Opinion ID: 609718
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The EPA's Reading of the Term Applicable Standard

Text: 16 Besides requiring that states adopt numeric criteria for priority toxic pollutants, the 1987 Water Quality Amendments included a provision intended to focus regulatory attention on toxic hotspots--waters where, even with the implementation of best available technology controls, severe toxic contamination would still exist. Specifically, Congress required states to compile three lists of impaired waters. Section 304(l )(1)(A) of the CWA mandated submission to the EPA of an A(i) List of waters that cannot attain or maintain the water quality standards for such waters reviewed, revised, or adopted in accordance with section 303(c)(2)(B) of the CWA--which, as discussed above, required states to create numeric criteria for priority toxics during their next triennial review--as well as an (A)(ii) List of waters that were not anticipated to reach that water quality which shall assure protection of public health, public water supplies, [and other uses]. 33 U.S.C. § 1314(l )(1)(A). The third list, included in section 304(l )(1)(B) and known as the B List, consisted of waters for which the state did not expect the applicable standard under section 1313 [requiring states to set water quality standards to] be achieved after [technology-based] requirements ... are met, due entirely or substantially to discharges from point sources of any [listed] toxic pollutants. 33 U.S.C. § 1314(l )(1)(B). Each state was also required to file, in 1989, a list (the C List) of point sources preventing or impairing the quality of waters on the first three lists. See 33 U.S.C. § 1314(l )(1)(C); see also Natural Resources Defense Council, 915 F.2d at 1320-22 (invalidating EPA regulation that required listing of only the point sources that impaired waters on the B List). For all C List point sources discharging into B List waters, states had to file an individual control strategy (ICS)--a plan to reduce point source discharges to a degree sufficient to allow a waterway to attain water quality standards within three years. See 33 U.S.C. § 1314(l )(1)(D); 40 C.F.R. § 123.46(a). 7 Through regulation, the EPA has defined an ICS as a final or draft NPDES permit accompanied by supporting documents showing how the permit's limitations would allow the water segment to attain relevant water quality standards within three years. See 40 C.F.R. § 123.46(c). 17 Since the EPA's current interpretation of the statute holds that only point sources discharging into B List waters are subject to the high-priority procedures of the ICS program, whether a waterway qualifies for the B List is an issue with critical practical consequences. Waters are to be placed on the B List if the state does not expect the applicable standard under section 1313 [requiring states to set water quality standards to] be achieved after [technology-based] requirements ... are met, due entirely or substantially to discharges from point sources of any [listed] toxic pollutants. 33 U.S.C. § 1314(l )(1)(B). The statute does not go on to specify what constitutes an applicable standard under section 304(l )(1)(B), but the EPA has defined the term as follows: 18 [A]pplicable standard means a numeric criterion for a priority pollutant promulgated as part of a state water quality standard. Where a state numeric criterion for a priority pollutant is not promulgated as part of a state water quality standard, for the purposes of listing waters applicable standard means the state narrative water quality criterion to control a priority pollutant ... interpreted on a chemical-by-chemical basis by applying a proposed state criterion, an explicit state policy or regulation, or an EPA national water quality criterion, supplemented with other relevant information. 19 40 C.F.R. § 130.10(d)(4). 20 Petitioners argue that this definition is both inconsistent with the CWA and arbitrary and capricious. 8 In their view, by referring to applicable standard[s], Congress meant only already existing standards containing numeric criteria; the EPA's regulation is consequently invalid to the extent it considers standards based on narrative criteria to be applicable. Petitioners contend that applicable standard[s] cannot have been meant to include standards containing narrative criteria because, since all states have narrative no toxics standards, the EPA's reading would result in there always being an applicable standard. This reading is untenable, the argument goes on, because it effectively strikes the allegedly limiting adjective applicable from the statute. Elaborating on this theory, petitioners note that in contrast to subsection (A), where Congress referred simply to water quality standards in specifying the content of the A(i) list, in subsection (B) Congress used the term applicable standard. By using these different terms, they contend, Congress indicated that the A(i) and B Lists were to refer to differing sets of water quality standards. Finally, petitioners seek support for their more limited interpretation of applicable standards from CWA section 303(c)(2)(B), the subsection that requires states to create numeric criteria for toxic pollutants during their next triennial review. Read together, they say, section 304(l )(1)--the section that requires the states to create these one-time-only lists and mandates that states formulate ICSs for at least some of the point sources discharging into those waters--and section 303(c)(2)(B) show that Congress intended to require states to promulgate the numerical water quality criteria for toxic pollutants that Congress believed was necessary to regulate discharges of those pollutants, while at the same time requiring that those limited situations where applicable [numeric] water quality standards for toxic pollutants were already known to be violated be addressed promptly through the development of Individual Control Strategies, even prior to promulgation of additional [numeric] water quality criteria under CWA Section 303(c)(2)(B). Reply Brief at 22-23. 21 These arguments (as well as others raised by petitioners 9 ) do not convince us that the EPA's broader construction of the term applicable standard is unreasonable. See generally Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843-44, 104 S.Ct. at 2781-83 (where statute is ambiguous on a particular question, we defer to any reasonable construction proffered by the implementing agency). The terms standards and applicable standard[s] are used in the statute in totally different contexts to refer to totally different sets of water quality standards. The standards governing the (A)(i) List, which includes all waters that will not meet new numeric criteria to be enacted during each state's forthcoming triennial review due to pollution from point or nonpoint sources, are obviously future, statutorily prescribed standards. The applicable standard[s] governing the B list, in contrast, focus on identifying waters that do not meet existing water quality standards because of point source pollution and thus mark a different set of troubled waters than those on the A(i) list; there is accordingly no reason why a major difference in meaning should be ascribed to a minor difference in phraseology. Moreover, in its own context, the EPA's definition of applicable standard seems quite reasonable, if indeed not required. Standards based on narrative criteria were among those applicable to state waters at the time of the 1987 amendments to the CWA, and, despite the petitioners' speculations to the contrary (based largely on the alleged interplay between this subsection and section 303(c)(2)(B), see supra page 355), there is no evidence in the text or history of the CWA or its amendments that Congress was concerned only with violations of numeric criteria. Thus, we conclude that the term applicable standard[s] may plausibly be interpreted to include all standards that apply to state waters--including those standards that contain narrative criteria. See Natural Resources Defense Council, 915 F.2d at 1319 n. 5 ([P]aragraph B refers to all water quality standards....) (emphasis added); see generally Chevron, 467 U.S. at 844, 104 S.Ct. at 2782 (where there has been an implicit delegation of a particular question to the expert agency, a court may not substitute its own construction of a statutory provision for a reasonable interpretation made by the administrator of that agency). 10