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Yesterday the SF Board of Supes approved over $4M in settlements with a group of residents who sued the city years ago after their properties were flooded by a massive December rainstorm. This is one fragment of many millions in settlements SF has paid out in similar suits. 1/
There are multiple, low-lying parts of SF that are flood-prone and despite the SFPUC's grant program for flood prevention, free sandbags etc, it's not clear anything will meaningfully change that, barring a multi-billion-dollar infrastructure changes. 2/
But the SFPUC has signaled it will be harder to win awards thru kinds of suits again, since it's basically attempted to make flood-prone residents aware of the risks. Their position is in essence, 'we've alerted you to the danger, so your damages claim is moot.' 3/
Some residents (a few of which were paid out yesterday) formed a group, Solutions Not Sandbags, to organize and protest what they saw as the SFPUC's inaction to fix underlying problems affecting flood-prone areas, like Mission Terrance & 17th and Folsom. 4/
The (Obama-era) EPA took notice, and after they started asking the SFPUC questions. From FOIA requests I submitted ages ago, I found that, at the time, SFPUC was apparently not properly reporting incidents in which discharge from the city's (extremely unique) combined sewer ...
system flowed up from the sewer and onto city streets, a potential health contaminant. They asked SFPUC to provide a ton of records, which, as far as I can tell, they did. Here's a taste of the back & forth: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7216729-EPA-Request-for-Information-Cover-Letter-to.html https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7216730-EPA-Deadline-Extension-for-February-2016-308.html
Essentially, the SFPUC said they were working with EPA on this issue, and that it was an ongoing thing. SF's combined system, in which wastewater and storm runoff are transported and treated using the same set of pipes, makes these 'excursions' more likely. (contd)
There was also a question (never resolved as far as I could tell) of whether these 'excursions' constituted a violation of the SFPUC's federal permit to discharge wastewater. To my knowledge, there was never a violation recorded.
So yeah, there's not a clean resolution to this. Low-lying areas of SF will continue to flood during massive storms, which will of course get worse as the planet warms. The city, for now, believes it has done its diligence by notifying thousands of residents that they're....
at risk. And if your property is damaged by flooding, because of this prior notice of risk, it's probably going to be harder to get the city to settle. They will prob fight these cases harder as a result. The city, it should be noted, does provide some tools to prevent flooding..
which people can take advantage of, several of which are free. But barring massive, street-ripped-up-for-months-types of projects, this problem isn't going to go away any time soon.
And just to give a clear sense of the costs we’re talking about, circa 2015, city officials were talking seriously about just buying up some of the affected properties. Would prob have been cheaper than the cost of the infra fixes.
