The city discharges billions of gallons of untreated sewage water onto its beaches and into San Francisco Bay and its tributaries every year, according to the federal complaint.
By Hillel Aron, Courthouse News Service
The federal government sued the city and county of San Francisco on Wednesday over “its repeated and widespread failures to operate its two combined stormwater-sewer systems and sewage treatment plants in compliance with the law and its permits, and in a manner that keeps untreated sewage off the streets and beaches of San Francisco.”
Sewage treatment systems are designed to filter wastewater so it can be discharged into rivers, lakes and the ocean without pollution. But during heavy rains, those systems can easily overflow, especially in urban areas filled with concrete. When the system overflows, untreated water — including human waste — is sent directly into the ocean.
According to the federal complaint, the overflow of San Francisco’s sewer system “discharges of billions of gallons of combined sewage each year onto the beaches of San Francisco and into San Francisco Bay and its tributaries.”
A spokesperson for the San Francisco Public Utility Commission, which runs the sewer system, called the lawsuit “unfortunate.”
“San Francisco, like many other cities across the country, is facing costly infrastructure needs due to climate change and new water quality challenges, like reducing nutrients discharged into the bay,” the spokesperson said. “Suing us doesn’t help. All it does is drive up costs for our ratepayers and reduce resources that are better invested in improvements to further protect the bay.”
In a written statement, Jen Kwart, spokesperson for San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, expressed “disappointment” that the feds had “chosen to resort to litigation, a needlessly costly approach,” in light of what she called the San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s willingness to resolve the regulators’ concerns collaboratively.”
“Nevertheless,” she added, the “decision is not surprising, because it has for decades used lawsuits — or the threat of lawsuits — to extract concessions from combined sewer communities across the country. Instead of using the permitting tools Congress granted it under the Clean Water Act for situations precisely like San Francisco’s, EPA prefers to threaten communities with enormous fines and costly litigation in lieu of working in partnership with the nation’s cities.”
Environmental groups like San Francisco Baykeeper have complained about the city’s wastewater treatment plants, which become overwhelmed in heavy storms and can overflow. In March, Baykeeper itself threatened to sue, accusing the city of “repeated discharges of mixed sewage and trash-filled urban runoff into San Francisco Bay during heavy rains.”
“In a typical year, the agency discharges 1.2 billion gallons of combined stormwater runoff and sewage, which contains feces, bacteria, viruses, chemicals, and trash. In a wet year, the volume of discharge can exceed 2 billion gallons,” the nonprofit said in a statement. Of that 2 billion gallons, the group estimates, 6% is raw sewage — the equivalent, in a wet year, of 120 million gallons, enough to fill 180 Olympic-size swimming pools.
”San Francisco is dumping raw sewage and trash directly into the bay at a magnitude that’s almost incomprehensible,” said Baykeeper managing attorney Eric Buescher, in a written statement in March. “Sewage and stormwater pollution is, by volume, the single greatest source of pollution in the bay, and San Francisco is likely the greatest source of that sewage pollution — which includes the pollution that causes fish-killing algae blooms.”
According to the San Francisco Public Utility Commission, the city has spent more than $2 billion to improve its sewage treatment system since 1976, which has reduced the volume of its discharge by 80%.
“San Francisco, and indeed every other combined sewer system in the country, cannot capture, treat, and disinfect all of the stormwater from every storm that rolls into town,” the agency said in a fact sheet. “Even assuming that such a system could be constructed, it would cost San Francisco ratepayers well over $10 billion,” and would have “negligible environmental benefits.”
Last year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 split decision that the Environmental Protection Agency has “broad authority” to require San Francisco and other cities to meet whatever water quality standard it sets.
