Supreme Court case could weaken Clean Water Act
A deeply polarized Supreme Court heard arguments October 16 involving San Francisco’s challenge to the EPA’s water pollution standards. Under the Clean Water Act, San Francisco must have a permit to ensure that its discharge of untreated sewage into local waterways does not hurt water quality or people’s health. The city claims, however, that the EPA’s generic prohibitions impose unclear requirements that fail to tell permit holders how to control sewage discharges. … Among the trade groups backing San Francisco are those representing companies in extraction industries, like mining and oil drilling, and others that can produce waste that needs to be discharged, like farming. Representing the Biden administration, Assistant Solicitor General Frederick Liu pushed back on that argument. “To be honest, these standards are much more specific than a general tort regime,” Liu said. He added that San Francisco’s problems were of its own making in asserting that the city had not provided information about its own sewer system to the EPA for the last 10 years despite requests from the agency.
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