Opinion ID: 788461
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Post-Consent Decree Injunctive-Relief Claims

Text: 53 Harsco and Gallatin challenge the district court's decision to grant injunctive relief on the Ellises' Clean Air Act fugitive-dust claims three months after the court entered the consent decree. In support, they argue (1) that the Ellises did not satisfy the traditional standards for obtaining injunctive relief (particularly a showing of irreparable harm) because they never notified the EPA about the violations, never asked the agency to enforce the consent decree and did not give the remedial requirements of the consent decree sufficient time to work and (2) that these alleged post-consent-decree violations constitute new claims that must separately comply with the notice provisions of the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 7604(b). We agree and therefore reverse this aspect of the injunction — at least to the extent it relies on federal rather than state law. 54 In entertaining these fugitive-dust claims, the district court did not dispute that they stemmed from the same types of migrating-dust allegations that led to the consent decrees. In its view, the consent decrees did not afford sufficient relief because the plaintiffs had no rights to enforce the consent decrees even though they are the ones who daily live [with] the dust problems. D. Ct. Op. at 18 (Oct. 8, 2002). The EPA, which may enforce the decree, the district court added, does not monitor the situation on a regular basis. Id. Having chosen to entertain the Ellises' new fugitive dust claims, the court determined that Harsco had continued to send dust across its property line and that Harsco and Gallatin had failed to take adequate dust-abatement measures, even after the consent decrees were entered, in violation of the Clean Air Act. Due to the threatened irreparable harm caused by actual and threatened fugitive-dust violations, the court awarded injunctive relief under the Clean Air Act. 55 The injunction entered by the district court essentially mimicked the Harsco consent decree by requiring Harsco to continue using the enclosed slag dumping containment structure and water spray system to minimize dust emissions. JA 178-79, 1273-77. The court went beyond the consent decrees, however, in one respect. It appointed a special master ... to monitor the visible fugitive-dust situation at Harsco and Gallatin — whether visible fugitive-dust is crossing their property lines for violations of the Clean Air Act. JA 178-79. The consent decree between the EPA and Harsco, by contrast, required Harsco only to allow the EPA access to its facilities in order to inspect[] and verify[ ] compliance with the consent decree. JA 1276. 56 In advancing the essential goal of protect[ing] and enhanc[ing] the quality of the Nation's air resources, 42 U.S.C. § 7401(b)(1), the Clean Air Act relies on three sources of enforcement authority. The Act entrusts the EPA with primary responsibility for promulgating national ambient air quality standards. 42 U.S.C. § 7409. It then requires the States to develop their own implementation plans to ensure that these standards are met and permits States to enforce these plans. See id. § 7410. If States fail to enforce their plans, the statute authorizes federal EPA action and private enforcement actions or citizen suits. See id. §§ 7413(a) & 7604. 57 Under the citizen-suit provision, the key provision at issue in this dispute, individuals may sue for violations of an emission standard or limitation under a state implementation plan, such as Kentucky's mandate that [n]o person shall cause or permit the discharge of visible fugitive dust beyond the lot line of the property on which the emissions originate, 401 Ky. Admin. Regs. 63:010. See 42 U.S.C. § 7604(a)(1) & (f). Before bringing such an action, however, private parties must notify the EPA, the State in which the alleged violation occurred and the alleged violator. See id. § 7604(b). The notice must describe the proscribed activity (including the dates and locations of specific incidents), and it must identify the person responsible for the violations and the applicable standard. See 40 C.F.R. § 54.3. No action under the Clean Air Act's citizen-suit provisions, the statute mandates, may be commenced within 60 days of when the plaintiffs have satisfied these notice requirements, 42 U.S.C. § 7604(b) — a limitation that the courts may not excuse, cf. Hallstrom v. Tillamook County, 493 U.S. 20, 29-31, 110 S.Ct. 304, 107 L.Ed.2d 237 (1989) (construing similar notice provision in Resource Conservation and Recovery Act as mandatory); Walls v. Waste Res. Corp., 761 F.2d 311, 316 (6th Cir.1985) (same, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and Clean Water Act). 58 Comparable notice provisions of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Supreme Court has said, serve two functions: to allow[ ] Government agencies to take responsibility for enforcing environmental regulations and to give the alleged violator an opportunity to bring itself into complete compliance. Hallstrom, 493 U.S. at 28, 110 S.Ct. 304. The notice provisions demonstrate that Congress has authorized citizen suits only when environmental officials  fail to exercise their enforcement responsibility and has provided an interstitial role for private parties in enforcing the statute. Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd. v. Chesapeake Bay Found., Inc., 484 U.S. 49, 60-61, 108 S.Ct. 376, 98 L.Ed.2d 306 (1987) (emphasis added); see also Atlantic States Legal Found. v. Eastman Kodak Co., 933 F.2d 124, 127 (2d Cir.1991) (The purpose of the citizen suit is to stop violations of the Clean Water Act that are not challenged by appropriate state and federal authorities.). The statute, however, does not permit citizen suits to seek types of relief that the [government] chose to forgo; otherwise, administrative discretion to enforce the [statute] in the public interest would be curtailed considerably and the nature of the citizens' role would become potentially intrusive. Gwaltney, 484 U.S. at 60-61, 108 S.Ct. 376. 59 In the face of these carefully reticulated enforcement requirements, the Ellises' injunctive-relief claims for post-consent-decree violations of the Clean Air Act suffer from at least two defects. First, the Ellises do not dispute that they were required to satisfy the traditional requirements for obtaining an injunction — namely, establishing a risk of continuing irreparable injury if the court fails to issue the injunction. United States v. Szoka, 260 F.3d 516, 523 (6th Cir.2001). Whether in the district court or in this Court, the Ellises have failed to explain why the June 20, 2002, consent decrees do not adequately deal with these claims. The parties agree that the decrees cover the same types of fugitive-dust claims covered by the injunction; that the decrees are forward looking and apply to continuing violations of the Clean Air Act, JA 1187, 1293-94; that the decrees reserve all rights to deal with anything that happens in the future, JA 846; that the decrees impose monetary penalties of $1,000 to $5,000 per violation; that there is no evidence that the EPA failed to enforce the decrees; and that the EPA was not notified that additional violations had occurred. See Harthman v. Witty, 480 F.2d 337, 340 (3d Cir.1973) (reversing grant of a second injunction as unnecessary because an injunction granted less than two months earlier already prohibited future pollution). On top of this, the decrees were just three months old when the district court entered its injunction, meaning that the remedial requirements imposed by the decrees either had just been completed or had not yet been completed at all. The decrees specifically contemplated some time for implementing their terms as they required the remedial changes to be put in place between 60 and 180 days. Under these circumstances, the district court committed reversible error in concluding that a risk of continuing irreparable harm had been shown. See Anderson v. Davila, 125 F.3d 148, 164 (3d Cir.1997) (requiring a showing of a real or immediate threat of recurrent violations of legal rights); Ladd v. Thomas, 14 F.Supp.2d 222, 224 (D.Conn.1998) (refusing to find an immediate threat that the plaintiff will be wronged again where the court had previously awarded declaratory relief against the defendant). 60 Second, the Ellises have not explained in their briefs and did not explain at oral argument why a consent decree dismissing the same types of claims that they had previously filed does not require them to satisfy the traditional requirements for commencing an action regarding new claims — 60-day notice and a showing (when there is government involvement) that the government is not diligently prosecuting the action. If it is true that citizens must notify the EPA before commencing an action in the first instance, surely it is true that they must notify the EPA before commencing an action that turns on the alleged inadequacy (or alleged under-enforcement) of a consent decree proposed by and negotiated by that very agency. See Atlantic States Legal Foundation, Inc. v. United Musical Instruments, 61 F.3d 473, 478 (6th Cir.1995) (One of the important purposes of the notice requirement under environmental statutes is to facilitate dispute resolution by EPA negotiation [and thereby] reduce the volume of costly litigation.) (quotation omitted). Generally speaking, when the contours of a private plaintiff's suit and the Government's suit coincide — as the district court determined they did here (and as the Ellises concede) — the former must be dismissed. See EPA v. City of Green Forest, Arkansas, 921 F.2d 1394, 1403-04 (8th Cir.1990) (upholding district court decision to dismiss a private plaintiff's Clean Water Act claims that overlapped completely with a Government consent decree); see also CLEAN, 2000 WL 220464, at ; Lockett v. EPA, 319 F.3d 678, 689 (5th Cir.2003) ([A]llow[ing] [the citizen] suit to proceed based on continued violations for which the [state agency] had already begun to take action would eviscerate the bar on citizen suits where the state is diligently prosecuting an action under comparable state law.). 61 The notice requirement is doubly important here because the Ellises not only sought to obtain an injunction on the same terms as the consent decrees but they also sought to obtain relief on more stringent terms than those worked out by the EPA. Green Forest, 921 F.2d at 1404. Such second-guessing of the EPA's assessment of an appropriate remedy — a mere three months after the entry of the decrees — fails to respect the statute's careful distribution of enforcement authority among the federal EPA, the States and private citizens, all of which permit citizens to act where the EPA has failed to do so, not where the EPA has acted but has not acted aggressively enough in the citizens' view. See Gwaltney, 484 U.S. at 61, 108 S.Ct. 376 (citizens cannot seek the civil penalties that the [EPA] chose to forgo); Comfort Lake Ass'n, Inc. v. Dresel Contracting, Inc., 138 F.3d 351, 356-57 (8th Cir.1998) (private plaintiffs cannot collaterally attack a state environmental agency's decision that a certain level of civil penalties suffice for the same violations alleged in the citizen suit); Orange Env't, Inc. v. County of Orange, 923 F.Supp. 529, 540 (S.D.N.Y.1996) (citizens cannot overrule the judgment of the EPA and demand an additional and different type of remediation than that settled upon by the federal authorities). 62 In ruling to the contrary, the district court expressed concern that the Ellises may not directly enforce the consent decrees and have no apparent remedy for continued fugitive-dust problems because the EPA does not monitor the fugitive dust situation on a regular basis under the decrees. Why these concerns made a difference in this case, however, is not clear, as the court simultaneously granted the Ellises ample injunctive and monetary relief regarding the continuing fugitive dust under Kentucky nuisance law. Even if that relief had not been available, however, there are two answers to the district court's concern. As a starting point, it is well to remember that the Clean Air Act primarily serves public, not private, interests. Citizens acting as private attorneys general to enforce the Clean Air Act, as the phrase implies, seek relief not on their own behalf but on behalf of society as a whole, and accordingly personalized remedies are not a first priority of the Act. See Orange Env't, 923 F.Supp. at 539 (noting that [t]he fact that the remediation order in an environmental suit does not meet the desires of private parties is not crucial, as the purpose of the Clean Water Act is to provide society with a remedy, not to secure personalized relief for individuals). 63 More importantly, the Ellises and the public interest they represent are not without a federal remedy. Three avenues of relief remained open to them. The Ellises could have petitioned the EPA to enforce the consent decrees. They could have petitioned the EPA or the court to obtain a modification of the consent decree. And they could have filed a new lawsuit after supplying the requisite notice to the EPA, to Kentucky and to Harsco and Gallatin. What the Ellises cannot do once the EPA becomes involved is wait until the EPA has resolved its own claims against the polluter, then obtain stricter enforcement than the Government negotiated. If, in other words, the Ellises had notified the EPA that violations of the Clean Air Act had persisted after the entry of the consent decrees and if the Government did not enforce the decrees or otherwise prosecute these claims, the Ellises could file a new complaint (and comply with the statute's 60-day notice requirements, in part by showing that the Government is not diligently prosecuting its suit, i.e., not enforcing the consent decrees). In view of the mere three months that elapsed between the entry of the consent decrees and the district court's injunction and in view of the Ellises' decision not to raise the issue with the EPA, it can hardly be said that the Government in this instance was unwilling or unable to enforce the decrees. Cf. CLEAN, 2000 WL 220464, at  (prosecutions under the Clean Air Act are heavily presumed `diligent'). 64 Also unavailing are the Ellises' arguments in defense of the district court's decision. They claim that (1) citizen plaintiffs have the right to seek injunctive relief after a government settlement if the violations continue and (2) notice to the EPA is not required for post-complaint violations that are of the same type as those identified in the initial notice. Ellis Reply Br. at 26-28. 65 In support of their first proposition, Eastman Kodak, 933 F.2d at 127-28, and Comfort Lake, 138 F.3d at 355, say that citizen plaintiffs may maintain their lawsuits after the Government has resolved claims regarding earlier violations when there is a realistic prospect of the alleged violations continuing. But neither of these cases establishes that a court may issue a citizen-suit injunction when consent decrees concluded by the Government grant prospective injunctive relief covering the same ground, much less allow such claims before the decrees have been allowed to work. The Ellises have not drawn our attention to any case that allows private parties to seek relief that requires a court to revisit (and revamp) territory tread by environmental authorities three months earlier, particularly when those authorities have not even been told about the alleged violations. 66 In making their second argument — that additional violations that are part of an ongoing pattern need not independently comply with the statute's notice provisions — the Ellises again overlook the significance of the consent decrees. It may well be true that private plaintiffs need not send additional notice letters for violations of the same type once they have filed a complaint. See Pub. Interest Research Group of New Jersey, Inc. v. Hercules, Inc., 50 F.3d 1239, 1250 (3d Cir.1995). But because the Government's consent decrees required the dismissal of the Ellises' claims for injunctive relief of the same type, the notice requirements for commencing a new suit (if the Ellises could demonstrate that the Government has actually failed to enforce the decrees) assuredly apply. See 42 U.S.C. § 7604(b) (No action may be commenced... prior to 60 days after the plaintiff has given notice of the violation.).