Opinion ID: 786210
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: CWA Claim

Text: 49 Plaintiffs argue that the district court erred in granting the City's motion for summary judgment on the grounds that Plaintiffs' CWA claims were moot. Plaintiffs submit that the City did not carry its heavy burden of persuading the court that further violations of the NPDES are not likely to recur, as required by Laidlaw. Laidlaw holds that a defendant's voluntary cessation of a challenged practice does not ordinarily moot a case. Laidlaw, 528 U.S. at 189, 120 S.Ct. 693 (citation omitted). In other words, voluntary cessation of the challenged conduct does not ordinarily moot a case unless subsequent events ma[ke] it absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not be reasonably expected to recur. Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). The heavy burden of establishing that the challenged conduct cannot reasonably be expected to start up again lies with the party asserting mootness. Id. 50 As noted above, the district court held that Plaintiffs' CWA claim was moot [at the time of summary judgment] and moot at the time it was filed. Although the district court characterized it as mootness, the latter half of the district court's statement implicates standing. See id. at 191, 120 S.Ct. 693 (discussing distinctions between standing and mootness). We therefore begin our analysis with standing.
51 [S]tanding concerns only whether a plaintiff has a viable claim that a defendant's unlawful conduct `was occurring at the time the complaint was filed.' Cleveland Branch, NAACP v. City of Parma, Ohio, 263 F.3d 513, 525 (6th Cir.2001), cert. denied, 535 U.S. 971, 122 S.Ct. 1438, 152 L.Ed.2d 382 (2002) (quoting Laidlaw, 528 U.S. at 184, 120 S.Ct. 693). The Supreme Court has consistently held that jurisdiction is tested by the facts as they existed when the action [was] brought and that after vesting, it cannot be ousted by subsequent events. Id. at 524. To establish initial standing to bring suit, a plaintiff must demonstrate (1) he or she has suffered an injury in fact that is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, as opposed to conjectural or hypothetical; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the defendant's challenged action; and (3) it is likely, not speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision. Id. at 523-24 (citing Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992)). 52 Mootness addresses whether the plaintiff continues to have an interest in the outcome of the litigation. City of Parma, 263 F.3d at 525. [A] case is moot when the issues presented are no longer `live' or the parties lack a legally cognizable interest in the outcome. Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 496, 89 S.Ct. 1944, 23 L.Ed.2d 491 (1969). In other words, [i]f events that occur subsequent to the filing of a lawsuit or an appeal deprive the court of the ability to give meaningful relief, then the case is moot and must be dismissed. Al Najjar v. Ashcroft, 273 F.3d 1330, 1336 (11th Cir.2001). 53 As the district court implicitly recognized, this case raises both standing and mootness concerns. See generally Laidlaw, 528 U.S. at 180-92, 120 S.Ct. 693 (discussing distinctions between the two doctrines). By the time Plaintiffs gave notice of intent to sue in February 2001 and filed suit sixty days later on May 16, 2001, the State of Tennessee had already procured the relief Plaintiffs sought in their complaint, namely remedial efforts to stop violations of the NPDES permit. In fact, by the time of Plaintiffs' suit, the State of Tennessee had already been at the task for approximately seven years, beginning with the Commissioner's Order and Assessment on November 16, 1993. By the time of Plaintiffs' federal action, per orders of the State of Tennessee, the City had installed and made operational a new wastewater treatment plant, at a cost of over $1 million, to bring it into compliance with its NPDES permit. Thus, by the time Plaintiffs' suit was initiated, Plaintiffs essentially no longer had an injury in fact that was actual or imminent. But for the fortuity of four minor discharges in February, March, and May of 2001, Lynch clearly lacked standing, 5 because the relief requested in the complaint was by that time for wholly past violations. 54 The district court's sense that Plaintiffs' standing was problematic is bolstered by comparison with the Supreme Court's decision in Gwaltney. In that case, the Virginia State Water Control Board issued a NPDES permit to the petitioner Gwaltney of Smithfield, Ltd., in 1974 authorizing Gwaltney to discharge seven pollutants, including fecal coliform, chlorine, and total Kjeldahl nitrogen (TKN), from the company's meat-packing plant on the Pagan River in Smithfield, Virginia. Id. at 53, 108 S.Ct. 376. Between 1981and 1984, the company repeatedly violated the conditions of the permit by exceeding effluent limitations on five of the seven covered pollutants. Id. In March 1982, the company installed new equipment to improve its chlorination system, and the last reported chlorine violation occurred in October 1982. Id. The new chlorination system also helped control the discharge of fecal coliform, the last of which occurred in February 1984. Id. at 54, 108 S.Ct. 376. In October 1983, the company upgraded its wastewater treatment system, and the last reported TKN violation occurred on May 15, 1984. Id. 55 The respondents, two environmental groups, sent notice in February 1984 to the company, the EPA, and the Virginia Board of their intent to file a citizen suit under the CWA based on the company's violations of its permit conditions. Id. The respondents filed suit in June 1984. Id. The company moved to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the Act, arguing that the language of § 505(a) [33 U.S.C. § 1365(a)], which allows private citizens to bring suit against any person alleged to be in violation of the Act, required the defendant to be violating the Act as of the time of suit. Id. at 54-55, 108 S.Ct. 376. The company contended that, because its last recorded violation occurred several weeks before the respondents filed their complaint, the district court lacked jurisdiction over the action. Id. at 55, 108 S.Ct. 376. 56 The Supreme Court agreed, holding that [t]he most natural reading of `to be in violation' is a requirement that citizen-plaintiffs allege a state of either continuous or intermittent violation that is, a reasonable likelihood that a past polluter will continue to pollute in the future. Id. at 57, 108 S.Ct. 376. The Court observed that the pervasive use of the present tense throughout § 505, especially in the definition of citizen as `a person ... having an interest which is or may be adversely affected' by the defendant's violations of the Act, id. at 59, 108 S.Ct. 376 (quoting § 1365(g)), made plain that the harm sought to be addressed by the citizen suit lies in the present or future, not in the past. Id. The Court reasoned in relevant part: 57 Any other conclusion would render incomprehensible § 505's notice provision, which requires citizens to give 60 days' notice of their intent to sue to the alleged violator as well as to the Administrator and the State. § 1365(b)(1)(A). If the Administrator or the State commences enforcement action within that 60-day period, the citizen suit is barred, presumably because governmental action has rendered it unnecessary. § 1365(b)(1)(B). It follows logically that the purpose of notice to the alleged violator is to give it an opportunity to bring itself into complete compliance with the Act and thus likewise render unnecessary a citizen suit. If we assume, as respondents urge, that citizen suits may target wholly past violations, the requirement of notice to the alleged violator becomes gratuitous. 58 Id. at 59-60, 108 S.Ct. 376. The Court further observed that 59 Adopting respondents' interpretation of § 505's jurisdictional grant would create a second and even more disturbing anomaly. The bar on citizen suits when government enforcement action is under way suggests that the citizen suit is meant to supplement rather than to supplant governmental action. The legislative history of the Act reinforces this view of the role of the citizen suit. The Senate Report noted that [t]he Committee intends the great volume of enforcement actions [to] be brought by the State, and that citizen suits are proper only if the Federal, State, and local agencies fail to exercise their enforcement responsibility. S.Rep. No. 92-414, p. 64 (1971), reprinted in 2 A Legislative History of the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972, p. 1482 (1973) (hereinafter Leg. Hist.). Permitting citizen suits for wholly past violations of the Act could undermine the supplementary role envisioned for the citizen suit. This danger is best illustrated by an example. Suppose that the Administrator identified a violator of the Act and issued a compliance order under § 309(a). Suppose further that the Administrator agreed not to assess or otherwise seek civil penalties on the condition that the violator take some extreme corrective action, such as to install particularly effective but expensive machinery, that it otherwise would not be obliged to take. If citizens could file suit, months or years later, in order to seek the civil penalties that the Administrator chose to forgo, then the Administrator's discretion to enforce the Act in the public interest would be curtailed considerably. The same might be said of the discretion of state enforcement authorities. Respondents' interpretation of the scope of the citizen suit would change the nature of the citizens' role from interstitial to potentially intrusive. We cannot agree that Congress intended such a result. 60 Id. at 60-61, 108 S.Ct. 376. 61 Notwithstanding its conclusion that § 505 does not permit citizen suits for wholly past violations, the Supreme Court remanded for further proceedings, because the respondents had also alleged in their complaint that the company was continuing to violate its NPDES permit when they filed suit. Id. at 64, 108 S.Ct. 376. The Supreme Court concluded that § 505 confers jurisdiction over citizen suits when the citizen-plaintiffs make a good-faith allegation of continuous or intermittent violation. Id. The Court rejected the company's argument that this construction of § 505 would permit citizen-plaintiffs to pursue their suits to conclusion even if their allegations of ongoing noncompliance became false at some later point in the litigation because the defendant begins to comply with the Act, reasoning that [l]ongstanding principles of mootness would prevent maintenance of suit when there was no reasonable expectation of recurrence. Id. at 66-67, 108 S.Ct. 376. 62 Like the citizen-plaintiffs in Gwaltney, Plaintiffs did not file their federal complaint until several weeks after the last recorded violation, and after the defendant polluter had installed new treatment systems to bring itself into compliance with its NPDES permit. Like Gwaltney, the remedial efforts were not prompted by the citizen-suit; indeed the remedial actions preceded the citizen suits. In neither case was the citizen suit prompted by state or federal agency inaction. 63 Furthermore, the Supreme Court's concern in Gwaltney that citizen suits for wholly past violations would undermine the supplementary role envisioned by Congress is equally applicable here. By the time Plaintiffs filed their federal action, the Board and the City had not only entered into, but enforced, an Order requiring the City to implement a corrective action plan to bring it into compliance with the CWA, and the City had expended over a $1 million to that end. By the terms of the Order, the Board had agreed to forgo civil penalties on the condition that the violator [the City] take some extreme corrective action, such as to install particularly effective but expensive machinery, that it otherwise would not be obliged to take. Gwaltney, 484 U.S. at 61, 108 S.Ct. 376. Thus, the true nature of Plaintiffs' suit in this case was not interstitial but potentially intrusive because the State had not failed to exercise [its] enforcement responsibility. Id. at 60, 108 S.Ct. 376. In short, all of the concerns expressed in Gwaltney are present in this case, and point to the conclusion that, given the unique facts of this case, Plaintiffs in essence lacked standing to file suit. 64 At the same time, Gwaltney also recognized that standing is conferred by good faith allegations of continuous or intermittent violations. Id. at 64, 108 S.Ct. 376. We must therefore examine the complaint. As noted above, the complaint alleged that the City's frequent discharges of pollutants past and present ... caused Plaintiffs serious bodily injury and loss of value in Plaintiffs' property. As relief, the complaint sought merely an Order compelling Defendants to provide remedial relief for all harm done as a result of the acts alleged herein, compensatory damages ..., punitive damages ..., the costs of this litigation ..., and all further and general relief to which Plaintiffs are entitled. It is arguable whether Plaintiffs properly alleged continuing violations. Cf. Gwaltney, 484 U.S. at 64, 108 S.Ct. 376 (holding that the plaintiffs' complaint satisfied the jurisdictional requirements of § 505 and conferred standing because their complaint alleged in good faith that Gwaltney was continuing to violate its NPDES permit when plaintiffs filed suit). Although slim, we nonetheless can give Lynch the benefit of the doubt and assume standing. See Arizonans for Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 66-67, 117 S.Ct. 1055, 137 L.Ed.2d 170 (1997) (holding that a court assumes without deciding that standing exists in order to analyze mootness). As the Gwaltney Court further noted, the mootness doctrine evens out the playing field. See id. at 66, 117 S.Ct. 1055.
65 As the district court observed in its order granting summary judgment, [i]t is undisputed that the expansion of the treatment plant has remedied the overflow problem, since there is no evidence that any overflow has occurred since November 2000. The only overflows, which came to light because of the City's self-reporting, involved two manholes on Main Street, not into Bull Run Creek. Plaintiffs' complaint alleges violations pertaining to only Bull Run Creek. 66 Furthermore, although the City's discharge from its wastewater treatment plant exceeded its NPDES permit limits in February, March, and May 2001, shortly after the new wastewater system began operating, Defendants established that as of the time of summary judgment in November 2001, the City was in compliance with the NPDES permit. The City presented undisputed evidence from both the City Recorder, Hazel Gillenwater, and an environmental specialist for TDEC, John West, that the City had remedied the deficiencies in the operation of its wastewater treatment plant. In short, the City met its heavy burden of demonstrating that the alleged violations were not likely to recur, since they were largely caused by an outdated wastewater treatment plant, which had been replaced by the time Plaintiffs filed their federal action. At the same time, Plaintiffs have not met their burden as the nonmoving party on summary judgment of establishing a realistic prospect that the violations alleged in the complaint would continue, having presented no evidence to demonstrate recurrence. Cf. Comfort Lake Ass'n. v. Dresel Contracting, Inc., 138 F.3d 351, 355 (8th Cir.1998) (holding that citizen plaintiffs offered no evidence to contradict stipulation agreement to the effect that defendant store construction was complete and NPDES permit had been terminated; stating that the plaintiff had therefore not met its burden to rebut the factual underpinnings of a well-supported motion for summary judgment). In short, as the district court held, even if Lynch could survive the standing challenge, the case is moot, because the injuries suffered in the complaint had been remedied by events subsequent to the filing of the lawsuit, with no showing of a reasonable likelihood of recurrence. 67 Laidlaw is distinguishable. In Laidlaw, environmental groups brought suit against the holder of a NPDES permit, alleging violation of mercury discharge limits and seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. Laidlaw, 528 U.S. at 175-76, 120 S.Ct. 693. The Supreme Court held that the action would not be rendered moot by the company's compliance with its permit limits, or its closure of the challenged facility, absent a showing that either event made it absolutely clear that the permit violations could not reasonably be expected to recur, and remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings. Id. at 193, 120 S.Ct. 693. 68 However, in Laidlaw, in contrast with this case, the citizen suit was instituted prior to any action by a state agency, and thus was truly supplementary. Id. at 175-77, 120 S.Ct. 693. Further, in Laidlaw, the defendant company's lawyer reached a settlement with the state environmental agency on the last day before the 60-day notice period expired, so as to prevent the citizen suit, and the agreement required merely that the company pay $100,000 in civil penalties and make every effort to comply with its permit obligations. Id. at 177, 120 S.Ct. 693. Thus, in Laidlaw, there was a genuine concern that the defendant might be free to return to its old ways if the court were to find the claim moot based on the defendant's voluntary cessation of the challenged practice. Id. at 189, 120 S.Ct. 693. Here, although the City was not subject to a court order, its conduct was certainly not voluntary in the same sense as the defendant polluter in Laidlaw. 69 In this case, the record establishes that Plaintiffs were not compelled to file suit because of federal and state inaction. The record reflects that, at the State's prompting, the City had, by the time of summary judgment, actually met its permit obligations by remedying the underlying problem, replacing an old wastewater treatment plant at substantial cost. Here, Plaintiffs had the opportunity before the district court at summary judgment to offer proof that the challenged practices were likely to continue, but failed to meet their burden under Rule 56. 70 Finally, the record also reflects that, in this case, it is the machinations of the citizen-plaintiffs, and not the defendant polluter, that appear to undermine the purposes and goals of the Act. Had Plaintiffs been truly compelled to commence litigation because of federal or state reluctance to solve a serious environmental problem, they would certainly have done so at least by 1998, when they filed suit in state court. Instead, they waited until the final chapter of the state agency proceedings to bring a CWA claim. The only plausible explanation for the timing of their federal suit is the possibility of reasonable costs and attorney fees. Indeed, at oral argument, counsel for Plaintiffs openly admitted that they were primarily interested in expert costs and attorney fees. However, because Plaintiffs never had a valid claim for civil penalties or injunctive relief, they cannot in any way be considered the prevailing or substantially prevailing party, see 33 U.S.C. § 1365(d), attorney fees are not warranted in this case. 6