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Cal. PUC § 853.2

This is the official text of Cal. PUC § 853.2, part of California’s Public Utilities Code — regulates utilities such as electricity, gas, water, and transportation carriers.

Not legal advice. This page reproduces the official text of a government statute for reference only. Laws change, and how a statute applies depends on your specific facts. For advice about your situation, consult a licensed attorney in your state.

Official statutory text

For a water or sewer system corporation or an entity merging with or acquiring control of a water or sewer system corporation with less than 2,000 service connections, the following shall apply to transactions valued at five million dollars ($5,000,000) or less, notwithstanding Sections 851 and 854:

(a) (1) A water or sewer system corporation or an entity merging with or acquiring control of a water or sewer system corporation shall receive the commission’s approval before entering into a transaction that would otherwise be subject to Section 851 or 854.

(2) If a water or sewer system corporation or an entity merging with or acquiring control of a water or sewer system corporation fails to receive the commission’s approval pursuant to paragraph (1), the transaction is voidable by the commission until the commission does either of the following:

(A) Retroactively approves the transaction upon a determination that the transaction is in the best interests of both the corporation and its ratepayers.

(B) Conditionally approves the transaction, subject to the fulfillment of specified conditions that would ensure that the transaction is in the best interests of both the corporation and its ratepayers.

(b) The commission may delegate the authority to make the determinations described in subdivision (a) to the director of the division that investigates water and sewer system service quality issues and analyzes and processes utility rate change requests.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.