SACRAMENTO, CA ---- Legislation that could result in restrictions or bans on home water softeners has been signed by Gov. Gray Davis, becoming Chapter 969 of California's Statutes of 1999. The Water Quality Association (WQA) in Lisle, IL, has paid close attention to the law because other states, primarily in the West, also are searching for ways to reduce brine discharges into public wastewater systems.

Senate Bill 1006, sponsored by Sen. Jim Costa (D-Fresno), had passed the state Assembly in August. Treatment industry leaders said the final bill was a reasonable compromise between their interests and water districts seeking jurisdiction over water softeners. After sponsor Costa accepted amendments proposed by the industry, the WQA and other groups withdrew their opposition to the legislation. The law will require all new home softeners sold in California to have either demand-initiated regeneration or portable ion exchange tanks and meet a salt-efficiency standard of 3,350 grains of hardness removed per pound, starting January 1. The standard will go up to 4,000 grains in 2002.

The effective date on the most controversial provision in the bill - authorization for localities to ban water softeners - was pushed forward to January 1, 2003. Also a water district will be required to substantiate the need for any ban; it would have to prove it had enforced limits on saline discharge from nonresidential sources and to document that restricting home softeners was its only means of complying with water reclamation of wastewater discharge requirements.

Previous softeners bans in Escondido and Santa Mana were overturned by a lawsuit filed in 1992 by the WQA. In 1997, a California appeals court upheld lower court rulings that a 1978 state law prohibited local bans.