SCOTUS to hear water pollution fight between San Francisco, EPA
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 ruling, due next year, could limit the authority of federal and state environmental agencies. The issue is whether — as San Francisco and other local governments contend — environmental laws require them only to limit water pollution to amounts set in advance, such as specific discharges per million parts of water. Federal and state regulators argued that the city was still violating its legal duty to prevent dangerous pollution from bacteria and other contaminants from flowing through its Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant into the ocean.
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