The City of Los Angeles recently put out draft requirements for Commercial Cannabis Activity within the City. The topic I'll be discussing today is item 23 on the list of requirements for application requirements.

"Any applicant required to apply for, and maintain a Certified Uniform Program Agency (CUPA) permit issued by the Fire Department must do so prior to the issuance of a Provisional License, and prominently display the CUPA permit on the premises where it can be viewed by state and local agencies."

What is the CUPA?

The CUPA or UPA is the Certified Unified Program Agency. This entity is the regulatory agency responsible for enforcing the requirements of the Health and Safety Code's Hazardous Materials Business Plan and other California Code of Regulations Title 23 requiremenst. This post will be talking only about the Hazardous Materials Business Plan requirements. Any facilities handling hazardous materials above the reportable quantities of 55 gallons, 500 pounds, or 200 cubic feet (with exceptions) are required to submit a hazardous materials business plan to the California Environmental Reporting System (http://cers.calepa.ca.gov). In addition to the initial submission facilities are required to annually certify and submit their plans on March 1st of every year. (Los Angeles City Fire Department follows the Health and Safety Code section 25508(a)(1)(B) written rules of March 1st but some agencies may have different dates. This post applies to Los Angeles City, please don't use the information provided here as a blanket for all CUPA agencies.

What is considered a hazardous material?

If your facility has hazardous materials storage above reportable quantities of 55 gallons, 500 pounds, or 200 cubic feet (with exceptions); your facility is required to submit a hazardous materials business plan to CERS.

What is considered a hazardous material? This list is an summazrized version of what is listed in the Health and Safety Code 25501

A substance that the manufacturer is required to prepare a material safety data sheet
A substance listed as a radioactive
A substance listed in Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations (Transportation and List of Hazardous Materials can be found in CFR 49 172.101)
A substance listen in Section 339 of Title 8 of the California Code of Regulations ( List of Hazardous Materials can be found in CCR 8 339)
An extremely hazardous waste, hazardous waste, waste oil, controlled substances, hazardous air polluant, toxic pollutant, and anything Administrator of the US EPA says is hazardous.

Does this apply to me?

The potential materials of concern to the cannabis industry are the items required by the manufacturer to produce a MSDS and possibly controlled substances. We are still waiting clarification on the latter.

The typical hazardous materials I have observed qualifying a cannabis facility for a CUPA permit are typically carbon dioxide cylinders, diesel for back up generators, and propane used for forklifts.

There are some exemptions that have higher threshold values and one of them is carbon dioxide. In this particular case, the Health and Safety Code 25507(a)(4)(B) bumps up carbon dioxide reportable quantities from 200 cubic feet to 1,000 cubic feet. Los Angeles City CUPA has not yet made a variance for this yet so we will be sticking to this value till told otherwise.

I have 50 pounds of carbon dioxide, Does this mean I don't need to report it?

You'l have to convert pounds to cubic feet. For Carbon Dioxide that conversion factor is 8.37 cubic feet of gas per pound of carbon dioxide. Which means that if you have more than (3) 50 pound cylinders, your facility is required to disclose that quantity in a hazardous materials business plan.

Are gas burners that generate carbon dioxide considered storage?

As far as the code is concerned, no this is not considered storage since the burners are hard plumbed to natural gas and technically not storing in separate containers, cylinders, or tanks.

What to do next, if I qualify?

Give us a call and we can discuss the specifics of having a hazardous materials business plan prepared for your facility.

Moving forward, I will keep this post updated as I receive clarification on some of the uncertain items. As always, the disclaimer, the information provided here is my interpretation and by no means a substitute for reading the codes and regulations yourself. My interpretation are not to instructions on how to operatre your facility.

If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me at eric@poomiengineers.com

Thanks!