Yesterday you received a message from us about Assembly Member Cunningham's AB 554 that passed out of the Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee! CalDesal urges you to support AB554. Listed below is more information to support AB554.
AB 554 is California State wide policy bill to establish a goal to desalinate 300,000 acre-feet of water a year by 2025 and 500,000 AFY by 2030.
The Water, Parks and Wildlife committee reviewed the bill on Tuesday and on a vote of 9 Yes, 3 No, and 3 abstain - the bill was to be moved on to the Assembly floor, but will be sent to a committee.
Assembly Members who voted: (Party and District)
- Yes - Chair Garcia (D-56), Rubio (D-48), Salas (D-32), Chu (D-25), Vice-Chair Gallagher (R-3), Begelow (R-5), Choi (R-68), Harper (R-74), Mathis (R-26)
- No - Gomez (D-51), Levine (D-10), Thurmond (D-15)
- Abstain - Friedman (D-43), Gloria (D-78), Wood (D-2)
As mentioned CalDesal strongly supports this bill, and Executive Director Paul Kelley sat with Assembly Member Cunningham to provide the primary support testimony and CalDesal's Legislative Advocate Ron Davis also provided support testimony after working with the author's office for the past few weeks in support of the bill.
We have heard that the bill will be sent to the Appropriations Committee even though it has no fiscal impact - we are waiting for a hearing date.
This bill will need your support. This bill was set very early for a committee hearing, so we weren't able to get a lot of letters from our members, but now we have a chance to get more support letters in.
Please send a support letter to Assembly Member Cunningham's office for his use at the next level. Please try to send in your letter as soon as possible.
Advocacy points:
- A Statewide Desalination Goal is good policy and is consistent with Governor Brown's CA Water Action Plan that recognizes ocean and brackish water desalination as important options for diversified water supply portfolio.
- Ocean Desal projects will comply with the 2015 State Board adopted Ocean plan amendments - and therefore they will be the most environmentally protective projects in the world.
- Brackish water clean up using desalination provides communities with local drought resilient supplies and is a tool to help regions meet the requirements of Salt and Nutrient Management plans.
To access the actual bill use this link:
Thank you,
Executive Director
CalDesal
