Thursday June 5, 2025
Stormwater Solutions —
Stormwater managers may welcome the guiding principle of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in City and County of San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency: permit holders and applicants should not be responsible for water quality impacts that are beyond their control. The court left much of the framework for regulating stormwater discharges under the Clean Water Act, including standard monitoring and best management practices requirements in place. But importantly, the court ruled that NPDES permits that impose “end-result” requirements, which can impose liability under the Clean Water Act whenever the receiving waters for the discharge exceed water quality standards, exceed EPA’s authority under the Clean Water Act.
San Francisco’s case highlights the competing concerns that agencies and businesses managing stormwater face. On the one hand, the city and county of San Francisco and its Public Utility Commission have been leaders in environmental advocacy and stewardship in many areas. On the other hand, like many municipalities, the city confronts the challenge of maintaining an aging and arguably antiquated infrastructure — in this case, a combined stormwater and sanitary sewer system that struggles to manage rainfall events. Faced with the possibility of extremely costly upgrades to the system and the rate increases that would be needed to fund the upgrades, the city challenged EPA’s authority to impose a broad range of “narrative” conditions commonly found in NPDES permits.