Opinion ID: 580022
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sufficiency of Citizens' Comments

Text: 35 Anticipating our approach, Citizens contends that the Administrator erred in holding that Citizens' comments on Spokane's PSD application were not sufficiently significant to require Ecology either to request a response from the permit applicant or otherwise to consider recycling as a possible best available control technology. It is incumbent upon intervenors who wish to participate to structure their participation so that it is meaningful, so that it alerts the agency to the intervenors' position and contentions. Vermont Yankee, 435 U.S. at 553, 98 S.Ct. at 1216. Citizens contends that their comments to Ecology about recycling met this standard. 36 In considering Citizens' administrative petitions, the Administrator noted that, because the permit applicant bears the burden of identifying the best available control technology, the slightest suggestion by an intervenor in the comments might compel applicants to undertake time-consuming, costly studies. Spokane I at 12. Deploring this scenario, the Administrator emphasized that applicants and agencies need respond in detail only to  'significant comments.'  Id. (emphasis added by Administrator) (quoting 40 C.F.R. § 124.17(a)(2)). Citing the Vermont Yankee Court, the Administrator noted that petitioners' responsibility to present its position and contentions effectively was especially heavy when asking an applicant or agency to  'embark upon an exploration of uncharted territory.'  Id. at 13-14 (quoting Vermont Yankee, 435 U.S. at 553, 98 S.Ct. at 1216). Finding that recycling as an air pollution control was such uncharted territory, the Administrator held that Citizens failed to meet its burden to show Ecology clearly erred in failing to evaluate recycling in detail despite Citizens' comments. We agree with the Administrator's reading of the Vermont Yankee decision. 37 In light of Citizens' comments and Vermont Yankee, EPA's decision not to consider recycling as a possible best available control technology was not arbitrary or capricious. Citizens does not assert that at the time it originally filed its comments with Ecology, hard data existed concerning the effects of fuel cleaning and separation used in combination with state-of-the-art cleaning devices. Rather, it is undisputed that no such hard data existed. In considering Citizens' comments, Ecology stated that the technology needed further study in order to quantify its benefits, and even after the Spokane PSD permit had been issued, a 1989 EPA Municipal Waste Task Force Report concluded that data are currently inadequate to determine precisely the effect on air emissions and ash of eliminating specific materials from the waste stream prior to combustion. Citizens does not contest these statements. 38 Although Citizens has structured its comments so as to be more specific than were those in Vermont Yankee, Citizens offers no hard evidence of the effectiveness of fuel cleaning and separation in combination with scrubbers and baghouses. Nor does Citizens refer to analogous technology that would quantifiably validate the effectiveness, or even the use, of fuel cleaning and separation in combination with state-of-the-art technologies. Instead, Citizens contends its comments are sufficient to provoke consideration of recycling as a possible best available control technology on the common sense argument of burn less, pollute less. 39 Taken by itself, burn less, pollute less is of course a common sense approach. However, once the addition of state-of-the-art control technologies are introduced into the equation, this common sense statement can no longer stand on its own two feet. As the Administrator indicated, because Spokane's proposed incinerator will incorporate state-of-the-art pollution control technologies, recycling may not result in a demonstrable reduction in emissions of regulated pollutants. Spokane I at 22. Thus, Citizens was required to introduce something more specific. In particular, it appears EPA considered necessary some indication of what materials recycling would remove from the waste stream, and what regulated air pollutants would thereby be further diminished after existing control technologies have been taken into account. Here, Citizens did not set forth with specificity, if at all, either issues or evidence in support of its common sense argument. 40 As the Administrator concluded, the three studies submitted by Citizens are not relevant to the question whether fuel cleaning and separation in combination with conventional, state-of-the-art pollution control equipment is best available control technology for the Spokane incinerator. 6 Spokane I at 15-17. One of the studies compared emissions from incinerators lacking air pollution controls to those from the same uncontrolled incinerators with the addition of recycling. Id. at 15. The Administrator reasoned that it is impossible to conclude from this study whether recycling would have decreased emissions further had the test incinerators also employed the state-of-the-art technologies proposed for the Spokane incinerator. Id. at 15-16. Another study determined that recycling was not the best available control technology for the facility in San Marcos, California. Id. at 16-17. Thus, none of the studies supported the proposition that a recycling requirement for Spokane's incinerator would reduce emissions of regulated pollutants over and above the reductions Spokane will achieve by installing the other technologies already required by the PSD permit. Id. at 17. We find nothing arbitrary or capricious in the Administrator's analysis of these studies. 41 In light of the statutory requisite that the proposed technology be the best available control technology, and in the absence of anything specific or quantifiable in support of a position that common sense alone cannot sustain, we conclude that EPA's decision not to consider recycling in permitting the Spokane incinerator was not arbitrary or capricious. 42