Trump’s Parting Jab at San Francisco Puts EPA In Uncharted Water

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump’s assertion that San Francisco had committed environmental violations by allowing trash from its homeless population to enter the ocean outraged California lawmakers, was ridiculed by former EPA officials and may have even taken the agency by surprise.

The president, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One late Wednesday, said the Environmental Protection Agency would soon issue a notice of violation to San Francisco over pollution generated by homeless people, including “needles.” He provided no substantiation for the claim, and there have been no recent media reports on unusual pollution in the waters surrounding the city.

San Francisco, which is home to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is in “total violation” of an unspecified law, Trump said.

“They have to clean it up,” he said. “We can’t have our cities going to hell.”

The pronouncement seemed to come from nowhere. The EPA declined comment, and the mayor of San Francisco insisted that no needles or other trash reach the ocean through storm sewers.

‘Absurd’ Claim

“It’s nonsense -- the idea of using EPA’s authority in connection with pollution from the homeless,” said Eric Schaeffer, a former director of civil enforcement at the EPA under former President Bill Clinton. “It’s absurd. That’s not what EPA does.”

The EPA regulates sources of pollution, such as vehicles, power plants and manufacturing facilities. That doesn’t lend itself to mobile encampments of homeless people, said Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project.

“EPA would have to be extremely creative to find authority to do anything about that,” Schaeffer said.

It is unclear whether the EPA was working on a notice of violation to San Francisco before Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks aboard the presidential aircraft.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said Thursday he wouldn’t comment on “potential enforcement actions” regarding the matter. An agency spokesman also said in an email: “EPA does not comment on potential enforcement actions.”

The White House declined requests to elaborate on the president’s statements.

Serious Sanction

A notice of violation is one of the EPA’s most serious sanctions, issued only after evidence is developed through an investigation, a process that typically takes months, said Adam Kushner, a former prosecutor and senior enforcement attorney at the agency.

“This would be extraordinary,” said Kushner, now a partner at law firm Hogan Lovells. “It is not clear to me how the issuance of an NOV to San Francisco would at all address the homelessness issues.”

Trump’s administration has regularly turned to unconventional techniques to achieve policy outcomes or simply to fulfill the president’s sudden demands. That includes diverting military funding to pay for parts of a wall on the border with Mexico, reportedly pressuring the National Weather Service to back his insistence that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane, or pushing the boundaries of national security law to impose steep tariffs on allies.

Trump is clearly acting “politically,” former California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, said in a phone interview. “If he really cared about the federal environmental rules he would be enforcing them instead of destroying them.”

Wastewater Treatment

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the city has a combined sewer system that ensures trash and other debris is filtered through wastewater treatment plants. None flows into the bay or ocean, she said.

“We are focused on advancing solutions to meet the challenges on our streets, not throwing off ridiculous assertions as we board an airplane to leave the state,” she said. “If the president wants to talk about homelessness, we are committed to working with our state and federal partners on actual solutions.”

Homelessness is an intractable problem in San Francisco, made worse by soaring housing costs as the city’s technology-led economy booms. The homeless population has soared about 17% since 2017, with most living on the streets.

California State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat who represents San Francisco, said Trump had slandered the city, and that Trump’s policies exacerbate the homelessness crisis.

“I wish Trump would have his EPA enforce against actual environmental problems -- like climate change -- but I guess that would be too much to ask,” he said.

The president’s remarks came as he returned from a trip to the western U.S. in which he repeatedly antagonized California over subjects including homelessness, auto emissions and immigration, seeking to cast the state as a Democratic-run cautionary tale. A White House report this week blamed California’s housing, policing and immigration policies for encouraging the growth of the homeless population.

--With assistance from Ryan Beene.

To contact the reporters on this story: Josh Wingrove in Washington at jwingrove4@bloomberg.net;Romy Varghese in San Francisco at rvarghese8@bloomberg.net;Jennifer A. Dlouhy in Washington at jdlouhy1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Shepard at mshepard7@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.