Law professor Sean Hecht worked with environmentalists, state legislators and industry representatives to write legislation proposing that Californians pay a $1 fee on lead-acid car batteries, and that the revenues fund the cleanup of toxic sites throughout the state.
Hecht, the Evan Frankel Professor of Policy and Practice, is co-director of UCLA Law's Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and co-director of the Frank G. Wells Environmental Law Clinic. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said that the proposed law will put nearly $40 million per year into a fund for California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control to clean up lead pollution at sites such as the Exide Technologies battery recycling plant in Vernon, an industrial city southeast of downtown L.A.
Hecht told the Times that the fee will raise “far more money up front than we otherwise would expect from suing those responsible, including companies that sent batteries to facilities like Exide.”
