Dam safety: state supervision: exceptions.

Petrie-Norris advances a narrowly tailored carve-out that would exempt certain water storage facilities tied to a compressed-air energy storage facility in Kern County from state dam-safety regulation, provided the project meets a tight set of size, design, and oversight criteria. The exemption would apply to water storage facilities, structures, and activities associated with such an ESS located in Kern County north of Dawn Road between State Route 14 and Sierra Highway, and it would require: a maximum water pool height of 25 feet from the final engineered grade and a maximum storage capacity of 1,500 acre-feet or less; design and construction under the supervision of a registered civil engineer; the facility not being located across a stream channel or watercourse; and lead agency approval under CEQA along with state regulatory approvals that certify CEQA compliance.

The measure builds this exemption alongside an existing carve-out for wastewater treatment and storage ponds that meet defined criteria, thereby adding a second, permissions-based exemption to the state dam-safety framework. Under the bill, facilities that meet all criteria for the Kern ESS exemption would not be subject to state dam-safety regulation, while oversight would continue through local lead-agency CEQA processes and related state regulatory approvals, and engineering supervision would remain a requirement. If a facility does not meet the specified criteria, the current dam-safety framework would continue to apply.

The bill includes findings that a special statute is necessary for Kern County due to the project’s unique location, and it does not provide an appropriation; the fiscal process is still required to review the measure, but no explicit funding is proposed. The geographic limitation means the exemption would not apply statewide, and implementation would depend on CEQA lead-agency processes and state approvals certified as meeting CEQA requirements. If enacted, the regulatory focus for qualifying projects would shift away from state dam-safety oversight toward environmental review and local regulatory mechanisms, while non-qualifying projects would continue under existing dam-safety oversight.