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Parties Involved:
Desert Citizens Against Pollution
Petitioner
Environmental Protection Agency
Respondent
Justin Hayes
Amicus Curiae for Petitioner
Lisa Perez Jackson
Respondent
Nevada Mining Association
Intervenor for Respondent
Sierra Club
Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 18, 2012 Decided November 9, 2012 

No. 11-1113 

DESERT CITIZENS AGAINST POLLUTION AND SIERRA CLUB, 

PETITIONERS

v. 

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY AND LISA PEREZ 

JACKSON, ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL 

PROTECTION AGENCY, 

RESPONDENTS

NEVADA MINING ASSOCIATION, 

INTERVENOR

On Petition for Review of Final Action of the United States 

Environmental Protection Agency 

Seth L. Johnson argued the cause for petitioners. With 

him on the briefs was James S. Pew. 

Justin Hayes, pro se, was on the brief as amicus curiae in 

support of petitioners. 

Jon M. Lipshultz, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause and filed the brief for respondents. 

USCA Case #11-1113 Document #1404132 Filed: 11/09/2012 Page 1 of 11
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Denise W. Kennedy, John A. Bryson, Emily C. Schilling, 

Michael A. Zody, and Jacob A. Santini were on the brief for 

intervenor Nevada Mining Association in support of 

respondents. Elizabeth A. Schulte entered an appearance. 

Before: SENTELLE, Chief Judge, GARLAND, Circuit 

Judge, and WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS. 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge: Section 112(c)(6) of 

the Clean Air Act requires action by the Environmental 

Protection Agency on seven bioaccumulative hazardous air 

pollutants (“HAPs”), each named specifically by Congress. 

EPA is to list each pollutant’s sources and to “assur[e] that 

sources accounting for not less than 90 per centum of the 

aggregate emissions of each such pollutant are subject to 

standards under subsection (d)(2) or (d)(4)” of § 112. Clean 

Air Act § 112(c)(6), 42 U.S.C. § 7412(c)(6). In a rulemaking 

effective February 17, 2011, EPA identified gold mine ore 

processing and production as a source for purposes of 

emissions of mercury, one of the seven HAPs named in 

§ 112(c)(6). 76 Fed. Reg. 9450/1 (the “Gold Mine Rule”). 

In its response to comments, EPA took two positions 

contested here by petitioners Desert Citizens Against 

Pollution and Sierra Club. First, EPA rejected the claim that 

§ 112(c)(6)’s cross-reference to § 112(d)(2) (in the instances 

where (d)(2) rather than (d)(4) applies) requires that EPA 

subject all HAPs emitted by a § 112(c)(6) source—even those 

not enumerated in § 112(c)(6)—to standards at the stringency 

level specified by § 112(d)(2). See 76 Fed. Reg. at 9457. 

Second, EPA made clear that, despite language in the Gold 

Mine Rule arguably suggesting that it covered “fugitive 

emissions”—namely emissions from certain sources such as 

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“tailings ponds, leach fields, and waste rock piles”—in fact 

the rule did not address such emissions. Id. at 9457/3-58/1. 

Petitioners timely challenged the rulemaking on both 

issues. We address these claims in the above order, rejecting 

both. 

* * * 

Does § 112(c)(6) require EPA to impose the same 

stringency levels in standards for non-§ 112(c)(6) HAPs 

occurring at § 112(c)(6) sources that it does for § 112(c)(6) 

HAPs? We start with a brief review of the statutory context. 

In the early years of the Act, Congress left the choice of which 

HAPs to regulate largely to EPA’s discretion. See New Jersey 

v. EPA, 517 F.3d 574, 578 (D.C. Cir. 2008). But in 1990 

Congress amended the Act to list 189 specific HAPs, 

including mercury compounds, 42 U.S.C. § 7412(b)(1), and 

then prescribed a two-step process whereby EPA would 

regulate their emission. Under the first step, EPA lists 

“major” and “area” sources of the HAPs, a distinction we 

have discussed at length elsewhere. See, e.g., Nat’l Mining 

Ass’n v. EPA, 59 F.3d 1351, 1353-54 (D.C. Cir. 1995). 

(Briefly, “major sources” are those that emit 10 or more tons 

of a specific HAP annually, or 25 or more tons of any 

combination of HAPs, 42 U.S.C. § 7412(a)(1), and are 

generally “subject to stricter regulatory control than are ‘area 

sources,’” Nat’l Mining Ass’n, 59 F.3d at 1353. An “area 

source” is “any stationary source of [HAPs] that is not a major 

source,” 42 U.S.C. § 7412(a)(2); their listing and regulation is 

more discretionary and context-dependent than is the case for 

major sources. For example, under § 112(c)(3), “area sources 

representing 90 percent of the area source emissions of the 30 

[HAPs] that present the greatest threat to public health in the 

largest number of urban areas” are subject to nondiscretionary 

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listing, whereas EPA “does not have to establish emission 

standards for unlisted area sources.” Nat’l Mining Ass’n, 59 

F.3d at 1353.) In the second step, EPA promulgates emission 

standards pursuant to the procedures and criteria outlined in 

various paragraphs of § 112(d), 42 U.S.C. § 7412(d). 

In the paragraph at issue here, § 112(c)(6), Congress 

additionally singled out seven specific persistent, 

bioaccumulative HAPs—some of them separately listed in 

§ 112(b)(1)—and required EPA to list their sources and 

promulgate emissions standards. In doing so, Congress did 

not employ the distinction between “major” and “area 

sources”: 

With respect to [the seven named HAPs] the 

Administrator shall, not later than 5 years after 

November 15, 1990, list categories and 

subcategories of sources assuring that sources 

accounting for not less than 90 per centum of the 

aggregate emissions of each such pollutant are 

subject to standards under subsection (d)(2) or 

(d)(4) of this section. 

42 U.S.C. § 7412(c)(6). Although, like § 112(c)(3), 

§ 112(c)(6) imposes a special deadline for listing sources that 

account for 90% of specified emissions (in the case of 

§ 112(c)(3), emissions of the 30 most hazardous HAPs), it is 

unique in denying EPA any choice in the selection of HAPs 

chosen for special treatment. 

 Section 112(d)(2), in turn, sets out a level of stringency 

known as “maximum achievable control technology” or 

“MACT”: 

Emissions standards promulgated under this 

subsection and applicable to new or existing sources 

of hazardous air pollutants shall require the 

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maximum degree of reduction in emissions of the 

hazardous air pollutants subject to this section

(including a prohibition on such emissions, where 

achievable) that the Administrator, taking into 

consideration the cost of achieving such emission 

reduction, and any non-air quality health and 

environmental impacts and energy requirements, 

determines is achievable for new or existing sources 

in the category or subcategory to which such 

emission standard applies. . . . 

42 U.S.C. § 7412(d)(2) (emphasis added). “[M]ajor sources 

must comply with . . . MACT standards.” Nat’l Mining Ass’n, 

59 F.3d at 1353. “For listed area sources, EPA may choose to 

promulgate emission standards requiring only ‘generally 

available control technologies or management practices,’” or 

GACT. Id. 

We review the competing statutory constructions under 

the familiar standards of Chevron, U.S.A., Inc. v. NRDC, Inc., 

467 U.S. 837 (1984), first determining whether there is a 

relevant textual ambiguity in the statute, and then, if there is, 

deciding whether the implementing agency’s construction is 

reasonable. Nat’l Cable & Telecomm. Ass’n v. Brand X 

Internet Servs., 545 U.S. 967, 980 (2005) (citing Chevron, 467 

U.S. at 843–44 & n. 11). 

Petitioners’ claim turns entirely on § 112(c)(6)’s crossreference to §§ 112(d)(2) and (d)(4). (More on § 112(d)(4) 

momentarily.) Looking to the language of (d)(2) emphasized 

above, petitioners argue that its phrase “emissions of the

hazardous air pollutants subject to this section” means that 

whenever EPA creates MACT standards for § 112(c)(6) HAPs 

for a source, it must similarly impose MACT standards for 

emissions from that source of any HAP listed anywhere in 

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§ 112 (“this section”)—including the 189 HAPs listed in 

§ 112(b)(1). 

 Petitioners’ reading of the statute is linguistically 

possible. After all, § 112(c)(6) directs EPA to assure that “the 

emissions of each such pollutant [the seven § 112(c)(6) HAPs] 

are subject to standards under subsection (d)(2) or (d)(4),” and 

(d)(2) says that “[e]missions standards promulgated under this 

subsection” must require MACT reductions “in emissions of 

the hazardous air pollutants subject to this section,” which 

would seem to mean all HAPs identified in § 112. Further, 

we have read subparagraphs (1) and (3) of § 112(d) to require 

the regulation of all HAPs listed in § 112(b)(1). See, e.g., 

Nat’l Lime Ass’n v. EPA, 233 F.3d 625, 633-34 (D.C. Cir. 

2000), Sierra Club v. EPA, 479 F.3d 875, 883 (D.C. Cir. 

2007). And, consistently with petitioners’ view of the phrase 

“subject to this section” in § 112(d)(2), we have recently 

recognized that Congress’s usual “hierarchical scheme in 

subdividing statutory sections” refers to a section of the U.S. 

Code, followed by subsections, paragraphs, subparagraphs, 

and clauses. U.S. v. Hines, 694 F.3d 112, 118 (D.C. Cir. 

2012) (citing Koons Buick Pontiac GMC, Inc. v. Nigh, 543 

U.S. 50, 60–61 (2004)). 

But however linguistically possible petitioners’ 

interpretation, it is not unambiguously correct. The textual 

ambiguity does not arise from § 112(d)(2), but from 

§ 112(c)(6), and lies in the phrase “subject to standards under 

subsection (d)(2) or (d)(4) of this section.” 

 “Standards under subsection (d)(2)” could be given the 

construction that petitioners advance, namely, that “standards 

under” incorporates every word of (d)(2), thereby triggering 

MACT standards for non-§ 112(c)(6) HAPs emitted by a 

§ 112(c)(6) source. But alternatively Congress may have 

plausibly intended simply to set MACT as the standard for the 

seven § 112(c)(6) HAPs, as opposed to the less restrictive 

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GACT standard specified in § 112(d)(5). This reading makes 

particular sense given that the usual criterion for selecting 

MACT versus GACT standards—whether a source is “major” 

or “area”—is missing from the framework established by 

§ 112(c)(6). 

As EPA pointed out in the rulemaking, petitioners’ 

interpretation would have the anomalous effect of changing 

the required stringency of non-§ 112(c)(6) HAPs at a given 

area source—from the GACT level to the more demanding 

MACT level—simply on the fortuity that the non-§ 112(c)(6) 

HAPs in question shared a source with one or more 

§ 112(c)(6) HAPs. 76 Fed. Reg. 9457/2. Thus a subsection 

designed for seven HAPs that Congress thought deserved 

special attention—a temporal priority and a demanding 

stringency level—would, under petitioners’ view, require 

EPA to apply those special rules to a broad array of HAPs 

when they chanced to occur at a § 112(c)(6) source. 

A further curiosity of petitioners’ interpretation is that it 

leaves the cross-reference to (d)(4) hanging. That subsection 

reads, in full: 

With respect to pollutants for which a health 

threshold has been established, the Administrator 

may consider such threshold level, with an ample 

margin of safety, when establishing emission 

standards under this subsection. 

42 U.S.C. § 7412(d)(4). Whereas the (d)(2) cross-reference 

provides a linguistic hook for tightening the required 

stringency of controls over non-§ 112(c)(6) HAPs at 

§ 112(c)(6) sources, there is no comparable hook in (d)(4)—

no language equivalent to (d)(2)’s mandate to cover “the

hazardous air pollutants subject to this section.” Thus, 

petitioners ask us to hold that Congress used (d)(2) to upshift 

the required stringency for some non-§ 112(c)(6) HAPs, with 

no similar upshift for § 112(c)(6) HAPs governed by (d)(4). 

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Given that the language “standards under subsection 

(d)(2)” might simply reflect Congress’s intention to set the 

stringency level for § 112(c)(6) HAPs in a way the 

architecture of the Act does not otherwise make obvious, and 

that petitioners’ reading has the effect of tightening the 

stringency of standards for non-§ 112(c)(6) HAPs from 

sources that happen to emit § 112(c)(6) HAPs, the meaning of 

§ 112(c)(6)’s “subject to standards under subsection (d)(2) or 

(d)(4)” is ambiguous. EPA reasonably resolves the ambiguity 

by reading the cross-references as simply supplying the level 

of stringency for § 112(c)(6) standards—either MACT under 

(d)(2) or “health threshold” under (d)(4).1

 Congruently, it 

sees the cross-references as saying nothing about the 

standards governing non-§ 112(c)(6) HAPs when EPA sets 

out to assure that the seven § 112(c)(6) HAPs “are subject to 

standards” of the requisite type. 

Such an interpretation is not the only one available, as 

EPA itself acknowledged. See 76 Fed. Reg. at 9457 (the 

“language [of § 112(c)(6)] can reasonably be read to mean 

standards . . . for all HAP emitted by the source.”) But our 

duty is to accept the agency’s interpretation if it is “based on a 

permissible construction of the statute.” Chevron, 467 U.S. at 

843. 

We further note that petitioners’ view would seriously 

risk undercutting the priority that Congress obviously 

assigned the § 112(c)(6) HAPs. If the § 112(c)(6) crossreferences triggered a duty to impose more stringent standards 

on non-§ 112(c)(6) HAPs at § 112(c)(6) sources, such a 

triggering would almost certainly precipitate pushback from 

the operators of such sources and slow the process of 

imposing MACT standards on the § 112(c)(6) HAPs. 

 1

 We do not know and need not address how the 

“may” in (d)(4) is to be construed. 

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For the reasons noted above, we find EPA’s interpretation 

eminently reasonable. 

Does the Gold Mines Rule embrace fugitive emissions? 

As we observed at the outset, fugitive emissions are ones from 

sources such as “tailings ponds, leach fields, and waste rock 

piles.” 94 Fed. Reg. at 9458/1. In its response to comments 

EPA made clear that the rule would not address such 

emissions. 

Prior to that response, the rule could be said to have left 

some obscurity as to its coverage. The regulation declares, 

“You are subject to this subpart if you own or operate a gold 

mine ore processing and production facility as defined in 

§ 63.11651, that is an area source.” 40 C.F.R. § 63.11640(a). 

And § 63.11651 in turn defines such a facility as “any 

industrial facility engaged in the processing of gold mine ore 

that uses any of [a number of specified production 

processes].” Id. § 63.11651. These definitions paint rather 

broadly. But in another section, EPA appeared to narrow the 

rule’s scope, saying first that “[t]his subpart applies to each 

new or existing affected source,” 76 Fed. Reg. at 9480, 

codified at 40 C.F.R. § 63.11640(b) (emphasis added), and 

then defining “affected sources” as 

each collection of “ore pretreatment processes” at a 

gold mine ore processing and production facility, 

each collection of “carbon processes with mercury 

retorts” at a gold mine ore processing and 

production facility, each collection of “carbon 

processes without mercury retorts” at a gold mine 

ore processing and production facility, and each 

collection of “non-carbon concentrate processes” at 

a gold mine ore processing and production facility, 

as defined in § 63.11651. 

Id. Petitioners do not contend that any of the “affected 

sources” listed encompasses fugitive emissions. 

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In response to petitioners’ comments advocating the 

broader definition, EPA resolved any resulting ambiguity in 

favor of the narrower definition, making the exclusion of 

“fugitive emissions” from “affected sources” express rather 

than implicit. It characterized affected sources more generally 

as consisting of “the thermal processes that occur after ore 

crushing, including roasting operations (i.e., ore dry grinding, 

ore preheating, roasting, and quenching), autoclaves, carbon 

kilns, electrowinning, preg tanks, mercury retorts, and 

furnaces,” and excluding “tailings ponds, leach fields and 

waste rock piles.” 76 Fed. Reg. at 9458. 

 We review EPA’s interpretation of its previous rules even 

more deferentially than we review its interpretation of 

statutory ambiguity. We must give “controlling weight” to 

the agency’s interpretation “unless it is plainly erroneous or 

inconsistent with the regulation.” Thomas Jefferson Univ. v. 

Shalala, 512 U.S. 504, 512 (1994) (internal quotation marks 

and citations omitted). 

EPA’s prose may be inelegant, even recognizing that 

drafting rules for mercury emissions from gold mines seems 

unlikely to inspire elegance. But the basic structure is 

plausible: gold mines are a broad concept and those who own 

or operate them are indeed “subject to” this subpart, as 

§ 63.11640(a) says. Having set out that broad term, however, 

EPA can logically state that the subpart applies only to 

affected sources, and then define such sources as including 

considerably less than all activities at a gold mine. 

Thus, even assuming that before the clarification a reader 

might have supposed the rule to cover fugitive emissions, its 

resolution of the possible linguistic confusion was not “plainly 

erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation,” Auer v. 

Robbins, 519 U.S. 452, 461 (1997) (citation omitted), and is 

entitled to our deference. 

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Petitioners assert further that, assuming EPA’s rule 

actually excluded fugitive emissions (as we have just held), its 

explanations for doing so were arbitrary and capricious. These 

arguments are without merit. EPA reasonably concluded that 

the record before it provided insufficient information about 

the quantity of fugitive emissions or available methods of 

controlling them. 

* * * 

The petition for review is therefore 

Denied 

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