Cal. Health & Safety Code § 25249.9

Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986

Applied in 4 court decisions — leading case 135 Cal. App. 4th 431 - As You Sow v. Conbraco Industries (2005)

Most recently applied in 124 F. Supp. 3d 1007 - California Sportfishing Protection Alliance v. Chico Scrap Metal, Inc. (August 2015)

Added November 4, 1986, by initiative Proposition 65

How often courts cite this section

citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

Exemptions from Discharge Prohibition.

(a) Section 25249.5 shall not apply to any discharge or release that takes place less than twenty months subsequent to the listing of the chemical in question on the list required to be published under subdivision (a) of Section 25249.8.

(b) Section 25249.5 shall not apply to any discharge or release that meets both of the following criteria:

(1) The discharge or release will not cause any significant amount of the discharged or released chemical to enter any source of drinking water.

(2) The discharge or release is in conformity with all other laws and with every applicable regulation, permit, requirement, and order.

In any action brought to enforce Section 25249.5, the burden of showing that a discharge or release meets the criteria of this subdivision shall be on the defendant.

Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.