25992.10. (a) (1) The Voluntary Offshore Wind and Coastal Resources Protection Program is hereby established to be administered by the commission for the purpose of supporting state activities that complement and are in furtherance of federal laws related to the development of offshore wind facilities, including federal laws providing for offshore wind lease conditions of the bureau. The program shall award moneys to public and private entities, including, but not limited to, state agencies, tribal entities, local governmental agencies, research institutions, and nonprofit entities, through various mechanisms, including, but not limited to, grants.
(2) Moneys from the fund and account shall be available for allocation by the commission for purposes of this chapter.
(b) The commission may allocate moneys for any of the following:
(1) Increasing the ability of state agencies to engage in postlease assessments and studies of impacts, including surveys and plans, and ongoing review of project compliance and monitoring, including administrative costs.
(2) Research facilitation and coordination, including, but not limited to, funding to support state agencies to work collaboratively with the bureau and other federal, state, and tribal entities to ensure that lessees’ construction and operations plans incorporate strategies and specific plans for comprehensive monitoring and adaptive management, and to ensure that the strategies and plans are implemented appropriately, including funding to contract with technical experts to be retained by state agencies to consult and collaborate on strategies and specific plans for comprehensive monitoring and adaptive management.
(3) (A) Contracts with technical experts to assist the bureau and the state in their review of survey and sampling and analysis plans, survey data and analysis, construction and operation plans, and other planning, project development, and project implementation activities and documents.
(B) The purpose of the technical experts is to review current research on survey methodologies, monitoring approaches and technologies, adaptive management strategies, and other relevant topics for floating offshore wind and to provide the bureau and the state with recommendations, suggested guidelines, and best practices, and to fulfill additional research needs, during all phases of floating offshore wind development and implementation with the overall goal of avoiding and minimizing impacts to coastal resources.
(4) Environmental impacts monitoring including, but not limited to, any of the following:
(A) Collecting, analyzing, and reporting baseline and postdevelopment environmental data to assess large-scale changes and cumulative impacts to marine species, habitats, and uses from floating offshore wind development and related activities with a goal of enabling the bureau and the state to accurately assess, mitigate, and adaptively manage those impacts.
(B) Data collection at a regional scale that integrates data with information and data provided by lessees or the bureau and other relevant data to provide a comprehensive understanding of how floating offshore wind development is affecting the marine environment and coastal uses.
(5) Infrastructure readiness commitments, including, but not limited to, activities associated with the bureau’s lease requirements for lessees to support infrastructure readiness, such as ports, waterfront facilities, and transmission for floating offshore wind generation facilities.
(c) Moneys in the fund and the account shall not be allocated by the commission to another state or local agency for that agency’s costs that are otherwise recoverable from project proponents in administering a regulatory or entitlement program.
(Added by Stats. 2022, Ch. 251, Sec. 20. (AB 209) Effective September 6, 2022.)