Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/08pdf/07-588.pdf/07-588.pdf
Page Number: 40

Cite as:  556 U. S. ____ (2009) 

11 

STEVENS, J., dissenting 

weakens the provision’s mandate.11 

Accordingly,  I  would  hold  that  the  EPA  is  without  au-
thority  to  perform  cost-benefit  analysis  in  setting  BTA
standards.    To  the  extent  the  EPA  relied  on  cost-benefit 
analysis in establishing its BTA regulations,12 that action 
was contrary to law, for Congress directly foreclosed such
reliance in the statute itself.13  Chevron, 467 U. S., at 843. 

—————— 

11 The Court attempts to cabin its holding by suggesting that a “rigor-
ous  form  of  cost-benefit  analysis,”  such  as  the  form  “prescribed  under 
the  statute’s  former  BPT  standard,”  may  not  be  permitted  for  setting
BTA  regulations.    Ante,  at  13.    Thus  the  Court  has  effectively  in-
structed the Agency that it can perform a cost-benefit analysis so long
as  it  does  not  resemble  the  kind  of  cost-benefit  analysis  Congress 
elsewhere  authorized  in  the  CWA.    The  majority’s  suggested  limit  on
the  Agency’s  discretion  can  only  be  read  as  a  concession  that  cost-
benefit  analysis,  as  typically  performed,  may  be  inconsistent  with  the
BTA mandate. 

12 The  “national  performance  standards”  the  EPA  adopted  were 
shaped  by  economic  efficiency  concerns  at  the  expense  of  finding  the
technology  that  best  minimizes  adverse  environmental  impact.    In  its 
final  rulemaking,  the  Agency  declined  to  require  industrial  plants  to
adopt  closed-cycle  cooling  technology,  which  by  recirculating  cooling 
water  requires  less  water  to  be  withdrawn  and  thus  fewer  aquatic
organisms  to  be  killed.  Riverkeeper,  Inc.  v.  EPA,  358  F. 3d  174,  182, 
n. 5  (CA2  2004);  69  Fed.  Reg.  41601,  and  n. 44.  This  the  Agency  de-
cided  despite  its  acknowledgment  that  “closed-cycle,  recirculating 
cooling systems . . . can reduce mortality from impingement by up to 98 
percent and entrainment by up to 98 percent.”  Id., at 41601.  The EPA 
instead  permitted  individual  plants  to  resort  to  a  “suite”  of  options  so
long as the method used reduced impingement and entrainment by the
more  modest  amount  of  80  and  60  percent,  respectively.    See  40  CFR 
§125.94(b).    The  Agency  also  permitted  individual  plants  to  obtain  a
site-specific  variance  from  the  national  performance  standards  if  they
could  prove  (1)  that  compliance  costs  would  be  “significantly  greater 
than” those the Agency considered when establishing the standards, or 
(2)  that  compliance  costs  “would  be  significantly  greater  than  the
benefits  of  complying  with  the  applicable  performance  standards,”
§125.94(a)(5).

13 Thus,  the  Agency’s  past  reliance  on  a  “wholly  disproportionate” 
standard,  a  mild  variant  of  cost-benefit  analysis,  is  irrelevant.    See 
ante,  at  14.  Because  “Congress  has  directly  spoken  to  the  precise