As I read it, the EPA as a restrictive government entity issues NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) permits on a yearly basis a water treatment plant in San Francisco. After a year of heavy rainfall, the treatment plant had to discharge sewage into the ocean as it couldn’t handle the influent flows that it was receiving. This is normal practice. As it stands, the treatment plant followed all the rules.
Because of this, in 2019, the EPA issued new restrictions on the treatment plant’s NPDES permits because, as a result of the released sewage, the water tests conducted in the San Francisco Bay failed to meet NPDES standards.
NPDES currently operates by testing the body of water the treatment plant discharges to, not the outflow from the plant. SF says that’s unreasonable because even though the plant followed all guidelines for outflow from the plant, it is now also responsible for the quality of the Bay because of these “end-result” restrictions.
I’ll update more as I read the decision…