Chris White Tech Reporter
October 03, 2019 10:30 AM ET
The Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice Wednesday accusing San Francisco of violating the Clean Water Act, a 1970s environmental regulation designed to protect the country’s waterways and tributaries.
San Francisco is struggling to maintain its sprawling sewage system, allowing “substantial volumes of raw and partially-treated sewage to flow across beaches and into the San Francisco Bay,” EPA spokeswoman Molly Block told reporters ahead of the notice. California and the administration have traded barbs over the issue recently.
EPA’s regional director representing San Francisco noted that sewage is overrunning the city in some areas. (RELATED: Trump Says He Will ‘Slap’ San Francisco With Environmental Violation Over Homelessness Problem)
“There have been instances of sewage flowing in the streets and entering people’s homes,” Michael Stoker, head of EPA’s Region 9 district, wrote to Harlan Kelly Jr., the general manager of San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Data also show high concentrates of zinc and lead threaten the city’s beaches, he added.
“President Donald Trump criticised the city recently for the violations, telling reports aboard Air Force One on Sept. 19 that “we’re going to be giving San Francisco, they’re in total violation, we’re going to be giving them a notice very soon.” He added that “It’s a terrible situation.”
San Francisco has experienced an 18% rise in homelessness since 2015, and the issue is causing the streets to be littered with trash, feces, and used needles. An interactive map created in 2014 called “Human Wasteland” shows a heavy concentration of incidents of human excrement throughout the city.
EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler seized on the issue, writing a Sept. 26 letter to Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom citing multiple instances of California failing to meet federal water quality standards, noting that the problems are stemming from the state’s homeless population.
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What’s not to like: the EPA telling San Francisco to get its sh*t together.
California has the solution: a ban on single use toilet paper.
LOL. Made me laugh!
Maybe they should put some of warning labels CA is famous for on SF and LA “Welcome to …” signs?
“The USEPA has determined that the streets of (plug in the sanctuary city’s name) are full of ….. And that’s no Bull!”
Oh, so SF the SNIP, the sanctuary of criminals, illegal aliens and sidewalk defecators is now dumping feces in the bay where people swim, boat and fish. Comeuppance is so apropos. And now the people are being taxed (looted) to finance the poop patrols. This is just too sweet. Comeuppance is best served to the voters sitting on shit filled sidewalks. The old saying is that people get exactly what is coming to them and for sure the commie/socialist, hate mongering, immoral, duplicitous, prejudiced, economics dishonest and ignorant Democrats have got their just desserts. Yes Dorothy, you are not in Kansas any longer; you are in the shitybythebay, San Francisco. Might I have more TP, please? And to think some damned fool woman bureaucrat thought she could end poverty by canceling overdue library fees. Insanity, lunacy, reigns in the SNIP.
How many people remember that beautiful hit – San Fransisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers in Your Hair) – written by John Phillips and sung by Scott McKenzie?
I wonder… if John Phillips had the opportunity to write the lyrics today, what he would have written?
If you’re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some boots while you are there
If you’re going to San Francisco
You’re gonna meet lots’a homeless people there
For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a stinkin’ there
In the streets of San Francisco
Homeless people dumping from their rears …..
It is a real problem for us here in SF. The homeless come here for two reasons, 1) The “virtuous” communities critiquing us, give their difficult people one way bus tickets to SF. (My wife works in Social Services, can attest to the high number coming here every day, free on a bus, courtesy of these self righteous moral communities). Police in these places give their derelicts tickets to SF, force them on buses, and no local judges intervene…There is then the 2nd reason, SF has no ice or blizzards, and the climate is mild for 9 months. What this points out is that (moral self righteousness aside), this is a nationwide problem. We don’t think we in SF should be held responsible for what is occurring in every state, while their “solution” is to dump their problems on us. So, please get off your “It’s a SF problem, not ours, ha, ha.” No it isn’t. We need a nationwide approach to solve our homeless problem.
I live in Victoria, British Columbia. The city is full of Eco loons, and we dump all our raw sewage directly into the Ocean. As usual they have the wrong set of priorities.
I also used to have a perfectly adequate septic tank and septic Field. Now, as housing density increased I had to hook up to sewer, for ‘sanitation’ reasons. So now my sewer joins the rest going directly into the Ocean.