Thursday October 10, 2024
San Francisco Chronicle —
As San Francisco prepares to ask the Supreme Court to ease federal restrictions on sewage pollution into the ocean and the bay, the case has divided the city’s all-Democratic leadership, and put the city in the unusual position of siding with oil companies and business groups and against the state and federal governments.
The Board of Supervisors will take up a resolution Tuesday urging city officials to settle the case and avoid a ruling that could harm offshore water quality nationwide.
San Francisco is siding with “the nation’s biggest polluters” in a lawsuit that “has the potential to seriously destabilize Clean Water Act protections at a time when environmental protections are already under serious threat,” said the resolution by Supervisors Myrna Melgar and Aaron Peskin.
The “biggest polluters” was a reference to the city’s industry allies in the case, including the National Mining Association, the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They argued in a court filing that the Environmental Protection Agency pollution standards that San Francisco is challenging could undermine more than 330,000 offshore water discharge permits.