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 many small communities.

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

(j) The people of California have a primary interest in the development of facilities to reclaim water to supplement existing water supplies and to assist in meeting the future water needs of the state.

(k) A significant portion of the future water needs of California may be met by the use of reclaimed water.

(l) Local public agencies have the primary responsibility for the construction, operation, and maintenance of water reclamation facilities.

(m) Local public agencies need financial assistance to make cost-effective reclamation projects financially feasible.

(n) (1) 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.

(2) It is also the intent of this chapter to provide funds for the design and construction of eligible water reclamation projects and for the development and implementation of programs and activities that lead to increased use of reclaimed water in California.

(Amended by Stats. 1994, Ch. 724, Sec. 7. Effective January 1, 1995. Note: This section was added by Stats. 1988, Ch. 47, and approved in Prop. 83 on Nov. 8, 1988.)