San Francisco Asks High Court to Dial Back EPA Water Limits

The EPA’s decision to put San Francisco on the hook for how discharging pollutants affects overall water quality instead of imposing specific limits on those pollutants is “unfair” and “unworkable,” the city told the US Supreme Court.

When the Environmental Protection Agency most recently renewed the city’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for discharges into the Pacific Ocean, the agency instructed the city and county not to contribute to water quality standard violations.

But that instruction is too general and exceeds the EPA’s regulatory authority under the federal Clean Water Act (CWA), since the agency imposed checks on ...