SACRAMENTO – A bill from Senator Melissa Hurtado has reached another milestone in its journey to secure better health monitoring in the Valley.
On June 17, Hurtado’s office announced that the California Assembly Health Committee unanimously passed Senate Bill (SB) 317: Wastewater Surveillance and Preparedness Act. The bill, which seeks to expand wastewater monitoring systems in underserved areas, will now move onto the California State Assembly’s Appropriations Committee.
“I think that this is going to provide a good way of ensuring that the Central Valley is covered when it comes to assessing the health of the community,” Hurtado said. “There’s funding in the budget to expand wastewater, but I believe that the policy’s got to go with the budget.”
SB 317 will require the California Department of Public Health, in consultation with participating wastewater treatment facilities and local health departments, to maintain the California Surveillance of Wastewaters (Cal-SuWers) Program. The goal is to ensure that the state has its own established system without relying on private labs that may not always be around.
“California’s got to have its own program in place, so that when federal dollars dry up or when things pack up and go, we still have something in place that covers all communities,” Hurtado said.
The bill is a key pillar of Hurtado’s “Common Sense Plan,” which aims to better the lives of citizens while holding leaders accountable. The inception of SB 317 was motivated in large part by the 2024 avian flu surge, and the Valley’s lack of recorded data of it.
“Communities were left in the dark. Water testing was testing positive for bird flu in San Francisco, yet in the Central Valley we didn’t have any testing, so I felt that that wasn’t right,” Hurtado said.
With this reviewed effort and emphasis on the Cal-SuWers program, Hurtado aims to be prepared for when the next outbreak hits. However, she noted that her main concern as the bill moves forward is it dying because of the apparent available funding.
“(Sometimes) a bill dies because they feel that there isn’t a need for policy, because the funding’s there,” Hurtado said. “I wholeheartedly disagree with that because, as we’ve seen, the funding has been there but an adequate plan hasn’t been there.”
