August 27, 2026 · Emergency Management · 5,537 words · 4 speakers · 35 segments
Senate Emergency Management Committee will come to order. Good morning, all. If all members could come down to room 112, we can begin to establish a quorum. But for now, I think we're going to start as a subcommittee and just take presentation at the moment. And once we get some members, we'll start. So, Mr. Archuleta, you're first up. SB 804, file item number one. Welcome. At your leisure, please bring it to us.
Is the mic on? There we go. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair and members to follow. I'm pleased to present Senate Bill 804, the Hydrogen and Pipeline Safety Act, which is back on concurrence. This bill tasked the Office of the State Fire Marshal to establish hydrogen pipeline safety standards and require the California Public Utilities Commission to recommend to the legislature a regulatory framework for pipelines carrying blends of hydrogen. Over the last year, my office has worked extensively with the Governor's Office, Office of the State Fire Marshal, and the appropriate committees to make this bill workable workable for all stakeholders involved. Senate Bill 804 ensures that the Office of the State Farm Marshal has clear authority, appropriate enforcement tools, and fee structure sufficient to administer the new hydrogen pipeline safety program. Hydrogen is a key part of California's climate strategy, and we know there are certain sectors of our economy where hydrogen will be essential to achieving our climate goals. These include heavy-duty transportation, ports, maritime shipping, aviation fuels, and other industrial manufacturing applications where electrification alone may not be sufficient. To support these uses, hydrogen must be transported safely and efficiently from where it is produced to where it is needed. For large-scale deployment, pipelines are widely recognized as the most efficient, lowest emission, and most cost-effective methods of transporting hydrogen. However, hydrogen presents unique safety challenges. Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in existence. It can permeate materials differently than natural gas, behaves differently under pressure, and requires specialized engineering and safety standards to minimize leakage and ensure safe operations, hence the necessity to establish the hydrogen-specific pipeline safety program. The Federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration recognized these unique characteristics and began work on hydrogen-specific regulations. However, the effort has stalled, and today's hydrogen pipelines remain subject largely to regulations originally developed for other gases. At the same time, California is effectively investing in hydrogen production, fueling infrastructure, and industrial applications. In short, the deployment of hydrogen infrastructure is moving forward, but the development of hydrogen-specific safety regulations is not. That creates uncertainty for communities, regulators, and project developers. Current California law does not clearly identify which state agency is responsible for regulating the safety of hydrogen pipeline. In fact, the California Public Utilities Commission has acknowledged that its authority over hydrogen pipelines has not been clearly established. Senate Bill 804 closes that gap. This bill designates the Office of the State Fire Marshal as the Safety Regulator and Enforcement Authority for Ultra-State Hydrogen Pipelines and directs the fire marshal to adopt hydrogen-specific safety standards that reflect the unique characteristic of hydrogen. Importantly, this bill does not mandate the construction of any hydrogen pipelines. It does not approve any projects. It does not create a hydrogen deployment program. And it does not circumvent environmental review or local permitting requirements. What it does is ensures that if hydrogen pipelines are built in California, they will be built and operated under a clear, consistent, and accountable safety framework administered by the state's recognized pipeline safety experts. This is exactly the approach California has taken in other emerging industries. Establish the safety rules first, then allow the deployment to proceed within the predictable regulatory framework. This is a good public safety bill, good for environmental protection, and good for responsible economic developments. Most importantly, it is much easier and less expensive to establish strong safety standards before infrastructure is built than to retrofit an entire system after deployment. In California, if California intends to be the leader in hydrogen, then California should also be the leader in hydrogen safety. Senate Bill 804 ensures that California is that safety leader. For these reasons, I respectfully ask for your aye vote.
And with me today is Mike Monaghan on behalf of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California.
Thank you, Senator. Mr. Monaghan, two minutes.
Two minutes? Okay, I'll try. Mike Monaghan of half the State Building Trades. I don't have much to add to the Senator's remarks. I would like to say that we really appreciate and acknowledge his leadership in this space. It's critical that hydrogen be part of the solution, and this legislation will go a long ways to making sure it is. We ask for an aye vote.
You have another minute and 45 seconds, but we can just, if you want to, just tell us a poem.
No, it's okay. We'll leave it at that.
The members are here now. Clearly, I recognize the need to be brief.
You do.
You've adhered to it well. We appreciate you. Members, we're hearing SB 804 at the moment as a subcommittee from Mr. Archuleta on hydrogen pipeline safety. Just heard his opening testimony in the lead witness. And we're going to turn to opposition, and then we'll establish a quorum once we get one more. Two more members? Okay. Do we have any others in support of this measure? Just general witnesses in support. Welcome to come forward at this time. Seeing none, we'll turn to opposition. Come on forward. We'll give you take two as well. Welcome.
Thank you, chair and members. Ryan McCarthy here on behalf of Air Products and respectful opposition to the bill. Air Products has safely operated the only hydrogen pipeline in California for more than 30 years under an effective federal regulatory regime. Although hydrogen pipelines are already regulated for safety, we have supported the author's effort to establish jurisdiction under the state fire marshal. However, we have two major concerns with amendments that were taken in the assembly. First, the bill authorizes the collection of fees from hydrogen pipeline operators to cover the costs. According to the appropriations analysis, this could range from $2 to $3 million annually. We think it would be wholly inappropriate if those costs were imposed on the only hydrogen pipeline operator in the state. Our understanding is that the intent of those amendments were to spread the costs and have hydrogen operators pay the same as others under the Elder Act, but that's not clear in the bill. So we're hoping to get clarification on that. Second, the Elder Act has historically defined the term rupture separate from leak. And a rupture is supposed to be a big leak that poses hazards and therefore requires a set of remedies to repair, including shutting down the pipeline, a deep investigation, and repairs. This bill, or the amendments in this bill, now define rupture as leak. So for any leak whatsoever, no matter how small and no matter how clear the fix is and how simple the fix is, you would shut down the pipeline. You would have to do a deep root cause investigation before you repair it. even if it's very clear what the repair is and there's no risk to public safety. So that would risk shutting down the pipeline. That would risk shutting down customers of the pipeline, like refiners, for not necessarily any good reason. We certainly agree if there's a hazardous leak, we should shut down the pipeline and do a deep investigation. But not every leak is going to represent that. We have been working diligently, trying to connect with the state fire marshal. We think there are straightforward fixes to the bill that in no way limit the safety provisions or the authority of the state fire marshal under the bill. But unfortunately, we have not been able to connect with them and have these deep dive technical conversations and remain concerned with the provisions in the bill. Thank you.
Thanks for that. Do we have any others in opposition, just general witnesses in opposition, willing to come forward? Seeing none. We went away from quorum still? So we're operating a subcommittee, but members are welcome to ask questions. Comments, we'll bring it back to the dais.
We don't have any at the moment.
I do maybe give the author a chance just to respond to the opposition's concerns about, or the sponsor on this Elder Act distinction issue around ruptures versus leaks I been looking here through my notes It seems like there are some de minimis thresholds under the Elder Act in the oil context, but we recognize that a hydrogen molecule is a lot smaller, so leaks are sort of a different animal. If you have thoughts on it.
If I may, Mr. Chair and committee members, this is the Hydrogen Safety Act. This is our way here in California, as we develop hydrogen, that we should have, I guess we'll call it a playbook, a rule book, a book of safety and standards in production and transportation of hydrogen. Regardless of the size of the leak, whether you classify it as a rupture, you classify it as a leak, it is still possibly dangerous. So the state, the governor, our office has been working intensively over the last year to establish who will be the right authority to oversee the Hydrogen Safety Act, and that is the fire marshal, State California Fire Marshal. That is the purpose and the foundation of the bill, to establish that authority. It also makes sure that when it's transported, produced, transported, and on the market, whether it be for heavy-duty application or whatever, there are safety standards. And as California develops with a green environment, we want to make sure that hydrogen is leading the way when it comes to safety.
Thank you for that. We do have a quorum at the moment, then we'll bring it back for question. Can we call the roll? Senator Stern here. Stern here. Sarato here. Allen. Ashby. Blakespeare. Blakespeare here. Dolly. Grayson. Perez. Perez here. Rubio. Rubio present. Okay we've got a quorum. We'll bring it back to Senator
Blakespeare. Thank you. Thank you to the author and to the opposition. I wanted to see if your witness wanted to answer any of the specific things that were raised
by the opposition no I don't think so I think the senator covered the questions adequately the building trays have been very active in hydrogen space for long as I've been with them this is a key to making sure that hydrogen is upfront in a part of the solution going forward okay thank you sorry I want to be charitable but I also I'm gonna I'm gonna put you through your pace mr. Monaghan, just real quickly here. Is the intent of the bill to assess all the fees to stand up the agency on this one pipeline or spread it more broadly? Do you guys have a sense of that?
The overall safety act is a blanket across California. Whether the hydrogen produced in Northern California or Southern California, it doesn't matter. It's the same standards that we're looking for and the fire marshal is the one that we're trying to establish that he has the authority and that's why the governor's office our office has jumped in together to establish that and recommend that to the committee okay yeah I would just my caution would be because there's
only one in operation right now we know we want to build more and that's why I'm I'm standing with you on this bill and some of your other efforts given that there is just one major hydrogen pipeline going on right now I want to make sure that the the as we stand up this I think the analysis says a few engineers some analysts some safety experts in the in the safety supervisor and executive and office manager supervisor equipment and training just that we don't sort of burden any of the work going on down in Southern California especially as it's feeding the refining system and throw off other things on the fee front and then the The other caution I would just say going forward, I hope you'll work with the opposition just to ensure that there's a – that we can make a proper distinction between leaks and ruptures and that the Office of State Fire Marshal is recognizing, I guess, what some kind of de minimis threshold. I'm curious from the opposition, though, do you have a proposal for what would count as de minimis in your mind? Is there, because the Elder Act really isn't that clear on the hydrogen front. So did you have a proposal? You're just concerned about them overinterpreting their authority, and is the bill vague on this front, or is it specific, in other words?
Well, we are concerned it is specific. we we had proposed various approaches that we tried to run through the fire marshal via the governor's office we have not been able to connect directly with the fire marshal frustratingly but you know one was the original or earlier in the bill and as is in the elder act elsewhere it defines a rupture is something that poses a safety hazard and causes an explosion fire bodily injury We were fine with that. We were also fine with if if that was not some an approach they wanted to mimic for hydrogen going through the regulatory process to define this because it's it's new for the fire marshal and we have the experience. But it's not really if if if the you know if the intent or the desire is to define rupture is any leak for hydrogen. That's not even a concern with us. We're happy to go through the reporting and other obligations that would go through that. The concern is the obligation earlier in the bill. And I'm sorry, I don't have the section number separation, but it says you must shut down a pipeline for a rupture. And that made sense when rupture means, you know, a big risk to the environment or to safety. It doesn't necessarily make sense if it means any leak whatsoever, and it doesn't just say shut down the pipeline It says do a deep dive investigation which our understanding is often at least in an industry a term of art to mean a root cause analysis Which is not just you know a car crashed into a pipeline or some sort of weld leaked or something It's why did that happen and going steps? Upstream from that which can take a long time no matter how apparent the cause and fix fix are so that's our big concern we think you could actually just delete that provision it's B and some section again I apologize I don't have that in front of me because the provision right in front of it says the state fire marshal may shut down a pipeline for safety or environmental concerns and the one right after it says they can choose when to start a backup so we think that's entirely unnecessary actually and they would still have all the authority they need if they want to shut down the pipeline if they want to order an investigation to do so. But it's really that legacy from the Elder Act coupled with the definition of rupture being the same as leak that poses the concern. Mr. Chair if I may? Yes please. You know the Assembly Utilities and Energy
Committee this was submitted and approved and again it just clarifies that all the pipelines will be under the authority of the fire marshal and air products in the opposition they're probably concerned no doubt of the financial requirement they would take but let me bring it down to a basic fundamental because hydrogen is is a very complicated fuel but imagining your cars everyone you had a leak in your radiator and you're driving to Vegas it's 110 degrees should you pull over and get that leak fixed or are you waiting for that leak to be classified as a rupture a leak is a leak of ruptures a rupture danger awaits you and that's what this Safety Act is all about we're working with transportation I know one of our committee members is is very involved in transportation up and down the corridor in San Diego safety standards I'm on the Transportation Committee safety standards everywhere we go California's is setting the standards for safety.
But who should oversee it?
This bill, all its states, it's a state fire marshal, should oversee it. Fees pertaining to violations, that's another structure. That's not what we're talking about. We're just talking about who has the authority. And if my opposition is, again, concerned about the dollars and cents, where is the safety when it comes to dollars and cents? whether you seal it immediately or you bring in a big crew. That's not for us to decide. It's the state fire marshal to decide. That's my point. Safety first. And with that, I again urge the aye vote. And I will continue upon closing.
Okay, thanks. Okay, so we have a motion from Senator Perez, and first we'll hear from the vice chair. I just want to bring some comfort to this part of the discussion. Just because it is the office of the state fire marshal and he ultimately gives the order to shut or open or shut down, that does not mean he's the person making the decision from his ivory tower. They have experts out there. They have the hazmat folks out there. They're going to determine what size of leak, what needs to be done to mitigate that and some of the precautionary things that need to be done and when it's safe to open it back up. And at the end of the day, they won't open it until it's safe. And they won't close it if it's unnecessary. Because those are things that as an incident commander or something, you have to take into consideration the cost implications. You don't want to shut things down unnecessarily just because you can. But there's a lot of decision making that goes in by people that are really experts at this stuff that advise whoever it is that says, hey, we're going to shut down the pipeline for now. So I an advocate of the OES handling that just because of that because we have that Everybody gets to be involved in a decision making from the IC that arrives on scene first to everyone else the Department of Transportation all their experts also weigh in And I think it covers it that well. And that's why I was an advocate of having a state fire marshal on this. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you. I will just say we read the bill to give some discretion to the fire marshal to make those sort of judgment calls when something is so serious that it requires ceasing operations versus sort of automatically shutting down operations over things that are de minimis that aren't going to have serious safety risks. We'll be keeping an eye on that going forward and looking for feedback, obviously, from the administration as this gets stood up. But we think this bill is quite necessary at the moment. We appreciate your leadership on this. I'll be recommending an aye vote, but certainly encourage you to keep working with the opposition as our sort of lead hydrogen carrier in the state right now, just to make sure that we don't unintentionally disrupt operations and what's going well. We hope this lays the groundwork for expansion of the system in a safe manner. But for existing operations, we do want it to keep operating smoothly. So I'm recommending aye vote. We'll allow you the opportunity to close.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members. And you're absolutely right. There are experts within the agency, the State Fire Marshal, and there's no one standing up in some office somewhere. It's going to be hands-on, going to verify the problem, verify the necessity of repair, but also it will open up other doors for further safety regulations that are out there. It's new, and it should be established that the ground rules that the ground rule is safety first across the state of California. And we will lead the way when it comes to safety across the nation. And that's what this bill is all about. I urge and I vote. Thank you.
Thank you very much. I think we have a motion from Senator Perez. So the motion is that the assembly amendments be concurred in. We'll call the roll. Senators Stern. Stern. Aye. Stern. Aye. Serato. Aye. Serato. Allen Ashby Blake Spear Blake Spear I Dali Dali I Grayson Perez Rubio Rubio I okay we will leave that on call for the absent members and we'll hope is there no if only there was no we're just waiting for mr. Kabaldon who is not busy at all at the moment. He's just lollygagging somewhere. Senator, thank you. We'll leave that on call if you have some more. Okay, appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Senator Sayarta-Kabaldin, welcome. Welcome to this committee. we have before us here SB 828 fire chief oh wait that's not you who are you that's him okay he doesn't have its folder let's see let's see what he can do all right on behalf of Senator Cabaldon Mr. Vice Chair yes This is razzing. I thought I was cutting in line. Sorry. Nope. All right. Yeah, no, it's a free-for-all here in Senate Emergency Management Committee. Good morning. If you're ready to present, go ahead.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. SBA 28 is the bill that I introduced at the beginning of the year in response to the massive explosion in Esparto in my own community from a site that was unlicensed, unpermitted, unregulated, and largely unknown that killed seven people, but also exposed a massive challenge with fireworks and explosives in the state and their connection to organized crime. When the bill left the Senate, it included recommendations based on the experience specifically in Esparto. In the Assembly, the Assembly amendments incorporate the final recommendations of the State Farm Marshals Task Force on fireworks for this issue. And so covers a wide array of issues with respect to licensure verification, to land use and permit verification and validation between the state and local governments in order to assure that this does not happen again. There are many more issues to deal with in this space, as we've learned over the time in the assembly. but this bill implements the consensus recommendations of that task force and look forward then to working with many of you on follow-ups next year. I will note also for the record that there have been, one of the issues we need to continue to work on next year is the relationship to production studios and those that work with fireworks and explosives as part of film and other productions. AND SO, WHO ARE COVERED UNDER THE STATE FIREWORKS AND EXPLOSIVE LAWS FOR IMPORTANT REASONS. BUT THEY ALSO ARE IN A DIFFERENT SITUATION. SO WE LOOK FORWARD NEXT YEAR TO CONTINUING TO REFINE THE STATUTE TO ASSURE THAT WE BOTH PROTECTING PUBLIC SAFETY PROTECTING AGAINST THE ORGANIZED CRIME RINGS THAT ARE IN THIS SPACE WHILE ALSO CONTINUING TO SUPPORT OUR continuing to refine the statute to assure that we both protecting public safety protecting against the organized crime rings that are in this space while also continuing to support our entertainment and film industry in California So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you so much. Okay, thank you, Senator. We'll look to witnesses in support. Seeing none, we'll look to anyone in opposition. Seeing and hearing none, we'll turn back to the dais. It's a motion, but we'll turn first to Senator Blakespear and then over to Senator Rubio.
Yes, thank you. I remember this because, of course, we all come to Sacramento every week, and I was watching the local news one evening and saw this exploding firework facility on the local news, and it was happening live in real time, and they were playing it continuously. And the fact that this massive facility with such danger had been built and was operating without locals and county understanding what was there somewhat boggles my mind. So can you give a little bit more insight about how something like that can be set up and not actually have the permits to be there at all?
Yeah, this was a failure on many, many, many levels. So the site itself was not zoned or permitted, and the county, at least officially, was unaware that this was being used for this purpose. The facility could be an ag processing facility or just driving by. You couldn't know. And so the county was not aware. The owner told the state for the licensure process and the state oversight process that, yes, we have all the necessary local permits. They did not. But current law does not provide for any data sharing, any validation between the state and the local agencies. And, of course, keep in mind, as you know, Esparto is an example. this is a tiny jurisdiction with its own fire district, and Yolo County does the best that it can, but their ability to keep their finger on the pulse of every single organized crime ring on explosives is pretty limited. So that state-local partnership is essential. So the bill addresses that by requiring that you have to show your receipts, show your homework, that, yes, we have the necessary back-and-forward permits. At the same time, the licensure itself for the owner, that owner should never have been licensed at all. But under current law, the state fire marshal's authority to not grant a license when there is a prior conviction is at least ambiguous. And so this legislation clarifies that as well, that when there is a prior conviction in the space, that the fire marshal has the authority to not issue a license. So those are a couple of those examples. Now, the law is not the only problem here. There was also violations of the existing law, which is why the district attorney has filed indictments in the case as well. So I don't want to suggest it's just because the legislation hasn't been enacted. It's also that there have been nefarious actors who have been actively, or at least allegedly, flaunting and breaking the laws that we already have.
Thank you. Senator Rubio.
I think Catherine sort of asked the questions that I had concerns with, you know, about the license verification and the appropriate line use. But I wanted to just kind of clarify, there were some criminal charges and people were held accountable. Because I think that, like Catherine, that baffles me how something's so massive and it's happening in a lot of our communities. But the issue here is the strong message that if this happens, you will be criminally charged. So I hope that that happened and that those people receive justice. Yes, I completely agree.
And I think the other dimension of this, and this was the focus of more of the assembly amendments, was around weeks before the explosion in Esparto, So there was a raid in the City of Commerce of a fireworks facility with connections to organized rings, lots and lots of explosive and dangerous material. And some or many of those boxes and what have you had addresses, they were addressed to the Esparto facility. So it isn't purely a local issue. It really is also that California has become a way station for massive, we're not talking about sparklers, massive explosive devices and materials. California is becoming a way station internationally. And so we also need to teeth up the fire marshal and other state and local law enforcement in order to respond to that. Because we should have caught those materials before they even got to Esparto in the first place. Thank you.
Mr. Vice Chair. Thank you. So, shedding a little bit of light on the warehouse issue. Anybody can build a warehouse. They can get permits. They can tell them what they're going to put in it. But when a cartel or a foreign person from the places where these are made most, and they're very illegal entice a owner of a building with massive amounts of dollars to move their product in in the middle of the night unless that is inspected every so often it's not going to get caught and there's a reason they don't want to get caught so they're going to make sure it's masked so they can't and and it's really important and this is one of the you know federal state things those are federal ATF people that come in and are dealing with some of these and the explosion explosives and things like that and so it's really important to have that relationship so that you can find these and then when you get them you can trace where it's coming in from and try to nip it at that point because really nobody knows what's in half these warehouses unless your fire guys are going out there and looking at them. And we do. I worked in the city of industry. We had a gazillion of these. Not these, but a lot of warehouses. And that's how you discovered these things as you have people. But, you know, some warehouses were never open. And those would get referred because we couldn't ever gain access. and you knew something bad was going on in there. So that's how that happens. I don't know that people mean for it or it's necessarily negligence on the locals' part. It's just bad people do bad things, and they hide them. And until we find them, that's how it works. Thanks for that, Mr. Vice Chair. We appreciate your work on this. The committee is recommending an aye vote. As our technology guru for the Senate, I have every confidence that as you implement the task force's recommendations with the provisions in this statute, that you also look for those kind of technology opportunities for how to do better monitoring on site so it doesn't just rely on thinly staffed state and local operations, but we can also do remote sensing and other detection. I think there's a lot of opportunities there. I do appreciate the state fire marshal's work on getting on top of this, and I'm sorry that it takes so long. Hopefully this is of some comfort to the families that have lost so tragically. And the last thing I'll just say is I do encourage you, though, to keep working with the entertainment industry because, as we know, pyrotechnics are also an important part of making big movies here in California. And so we want to preserve the legitimate industry and make sure we don't have sort of any unintended consequences. But I appreciate your commitment to working through that next year. We'll be here to help you along in that task. And I would entertain a motion at the appropriate time and then allow you to close. so move from Senator Rubio opportunity to close simply to ask for an aye vote thank you thank you all right so the motion is that the assembly amendments be concurred in we will call the roll Senators Stern Stern I Sarato I Sarato I Allen Ashby Blake Spear Blake Spear I Daly Daly I Grayson Perez Perez I Rubio Rubio I We're going to open the roll on the first item, file item number 1, SB 804. please call the absent members. Current vote is 5-0. Senators Allen? Allen aye. Ashby? Grayson? Grayson aye. Prez? Prez aye. Great. 8-0. Bill's out. Close the roll on that one. Next up, file number 2, SB 828 Cabaldon. Motion is Assembly amendments be concurred in oh current vote is six to zero senators Allen Allen I Ashby Grayson Grayson I that's eight zero okay eight zero bills out we'll close the roll on that one and before we wrap I do want to say thank you very much to the if we can all thank the committee staff for their very hard work this year I know it's been a long year hopefully this is the last hearing we have to do so I'm going to hopefully not jinx us by just saying thank you all so much it's been a very important year and I think we've made California a lot safer so it's the minority staff to my staff do appreciate you all and thank you we'll wrap this meeting is hereby adjourned