San Francisco Takes on EPA in Supreme Court Case

The City of San Francisco’s case against federal environmental regulators is going to the Supreme Court, reports Bob Egelko in the San Francisco Chronicle. “The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to hear San Francisco’s appeal of a ruling that tightened offshore water pollution standards and said the city was failing to adequately protect swimmers and bathers from discharges of sewage into the Pacific.”

The case, San Francisco v. EPA, stems from a May 1 lawsuit by the EPA and the California Regional Quality Board charging San Francisco with failing to protect its offshore waters and “seeking orders requiring the city to change its practices and hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties.”

The city says it is only bound to “limit water pollution to amounts set in advance, such as specific discharges per million parts of water,” but federal regulators said the city needed to do more to meet its obligations. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with federal agencies, citing their “broad authority” to regulate waste discharge and pollution. “The Supreme Court’s ruling will set legal standards for the suit and for pollution-control agencies nationwide.”