A federal judge in San Francisco on Monday overturned a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruling that would have allowed dredging - cleaning and deepening a body of water by removing rocks and sediments - and filling Redwood City's salt ponds without obtaining permits from the appropriate federal agencies.
In a 21-page review, U.S. District Judge William Alsup determined that the EPA ignored its own regulations and misinterpreted relevant case law. Therefore, the judge overturned the determination and remanded the case to the EPA for reconsideration under the current rule.
In 2019, the EPA determined that the Redwood City salt ponds - an area comprising 1,365 acres (about 552 hectares) - adjacent to the San Francisco Bay filled with tide pools, wetlands and commercial salt mining operations; the latter were not part of the United States aquifers.
The determination had important consequences: If salt ponds were not considered U.S. waters, they were not subject to the Drinking Water Act; this meant that private development could proceed without complying with the law; in conclusion, the regulations required permits before filling and dredging.
The salt ponds are owned by a subsidiary of Cargill, Inc. a large, privately owned multinational food company. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and a group of environmental organizations, including Save the Bay and San Francisco Baykeeper, sued the EPA to challenge the ruling.
The salt ponds are filled with dikes for use in salt extraction operations. The saline water fills a series of evaporation ponds that result in salt deposits that can ultimately be extracted and profit from your product.
The controversy revolved around whether the fact that the salt ponds were separated from the Bay itself by the development of a system of dikes and dams meant that they no longer formed part of the navigable waters of the Bay and therefore of US territory.
"The salt mines in the area have not dried up and have had continuous connections to the Bay," the judge ruled. Based on that, the EPA was wrong to determine that they were not part of the navigable waters of the Bay.
The court overturned the determination and sent the case back to the EPA for reconsideration, this time applying the appropriate legal standards.
[With NCB information]
