because of the sour economy.

The public’s greater reluctance to spend money in the recession combined with the softener ban in Santa Clarita this year sent Hudson’s company through a major downsizing, from 85 employees down to 35. The company had been doing softener sales in Santa Clarita, but no longer. Now it’s limited to service work there, or sale of non-softener equipment.

Hudson believes things now are looking up for his company, mainly due to the growing consumer belief that if they still have a job now, layoffs may be over and they can start spending again. “We’re now back up in the 40s [in number of employees], and I have hiring ads in the paper,” he says.

The softener ban irks Hudson for more reasons than just its impact on his bottom line. Those include his view that softeners are a truly “green” technology (by reducing soap, water and energy usage), and that some sellers will try to “scam” people into buying unproven products to replace softeners.

One upside of doing business in California, Hudson says, is that it’s a health-conscious state where people will ask for technologies that improve their water and attack emerging contaminants. Still, he has this observation:

“Every time the federal government passes a new law, California comes in and makes it just a little tougher.”