(a) Lead-acid battery fees collected pursuant to this article shall be managed as follows:
(1) The board shall retain moneys necessary for the payment of refunds and reimbursement of the board for expenses in the collection of the fees.
(2) The remaining moneys shall be deposited into the Lead-Acid Battery Cleanup Fund, which is hereby created in the State Treasury, and is available upon appropriation by the Legislature to the department for the purposes specified in this section.
(b) (1) Moneys in the Lead-Acid Battery Cleanup Fund shall be expended for the following activities:
(A) Investigation, site evaluation, cleanup, remedial action, removal, monitoring, or other response actions at any area of the state that is reasonably suspected to have been contaminated by the operation of a lead-acid battery recycling facility.
(B) Administration of the Lead-Acid Battery Cleanup Fund and the department’s administration and implementation of this article.
(C) Repayment of a loan described in Section 25215.59 that was made before the effective date of the act which added this section, or any other loan made for purposes set forth in subparagraph (A).
(2) Moneys in the Lead-Acid Battery Cleanup Fund shall not be used to implement Article 14 (commencing with Section 25251) with respect to lead-acid batteries or to loan moneys to any other program.
(c) The department shall report to the Legislature by February 1, 2018, and annually thereafter, on the status of the Lead-Acid Battery Cleanup Fund and on the department’s progress implementing this article, including, but not limited to, the sites at which actions were performed using moneys from the fund, the status of cleanup at those sites, including total anticipated costs of cleanup at those sites, the balance of the fund, the amount of fees remitted to the fund, the amount spent by the fund and the purposes for which those amounts were spent, the amounts reimbursed to the board pursuant to paragraph (1) of subdivision (a), and any other information requested by the Legislature.
(Repealed (in Sec. 2) and added by Stats. 2016, Ch. 666, Sec. 1. (AB 2153) Effective September 26, 2016. Section operative January 1, 2017, pursuant to Section 25215.75.)
Last modified: October 25, 2018