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California's Existing Graywater Law: AB3518 |
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Written by Editor •
Thursday, 26 February 2009 11:27
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AB3518 was unanimously passed by the Assembly and Senate and became California’s greywater irrigation law. The rules went into effect in 1994.
Water Code Section 14875 et seq AB3518 directed DWR, in consultation with DHS, to write a code for safe greywater “use”, versus disposal as found in Appendix W, which had been sent by Fady Mattar, then Director of Standards for IAPMO, to IAPMO’s full body to be considered for adoption into the UPC as an appendix. With AB3518, Heavyweight Calif. had broken through IAPMO’s stranglehold on California’s plumbing code.
AB3518 recognized greywater was a valuable resource and was written for the use, not disposal, of this very valuable resource. Larry Farwell, the motive force behind the SB greywater law change, is hired by the State DWR to help write the code. He was asked to apply his greywater advocacy at the state level.
Details:
* After consulting with attorneys at the Legislative Counsel, it was determined the logical place to put the new law was in the Water Code, so it directed DWR to be the agency to write the subsequent code as an amendment to the California Plumbing Code, so that code could be placed in the California Plumbing Code as an appendix, which every city and county has a copy of.
* AB3518 specifically delegated the permitting authority for greywater reuse systems installed per that code to the city or county in which the system would be installed. That portion of the enabling legislation is now codified in law as Water Code Section 14877.2.
* The law specifically included a prohibition on anyone restricting the Code without first having a public hearing on the matter, then a finding of a compelling local reason for that restriction, and then an ordinance approving the proposed restriction had to be passed by the City Council or Board of Supervisors in the jurisdiction over those systems. This prohibition of the enabling legislation is now codified as Water Code Section 14877.3.
* Also participating in that Code-writing process were numerous state agencies including DWR and DHS, State Water Resources Control Board, California Water Commission, and California Building Standards Commission, and the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO), which writes the Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC) that is the model plumbing code for 17 states including California.
* Changing IAPMO’s code was not what was happening through California’s greywater Code-writing process. Rather, the state was amending its own code, which was only modeled after IAPMO’s code.
* IAPMO’s code at that time prohibited any greywater use. DWR had ample evidence that California had a need for greywater use, and California had every right to change its own code to allow greywater use. DWR provided IAPMO with many examples where California had previously amended the state code for other compelling reasons.
* Also participating in the Code-writing process were several environmental health organizations including the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health, and California Association of Directors of Environmental Health; numerous individual county health directors including the Director of the San Diego County Department of Environmental Health (DEH); California Association of Building Officials; Association of California Water Agencies; WateReuse Association; the City of Los Angeles; League of Cities; California Chamber of Commerce; several environmental groups including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council; California Landscape Contractors Association; several irrigation manufacturing companies including Netafim, a large Israeli drip irrigation company, and what is now the world’s largest irrigation equipment manufacturer, Toro, and ReWater Systems, Inc.
* Collectively, those various entities and individuals provided over 535 studies on greywater from universities and public and private agencies all around the world over generations of research, as well as other scientific and technical data concerning but not limited to plumbing, soils and percolation rates, and irrigation systems. Those studies and data surely represented hundreds of thousands of man-hours and tens of millions of dollars in research. DWR and DHS relied on and publicly referred to those studies and data as they drafted the Code, held hearings, and revised the Code numerous times before the final draft of the Code was settled on by virtually all parties.
* The science showed that by far the most common misconception about and thus bias against greywater, a misconception and bias that was constantly being repeated and demonstrated by only a handful of county environmental health regulators, was that greywater has virtually the same pathogenic characteristics as raw sewage and thus is nearly as dangerous to society as sewage.
* All the studies on greywater presented during that process that excluded kitchen water from greywater showed that kitchen-free greywater does not have nearly the same type or quantity of pathogenic characteristics as raw sewage.
* The Code is extremely comprehensive. It has numerous mechanical requirements, starting with the entire Uniform Plumbing Code (UPC) applying to the construction of the plumbing, except as allowed by minor additions right at the greywater filter itself. The Code requires and describes a collection system and filter, a distribution system and methods, the property criteria and soil types allowed, and mitigates every real concern that anyone in the wide range of interested parties in the Code-writing process could think of.
* In the order in which the Code is written, the Code explains that: greywater is for subsurface irrigation only; the building’s fresh water supply must be protected by an air gap or Reverse Pressure Principle Device; no surfacing of graywater is its intent; the permit applicant’s local plumbing code remains the same except as hereby altered; all connected graywater is discharged into subsurface drip irrigation fields; the entire greywater system is confined to the property underlying the discharging building; a plot plan must be submitted to the inspector; no inappropriate soil conditions are allowed; no part of the system can be located in a geologically sensitive area; appropriate clearances have been met per Table G-1; the building must have a sewer disposal system; an operation and maintenance manual must be provided to the system owner by the manufacturer; the inspector must supply copy of the Code to the permit applicant.
* The Code refers to the UPC, which states that the permit “shall” be issued if the criteria are met., and the Code states that “the greywater system shall discharge into subsurface irrigation fields”. Greywater irrigation in California is not a luxury to be allowed if an inspector likes the idea. It is a right to be exercised by anybody in the state that has a legal system and legal place to use it.
* AB3518 had resulted in California’s 13-page single-family residential greywater irrigation code, originally named Appendix J of the of the California Plumbing Code, later administratively renamed by the California Building Standards Commission as Appendix G of the California Plumbing Code .
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