The environmental fight that played out inside the Supreme Court on Wednesday was unusual in many ways: It featured poop, a whopping $10 billion fine and one of the nation’s greenest cities — San Francisco — battling the Environmental Protection Agency over water pollution rules in a case that could reverberate beyond the Bay Area.
During lively oral arguments, the justices appeared divided along ideological lines over a lawsuit brought by San Francisco arguing that EPA rules regulating how much sewage the city can discharge into the Pacific Ocean are so vague it can’t abide by them. The result: The city has wracked up billions in fines and counting.
“We simply want to understand our prohibition limits so we can comply with them,” Tara M. Steeley, the San Francisco deputy city attorney, told the justices.
The question the high court must decide is whether the Clean Water Act allows the EPA to impose generic prohibitions against violating water quality standards or whether the agency has to create specific pollutant limitations that give clearer guidance about when a line is crossed. For instance, San Francisco’s wastewater permit includes 100 pages of detailed rules on effluent limits, but also “narrative” restrictions such as “no discharge of pollutants shall create pollution, contamination, or nuisance” as defined by California’s water code.
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The environmental fight that played out inside the Supreme Court on Wednesday was unusual in many ways: It featured poop, a whopping $10 billion fine and one of the nation’s greenest cities — San Francisco — battling the Environmental Protection Agency over water pollution rules in a case that could reverberate beyond the Bay Area.
During lively oral arguments, the justices appeared divided along ideological lines over a lawsuit brought by San Francisco arguing that EPA rules regulating how much sewage the city can discharge into the Pacific Ocean are so vague it can’t abide by them. The result: The city has wracked up billions in fines and counting.
“We simply want to understand our prohibition limits so we can comply with them,” Tara M. Steeley, the San Francisco deputy city attorney, told the justices.
The question the high court must decide is whether the Clean Water Act allows the EPA to impose generic prohibitions against violating water quality standards or whether the agency has to create specific pollutant limitations that give clearer guidance about when a line is crossed. For instance, San Francisco’s wastewater permit includes 100 pages of detailed rules on effluent limits, but also “narrative” restrictions such as “no discharge of pollutants shall create pollution, contamination, or nuisance” as defined by California’s water code.
Read more here: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/16/supreme-court-sewage-san-francisco-epa/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/16/supreme-court-sewage-san-francisco-epa/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit.com)