San Francisco discharges an average of nearly 2 billion gallons of combined stormwater and raw sewage each year into Mission Creek and other points around the shoreline.
“None of that changes,” he said. “The city’s obligations and its costs really aren’t going to shift very much.”
He added that the city might have shot itself in the foot because the EPA could be forced to enforce more restrictive regulations.
“It’s very possible that San Francisco comes out of this litigation in the long run with more burdensome and less effective permit terms that cost just as much, if not significantly more, to deal with,” he said. “It’s not in the interest of a city that is surrounded by water to undermine the Clean Water Act.”
Environmental advocates had accused the city of trying to dismantle the Clean Water Act and encouraged San Francisco to drop its lawsuit. They argued it would stain the city’s reputation as a protector of the public and environment and affect federal regulators’ ability to implement the Clean Water Act.
Sanjay Narayan, chief appellate counsel of the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program, said in a statement that the court’s decision “ignores the basic reality of how water bodies and water pollution works.”
An overflow pipe near the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant, also known as the Oceanside Treatment Plant, at Ocean Beach in San Francisco on Feb. 10, 2025. Erosion is damaging the overflow pipes along Ocean Beach. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
“The result is likely to be a new system where the public is regularly subjected to unsafe water quality,” Narayan said.
Deborah Sivas, a professor of environmental law at Stanford Law School, reviewed the court’s opinion and said she doesn’t think it “is one bit helpful for solving the problem.”
Sivas believes the decision could ultimately have far-reaching consequences for cities with combined sewer systems across the country — and potentially those without. It could ultimately also affect agricultural runoff permits, she said.
“All those permits, in my mind, are now in jeopardy because they all have that backstop in there,” she said.
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