The Senate has refused to pass a California Chamber of Commerce-opposed bill that would have inappropriately made industrial, institutional, and commercial water use public information. AB 1520 (M. Stone; D-Scotts Valley) was an attempt to shame business under the guise of ensuring that large users are meeting conservation goals. The bill removed protections that safeguard production capacity and other sensitive production data from disclosure to competitors by requiring commercial, industrial and institutional water users to publicly disclose usage, supposedly to enforce compliance with water and energy conservation goals. The current privacy protections for commercial, industrial and institutional water customers serve an important purpose. These protections help prevent competitors from gaining information and knowledge about water usage, which could be used to find out production capacity and other production knowledge for others in that same industry. Giving this information to the public serves no purpose. Without knowing how an industry uses water and the regulatory requirements under which that industry operates, the volume of usage is not useful and serves no purpose other than to exploit a business’ operation. Allowing this information to be made public would have served no purpose other than to shame businesses that may be deemed as [...]
↧