U.S. Sues 4 Cities on Toxic Waste Dumping

The government, citing federal Clean Water Act requirements, sued four cities today for failing to stop local industrial plants from dumping toxic waste water into municipal sewer systems.

The Justice Department, acting on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, filed suit against Detroit, Phoenix, San Antonio and El Paso, charging that city officials have not enforced federal rules requiring industry to remove toxic pollutants from waste water before discharging it into sewers.

EPA officials said those four cities represent only a tiny fraction of the problem nationwide and that 57 other cities--including San Francisco, for its China Basin district, and West Sacramento, Calif.--already face federal penalties for failure to enforce the industrial “pre-treatment” rules.

Pre-treatment of industrial waste water is required under the Clean Water Act to ensure toxic pollution is not flushed into rivers and lakes from sewage systems, which are not designed to filter out hazardous chemicals.

City officials are supposed to enforce the pre-treatment requirements by setting limits on toxic discharges by industry and then monitoring factories to ensure that waste water does not contain pollution levels above those standards.

“Local officials have a legal and moral responsibility . . . to make sure local industries abide by the rules,” said Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh in announcing the lawsuits against the four cities. “Otherwise, they in effect become polluters themselves by permitting the very discharge they are supposed to police.

“We simply cannot allow harmful pollutants to reach our rivers and streams untreated,” Thornburgh said.

EPA Administrator William K. Reilly, appearing with Thornburgh at a news conference, said the lawsuits against the four cities are part of a continuing EPA crackdown on toxic discharges by industry.