By Laurie Au

The City Council is poised to approve several measures Wednesday that would allow the city to spend an additional $1.75 million on several lawsuits relating to wastewater, bringing the total to more than $9 million on lawyer fees over the last five years.

In a closed-door meeting two weeks ago, the city’s Corporation Counsel asked the City Council to approve these fees for Bingham McCutchen, a law firm working the city on two lawsuits.

The city is asking for an additional $750,000 to fight a recent decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for mandatory upgrades to two major wastewater treatment plants. This brings the total amount paid to this law firm on this case to $2,550,000.

The city is also asking for another $1 million for a lawsuit with several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, relating to sewage spills. That brings the total amount spent on this lawsuit, which started in 2004, to $6,486,000.

The maximum rate for the law firm is $450 an hour.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 am and is filed under In Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.