Opinion ID: 402206
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Certification of 3,000 Stations

Text: 55 The district court, in its June 16, 1981 order, required the Commonwealth to certify at least 3,000 inspection stations by May 1, 1982. The Commonwealth argues that this was an abuse of discretion because there was no such requirement in the consent decree and because the Commonwealth had no way of ensuring compliance with the requirement since it has no power or authority to mandate that private garages purchase the emissions analyzers and hire the inspectors necessary to obtain Phase II certification. 56 At oral argument, the Commonwealth indicated that its objection was not to the number of stations mandated-indeed, the Commonwealth itself had contemplated the establishment of 8,700 stations, nearly three times the number required by the district court 13 -but to the fact that the court required the certification of any stations. The Commonwealth's position was that it would have been an abuse of discretion for the court to have mandated the certification of even one station. Tr. of Oral Argument at 8. In the Commonwealth's view, the consent decree did not require it to establish a network of inspection stations, but merely to set up a system which private stations could volunteer to join. Id. at 14. And if too few stations, or even no stations, chose to participate, then-in an argument reminiscent of its earlier apology for noncompliance with the May 1, 1981 implementation deadline-the Commonwealth would treat the decree as inoperative and seek to modify it. Id. at 13, 18-19, 21-22, 43. 57 We reject this argument in its entirety. The Commonwealth in effect is asserting that the consent decree into which it entered imposed no real obligation on it to ensure that vehicle inspections took place and that pollutant emissions were reduced. 14 We agree with Delaware Valley that (s)uch an argument would make a mockery of the Consent Decree and would work a cruel hoax on the court. Delaware Valley Brief at 31. 58 Although the requirement that a certain number of inspection stations be certified is not explicitly set forth in the decree, it is necessarily implicit in it. To hold otherwise would turn the decree into an empty promise. When it signed the decree, the Commonwealth must have known that the attainment of the decree's objectives would require a certain minimum number of inspection stations to be established, and that it was the Commonwealth's duty under the decree to see that this was done. See Mayberry I, supra, 529 F.2d at 337 (Gibbons, J., concurring). We are unwilling to believe that the Commonwealth negotiated and signed the decree, regarding it from the start as a meaningless document, a farce. 59 It is true that the Commonwealth cannot force privately-owned garages to participate in the I/M program, but this argument is basically a distraction. It was always contemplated that the I/M program would be structured such that there would be an economic incentive for private garages to participate. In fact, at the time of the court's order, some 2,274 garages had already applied for the program, and had achieved Phase I certification. App. at 535. 60 We have no reason to believe that if the Commonwealth set about implementing the I/M program in good faith, the goal of 3,000 certified stations could not be met. But even if the number of initially volunteering garages fell short of the number necessary to operate the I/M program adequately, this would not be grounds-as the Commonwealth seems to suggest-for scrapping the decree. The Commonwealth always retains the option to establish its own inspection stations if a shortage of inspection facilities develops. We thus hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in requiring the Commonwealth to certify 3,000 inspection stations by May 1, 1982.