Trump Threatens San Francisco With EPA Violations Over Pollution Amid Homeless Crisis

Brittany M. Hughes | September 19, 2019
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President Trump is threatening to slap Democrat-controlled city of San Francisco with a slew of Environmental Protection Agency fines over the city’s pollution and rampant homelessness problem, calling reports of contaminated needles and dirty water a “terrible situation.”

During a trip to California, Trump told reporters the EPA will be issuing the city a notice over the “tremendous” amount of pollution he says they’re dumping into the ocean from their storm sewers, including dirty needles. 

“In the case of Los Angeles it’s a disaster, in the case of, if you look at San Francisco it’s a total disaster what’s happening, what are they going to ruin those cities,” Trump said. “We’re going to get involved very soon a federal basis if they don’t clean up their act.”

“One of the things that we’re very upset about and angry about is we’re paying a lot of money to Los Angeles to build the subway system, billions of billions of dollars, and you have tents all over the place, and really you have a sanitary issue because this water is rushing into the ocean,” he continued. “And this is supposed to be storm water, it’s not supposed to be sewage and you have these Democrat, liberal politicians, if they don’t straighten out the federal government will have to come in.”

“It’s a terrible situation that’s in Los Angeles and in San Francisco,” Trump said. “And, we’re going to be giving San Francisco, they’re in total violation, we’re going to be giving them a notice very soon.”

“They have to clean it up. We can’t have out cities going to hell,” he added.

San Francisco Democratic Mayor London Breed pushed back on Trump's criticism of her city, accusing the president in a tweet of "cutting clean air and clean water standards" and claiming San Francisco is "committed to working on actual solutions" to address the homeless crisis.

Despite coming out against Trump's claims, Breed has openly gone on record in the past for criticizing her own city's sanitation crisis, demanding that the homeless community "clean up after themselves and show respect to one another and people in the neighborhood." MRCTV reported in late 2018 that NBC’s Bay Area branch did an investigative survey of around 153 blocks of downtown San Francisco and found trash on all 153 blocks, feces on 96 blocks, and used needles on 41 blocks.

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