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Assemblymember Janet Nguyen is proud to announce that Assembly Bill 1658 has been signed by the Governor. AB 1658 encourages local authorities to develop an oil spill response plan that is consistent with both state and federal oil spill plans. Currently there is no statue that encourage local authorities to develop an oil contingency plan, only requirements on a state and federal level.
“I am very pleased that the Governor agrees that encouraging local jurisdictions to develop an oil spill contingency plan is an important piece to an oil spill response.” Said Assemblymember Janet Nguyen. “With local authorities having a current or updated contingency plan in place will allow for a more swift response to an oil spill incident.”
On October 1, 2021, an oil-related incident, resulting from an anchor-damaged pipeline, caused 25,000 gallon of crude oil to leak into the coastal waters near the City of Huntington Beach. During this time, it was clear that the different beach cities, county, state and federal authorities had no plans or different plans on how to respond. This created confusion in addressing the spill.
“During the October 1st spill, there were so many different agencies and local governments working to address the spill but there wasn’t any consistency in the process” said Assemblymember Janet Nguyen. “AB 1658 will encourage local authorities to develop their own plans that are consistent with state and federal plans which will make addressing these spills more organized with everyone on the same page working together.”
In addition to AB 1658, Assemblymember Janet Nguyen also introduced three other bills as part of her oil spill response package. AB 1657 related to oil spill reporting, AJR 24 related to unified command centers and AJR 25 related to the regulation of vessel anchorages.
Assemblymember Janet Nguyen was also appointed to be a member of the Select Committee on the Orange County Oil Spill where she participated in two separate oversight hearings to seek solutions for preventing future oil spills from occurring.
