California Stormwater Defense

El Niño Is Coming: What California Industrial Facilities Need to Know About Stormwater Compliance

gjansma@allenmatkins.com (Garrett Jansma) — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:22:58 GMT

In the middle of a dry California summer, stormwater runoff feels like the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. Yet for industrial facilities under the IGP, now is the time to prepare for what’s shaping up to be a wet El Niño year. According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, El Niño is strengthening and, in NOAA’s assessment, carries a 97% chance of persisting through early spring 2027, with an 81% probability of a very strong event during October through December 2026. Southern California typically sees higher-than-normal precipitation during El Niño years, while Northern California’s correlation is less consistent, though a wetter-than-average outcome remains possible. For California industrial facilities subject to the Industrial General Permit (IGP), a strong El Niño means more rain, which generally means more Qualifying Storm Events (QSEs), more required sampling, and more data available to environmental groups that bring Clean Water Act (CWA) citizen suits.

The Environmental Plaintiffs: A Guide to the Organizations Filing Stormwater Citizen Suits in California

gjansma@allenmatkins.com (Garrett Jansma) — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 21:50:48 GMT

If you operate an industrial facility in California, it helps to know who might be on the other side of a 60-Day Notice. Stormwater citizen suits are not filed by government agencies; they are brought by private environmental organizations using the citizen enforcement provision of the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1365. In California, a relatively small number of organizations and their counsel account for the majority of these cases.

Strict Liability Under the CWA: What It Means for Industrial Stormwater Dischargers

gjansma@allenmatkins.com (Garrett Jansma) — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 21:49:50 GMT

If you are an industrial facility operator in California, there is a legal reality about the Clean Water Act that catches many facility operators off guard: liability under the CWA is strict. That means your good faith, your reasonable efforts, and your lack of intent to pollute are all irrelevant to the question of whether you violated the law.

The 60-Day Notice: What It Is, What It Means, and What to Do When You Get One

gjansma@allenmatkins.com (Garrett Jansma) — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 21:41:54 GMT

If you operate an industrial facility in California, there is a letter you never want to receive but increasingly might. It is called a “60-Day Notice of Violation and Intent to File Suit,” and it is the opening move in a citizen enforcement action under Section 505 of the Clean Water Act.

Did CCSF Actually Change Anything? Why citizen-suit plaintiffs appear to be enforcing receiving water violations as if the Supreme Court never ruled, and what comes next.

gjansma@allenmatkins.com (Garrett Jansma) — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 21:23:36 GMT

In March 2025, the Supreme Court handed industrial dischargers what looked like a landmark victory. In City and County of San Francisco v. EPA, the Court held that “end-result” provisions in NPDES permits (provisions that make a permittee responsible for the quality of its receiving waters rather than spelling out what the permittee must do) exceed EPA’s authority under the Clean Water Act. The decision reversed the Ninth Circuit, rejected decades of EPA permitting practice, and appeared to pull the rug out from under one of the most commonly alleged categories of permit violations in citizen suits: receiving water limitations.

“A Cottage Industry”: The Economics of CWA Citizen Suit Enforcement

gjansma@allenmatkins.com (Garrett Jansma) — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 21:20:36 GMT

Citizen suits under the Clean Water Act were designed to supplement government enforcement, allowing private parties to step in when regulators could not or would not act. In California’s industrial stormwater space, however, citizen suit enforcement has also developed into a recurring, fee-driven litigation model used by a relatively small number of environmental organizations and an even smaller number of plaintiffs’ law firms.