California’s Clash With Trump Goes From Air to Land—to Mud

(Bloomberg) -- California’s widening war with the Trump administration has careened from disputes over automotive-exhaust regulation, air quality and highway funding, and into the briny salt ponds of San Francisco Bay.

And that’s just in the past five days.

Democratic State Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Tuesday filed what he said is his 15th environmental lawsuit against the administration. The latest targets a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decision to exclude almost 1,400 acres of ponds from protection under the federal Clean Water Act, opening them to commercial development.

“It’s a sad day when the country’s ‘environmental protection agency’ looks at San Francisco Bay and doesn’t see a body of water that it should protect,” Becerra said in a statement. “We should restore the Bay, not build on top of it.”

Trump has made eliminating federal regulations a priority, with the EPA following a directive from the president to repeal at least two existing regulations for each new one. A New York Times analysis earlier this month found more than 80 environmental rules and regulations that are on the way out.

The multihued salt ponds are connected to the Pacific Ocean via the bay, are navigable by boat and with “reasonable improvements” can be used in foreign and interstate commerce, according to the state’s complaint. The EPA ruled the ponds aren’t “waters of the United States,” a decision California says was made at the behest of urban developers.

Three years ago, the Obama administration’s EPA had reached the opposite -- albeit preliminary -- conclusion, in part because the tidal channels within the ponds were navigable. That determination wasn’t finalized before the January 2017 change in presidential administrations, and it was formally reversed in March.

A handful of environmental groups have also filed lawsuits challenging the EPA’s decision.

The EPA’s press office didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Earlier on Tuesday, the regulator notified California that it failed to file complete plans for combating conventional air pollution and, as a result, may be deprived of federal highway funding as punishment.

That action came five days after California sued the administration for withdrawing the state’s longstanding federal permission to set more stringent automotive-tailpipe-emission rules than those of the federal government itself.

The case is State of California v. Wheeler, 19-cv-5943, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Harris in Washington at aharris16@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, Steve Stroth

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