Opinion ID: 519994
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Scope of the Regulations

Text: 503 1. The EPA's Reservation of Nonconventional Pollutants and 504 Eight Priority Pollutants for Future Rulemaking 505 NRDC complains that despite a specific congressional mandate that the EPA control the discharge of toxic pollutants into navigable waterways, the Agency has reserved for future rulemaking promulgation of effluent limitations for eight priority toxic pollutants and a host of other nonconventional pollutants. Petitioners ask this court to find that this reservation for future rulemaking was arbitrary and a violation of the CWA. In effect, NRDC asks us to compel the EPA to promulgate effluent limitations for these pollutants. Petitioner brings this complaint, however, before the wrong forum. 506 The CWA establishes a bifurcated jurisdictional scheme whereby the courts of appeal exercise jurisdiction over some categories of challenges to EPA action and the district courts retain jurisdiction over other types of complaints. Any interested person may bring a claim in the federal circuit court of appeals for review of the Administrator's action in, inter alia, promulgating any standard of performance for new sources under section 1316 or in promulgating toxic and pretreatment effluent standards under section 1317. 395 However, the federal district courts, rather than the courts of appeals, have jurisdiction to hear claims that the Administrator has failed to fulfill a mandatory duty to promulgate regulations or that the Administrator has abused his discretion by not promulgating regulations. 396  '[W]here there is alleged a failure of the Administrator to perform any act or duty under [the Clean Water] Act which is not discretionary with the Administrator,'  the Act confers exclusive jurisdiction upon the district court. 397 507 NRDC does not complain that the effluent limitations promulgated by the Administrator to control toxic and nonconventional pollutants are in some way defective or deficient. Rather, petitioner seeks to compel the Administrator to promulgate such regulations in the first instance. Such suits clearly lie within the exclusive jurisdiction of the district court. 508 2. Application of the Regulations to Laboratory Discharges 509 The regulations apply to wastewater from laboratories operated in conjunction with and related to existing OCPSF manufacturing operations at OCPSF facilities. The EPA chose to regulate on-site OCPSF laboratories because these operations would most likely generate wastewater with characteristics similar to the commercial manufacturing facility. The regulations exempt research facilities that are not operated in conjunction with OCPSF manufacturing operations. 398 510 Ethyl argues that the application of the PSES to laboratory discharges at its Sauget facility is arbitrary because three of the pollutants found in its wastestream and subject to the PSES--chloroform, methylene chloride, and toluene--are not manufactured or used in its manufacturing process. Though Ethyl's brief is less than clear, the unarticulated premise in its argument appears to be that the EPA's regulatory authority is limited to pollutants resulting from OCPSF manufacturing operations. Ethyl has failed to provide any authority for this contention, and after an independent review of the Act, we have failed to discover any provision that limits the EPA's regulatory authority to pollutants resulting from the manufacturing, as opposed to the research, process.