S-3831

AN ACT Relating to environmental strategies; adding a new chapter to Title 43 RCW; creating new sections; and providing an expiration date.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:

NEW SECTION. Sec. 1. LEGISLATIVE FINDINGS AND PURPOSE. (1) The legislature makes the following findings:

(a) The Washington environment 2010 project identified several priority environmental threats that must be addressed to maintain and improve the state's environmental quality over the next twenty years;

(b) The action agenda of the environment 2010 project noted that the traditional methods of environmental regulation, commonly described as the "command and control" approach of pollutant source regulation, is unlikely to be adequate alone to address the magnitude and nature of environmental problems facing the state in the future;

(c) New environmental quality strategies including pollution prevention, consumer education, market incentives for pollutant discharge reduction, and comprehensive cross-media regulation hold great promise to achieve equal or greater environmental protection as traditional strategies at comparable or reduced societal costs;

(d) However, implementing these new strategies has been limited by lack of environmental quality data to assist in evaluating their success and they are often forced to compete for limited public funds already devoted to programs employing traditional strategies;

(e) An additional limitation is the delegation of administration of federal environmental programs to the state for which adherence to the traditional "command and control" strategies is a condition of maintaining the delegated authority;

(f) Moreover, there is often a great disparity of funding among the existing environmental protection programs when compared with the potential benefits to protection of the public health and the environment of each program, resulting in part from the lack of a comprehensive development of environmental policies over the past twenty years and more;

(g) The availability of public funds for environmental protection is likely to continue to be less than overall needs for the foreseeable future, and therefore it is vitally important that existing fiscal resources be devoted to those environmental issues posing the greatest risks to the state;

(h) The environment 2010 project found that many environmental threats are the cumulative effect of many actions of individuals that considered in isolation would appear to have minimal environmental impact, and therefore new environmental quality strategies should be particularly directed at these diverse sources of environmental degradation.

(2) The purpose of this chapter is:

(a) To use the information learned in the Washington Environment 2010 project in an analysis of existing state environmental programs and the ability of such programs to address the state's future environmental quality problems;

(b) To develop new environmental strategies that will achieve greater environmental protection with greater efficiency in fiscal resources, both public and private;

(c) To assess the allocation of existing fiscal resources for environmental programs in light of the relative magnitude of environmental threats addressed by such programs, and to take action through budgetary and other processes to apply relatively greater fiscal resources to those problems presenting greater threats; and

(d) To improve environmental monitoring and data management for use in administering environmental programs and in making policy decisions, and to determine environmental trends in the state over time.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 2. COMMISSION ON ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGIES CREATED. (1) There is created a temporary commission to be known as the commission on environmental strategies.

(2) The commission shall consist of twelve members as follows:

(a) Four members appointed by the governor as representatives of business and industry, agriculture, local government, and environmental organizations;

(b) Four members appointed jointly by the president of the senate and the speaker of the house of representatives as representatives of business and industry, agriculture, local government, and environmental organizations; and

(c) One representative from each of the four legislative caucuses to be appointed by the president of the senate and the speaker of the house of representatives.

(3) The appointments made under subsection (2) of this section should reflect a balance of interests and a balance of geographical representation across the state. In making the appointments there should be consideration of the interests of small business, landowners, and citizens' organizations for ecological protection as well as protection of human health.

(4) The chair and vice-chair shall be selected by the commission at its first meeting, which shall be called by the governor within sixty days of the effective date of this act.

(5) A representative of the governor's office and the department of ecology or their designee shall serve as nonvoting members of the commission. A representative of the United States environmental protection agency shall also be invited to serve on the commission as a nonvoting member. The governor's office representative shall provide for the participation of representatives of other state agencies as nonvoting members whenever the commission considers programs or subjects related to those agencies.

(6) The commission may create such subcommittees and advisory bodies for technical, fiscal, or other expertise as will facilitate the commission's performance of its duties.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 3. COMMISSION DUTIES. The commission shall develop recommendations for legislative and executive consideration and implementation that will:

(1) Increase the reliance upon environmental strategies that emphasize market incentives, pollution prevention, public education, and technical assistance;

(2) Reduce inefficiency, duplication, and inconsistency in program implementation by local, state, and federal agencies;

(3) Improve the relationship of the state's environmental and growth management programs to achieve mutually reinforcing goals and objectives;

(4) Ensure that the relative priority of environmental threats to the state is a central consideration in the development of state operating and capital budgets for environmental programs;

(5) Achieve a uniform, consistent, and high-quality assessment of the state's environmental quality and management of the data relating to environmental quality, and establish a system to assess state-wide environmental trends over time to assist in developing policies and budgets; and

(6) Reduce or eliminate environmental programs or activities that do not provide a substantial contribution to maintaining the state's environmental quality.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 4. RELIANCE UPON ALTERNATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGIES. (1) In conducting its duties relating to increasing reliance upon alternative environmental strategies, the commission shall review existing environmental programs in the state of Washington, to assess their capability to address the environmental threats anticipated in the state over the next twenty years as identified in existing reports such as the environment 2010 report. The commission shall further review and make specific recommendations for legislative and administrative action to implement supplemental methods to improve environmental protection in a cost-efficient manner, considering both public and private costs. Examples which the commission may consider include, but are not limited to:

(a) Market incentives, such as marketable permits, effluent charges, and auctions of emission allowances;

(b) Consolidated permits that integrate two or more existing permit requirements for a single land use or activity, including the effectiveness of existing procedures under chapter 90.62 RCW;

(c) Expansion of bubble and offset policies where allowed in existing programs, and extension of such policies to other programs;

(d) Pollution prevention programs;

(e) Increased public and consumer education to achieve voluntary actions where cumulative impacts of numerous activities make traditional regulatory methods not practical;

(f) Reduced permit requirements for closed-loop industrial processes;

(g) Greater reliance upon technical assistance to regulated entities to achieve compliance with reduced reliance upon enforcement.

(2) Where the commission determines that a pilot project may be implemented without further legislative action, the commission may recommend the project to the appropriate state agency director.

(3) In conducting its review under this section the commission shall identify obstacles to implementing recommended alternative environmental strategies due to federal law constraints, and shall make recommendations on methods to obtain necessary federal approvals to remove the obstacles.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 5. BUDGETS AND FUNDING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMS. (1) The commission shall review the relative risk of those environmental threats addressed by existing state programs, and compare this risk with the relative levels of fiscal resources committed in the operating and capital budgets of the programs. In determining the relative risk the commission may rely upon existing reports such as those prepared under the Washington environment 2010 project and other reports prepared by the department of ecology and the United States environmental protection agency. The commission shall make recommendations on existing and future budgetary levels to achieve greater total risk reduction when considering all environmental threats addressed by state programs.

(2) The commission shall also review and make recommendations for changes in budget development procedures within state agencies and the office of financial management to achieve greater consistency of budgetary levels with the relative risk from environmental threats. For this purpose the commission shall review the restrictions within existing dedicated fund sources for environmental programs and make recommendations for changes to such funds for greater flexibility to address the most significant environmental threats.

(3) The commission shall analyze proposals for environmental trust funds and make recommendations regarding the creation of such a fund or funds for the purpose of providing comprehensive mechanisms to better address environmental threats as they change over time.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 6. REVIEW OF FEDERALLY DELEGATED PROGRAMS. The commission shall review those environmental programs administered by the state of Washington under delegation from the federal government and make recommendations to improve intergovernmental coordination, reduce duplicative administration, and increase federal financial assistance for program administration.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 7. ONGOING REVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMS. (1) The commission shall review and make recommendations on instituting a process of ongoing review by the legislature and the executive branch of environmental quality programs. The purpose of such review should be to ensure that state and local programs effectively address the state's environmental quality threats into the future and that ineffective or duplicative programs be modified or subject to sunset review.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 8. RELATIONSHIP OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY AND GROWTH MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS. (1) The commission shall review the state's environmental quality and growth management programs and make recommendations to ensure that they achieve mutually reinforcing goals and objectives and to reduce inconsistent requirements for land uses and other activities subject to both.

(2) As part of the review required by this section the commission shall make specific recommendations to achieve the consistent operation of the shoreline management act under chapter 90.58 RCW and the growth management act, and reduce duplicative requirements under those acts.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 9. ENVIRONMENTAL STATISTICS AND TRENDS. The commission shall review existing programs for the collection, maintenance, and dissemination of environmental quality data, and shall make recommendations for the creation of a single, state-wide, geographically based system for the maintenance of environmental quality data, statistics, and trends. The program should be designed to be administered by a single authority responsible for maintaining environmental quality information based upon raw monitoring and other data collected by other entities. The commission shall make recommendations on methodologies to establish and maintain trend analyses for environmental parameters that will be useful for program administration, policy development, environmental budgeting, and will be accessible by and understandable to the public. The recommended program should ensure high quality and objective data and analyses.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 10. COMMISSION WORKPLAN. By December 1, 1992, the commission shall submit a workplan to the legislative standing committees on the environment on carrying out the duties of this chapter during the three-year period of the commission's existence. The commission shall endeavor to set priorities under the workplan to complete and submit reports requiring legislative action to coincide with the commencement of the regular sessions of the legislature. Periodic reports of the commission's progress in completing the three-year workplan shall be provided to the legislative standing committees on the environment.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 11. COMPENSATION. Nonlegislative members of the commission shall be reimbursed for travel expenses for attending meetings of the commission or any commission subgroups as provided for in RCW 43.03.050 and 43.03.060. Legislative members shall be reimbursed for travel expenses for attending meetings of the commission as provided for in RCW 44.04.120.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 12. STAFF. The office of financial management and the legislature shall provide staff as required by the commission to conduct its duties under this chapter. All agencies of state and local government shall cooperate fully with the commission in carrying out its duties under this chapter, and to extent permitted by law shall provide all information requested by the commission.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 13. The commission may receive and spend gifts, grants, and endowments from private or nonstate sources to carry out the purposes of this chapter.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 14. The commission may contract for such services as are necessary to supplement the staff as provided in section 13 of this act.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 15. If specific funding for the purposes of this act, referencing this act by bill number, is not provided by June 30, 1992, in the supplemental omnibus appropriations act, this act shall be null and void.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 16. This act and the commission on environmental strategies shall expire June 30, 1995.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 17. Captions used in this act do not constitute part of the law.

NEW SECTION. Sec. 18. Sections 1 through 14, and 16 of this act shall constitute a new chapter in Title 43 RCW.