The Legislature finds and declares as follows:

(a) Clean water is essential to the public health, safety, and welfare.

(b) Clean water fosters the beauty of California’s environment, the expansion of industry and agriculture, maintains fish and wildlife, and supports recreation.

(c) California’s abundant lakes and ponds, streams and rivers, coastline, and groundwater are threatened with pollution, which could threaten public health and impede economic and social growth if left unchecked.

(d) The state’s growing population has increasing needs for clean water supplies and adequate treatment facilities.

(e) It is of paramount importance that the limited water resources of the state be protected from pollution, conserved, and reclaimed whenever possible to ensure continued economic, community, and social growth.

(f) The chief cause of water pollution is the discharge of inadequately treated waste into the waters of the state.

(g) Local agencies have the primary responsibility for construction, operation, and maintenance of facilities to cleanse our waters.

(h) Rising costs of construction and technological changes have pushed the cost of constructing treatment facilities beyond the reach of local agencies alone.

(i) Because water knows no political boundaries, it is desirable for the state to contribute to construction of these facilities in order to meet its obligations to protect and promote the health, safety, and welfare of its people and environment.

(j) Voluntary, cost-effective capital outlay water conservation programs can help meet the growing demand for clean water supplies.

(k) (1) It is the intent of this chapter to provide necessary funds to ensure the full participation by the state under the federal Clean Water Act (33 U.S.C. Sec. 1251 et seq.) and any acts amendatory thereof or supplementary thereto.

(2) It is also the intent of this chapter to provide special assistance to small communities to construct facilities necessary to eliminate water pollution and public health hazards.

(3) It is the further intent of this chapter to provide funds for state participation in the financing of the development and implementation of programs and systems for water reclamation.

(4) It is the further intent of this chapter to provide funds for voluntary, cost-effective capital outlay water conservation programs cooperatively carried out by public agencies and the department.

(Added by Stats. 1984, Ch. 377, Sec. 1. Approved in Proposition 25 at the November 6, 1984, election.)