EPA halts Cargill salt plant, prevents expansion of Redwood City facility, EPA withdraws appeal from past administration.
Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press [P360P].
After a nearly 12-year battle where the Cargill Salt Company sought to develop and expand its property in the San Francisco Bay Area near the port of Redwood City, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency withdrew Friday an appeal made during the previous federal administration, concluding that the area is subject to the federal Clean Water Act.
The potential expansion meant billions of dollars in business for Cargill, a private Minnesota-based company that evaporates water on the 1,365-acre property in "crystallizer beds" to produce salt for industrial uses.
However, the land, being subject to the 1972 Clean Water Act, sharply limits what can be built in the area, a ruling that environmentalists widely applauded, saying for years that the land, which is at sea level and was once part of San Francisco Bay before it was leveed in 1902, should be restored as tidal wetlands for fish, wildlife and recreation.
They also argued that any attempt to develop the land in front of the bay is impractical due to sea level rise.
"We're thrilled that President Joe Biden's administration is doing what Trump didn't, which is upholding the law and protecting clean water, wetlands and the Bay," said David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay, an Oakland-based environmental group.
At the same time, he detailed that there was always broad and deep opposition in the Bay Area to building on the property, yet Cargill had found a friend in the Trump administration.
According to the salina's attorneys, the property is dry land separate from the bay and is not subject to the Clean Water Act, which requires a federal permit to fill "waters of the United States."
In light of this, Cargill will not give up on its attempt to make the extension, as it says it plans to move forward with an appeal in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
"Our focus has always been to protect environmental resources and work with our neighbors in the Bay Area to consider future uses of the site," David Smith, an attorney for Cargill and DMB Pacific Ventures, an Arizona company that has sought to develop the property, said at the time.
During 2009, Cargill and DMB proposed to build 12,000 homes on the industrial salt production land along Seaport Boulevard north of the Dumbarton Bridge, a project that would have become the largest development on the San Francisco Bay shores since Foster City was built in the 1960s.
But, again, the project was withdrawn in 2012 amid opposition from community groups and environmentalists.
Cargill does not remove the finger from the line and maintains that it seeks to advance in Otero project, however, has not offered details.
We should remember that, in 2016, during the Barack Obama administration, the Army Corps of Engineers ruled that Cargill's property was not subject to the Clean Water Act, yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in San Francisco came to the opposite conclusion. And under federal law, the EPA can override the Army Corps in special circumstances.
The issue fell by the wayside, and along came the Trump administration, which took it upon itself to give the saltworks an open letter, signing a letter concluding that the property "is not subject" to the Clean Water Act's development restrictions. Environmentalists did not sit idly by and filed a lawsuit to challenge the decision.
With the Biden administration, things changed again, as it appears that the environment will be a priority, as U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup, in relief of environmentalists' arguments, ruled that the area is still connected to the bay by tide gates and intake pipes, and most importantly, it's wet.
EPA halts Cargill salt plant, prevents expansion of Redwood City facility, EPA withdraws appeal from past administration.
It should be noted that the matter is not over, and there will be more legal problems, as the environmental groups sued the EPA, not Cargill, and the appeals court will have to decide whether the salt plant still has standing in the case to continue with the appeal of the lower court's decision.
