Opinion ID: 564945
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: monitoring unusable aquifers

Text: 25 Section 3004 authorizes the EPA to enact only such performance standards as may be necessary to protect human health and the environment. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 6924(a). Pursuant to this authority, the EPA requires that the operator of a disposal site (1) monitor the ground water in the uppermost aquifer below the site in order to detect leaks (detection monitoring); (2) in the event of a leak, conduct further monitoring in order to determine whether the leaked substance exceeds the permissible concentration level (compliance monitoring); and if it does, (3) take remedial action to clean up the contaminated ground water. See 40 C.F.R. Secs. 264.98 to .100. The regulation requires detection monitoring without exception, but provides for flexibility in the compliance monitoring and remedial stages. For example, the agency will exclude from the program a hazardous constituent not capable of posing a substantial present or potential hazard to human health or the environment, taking into account a list of considerations bearing upon the quality, isolation, and likely use of the aquifer; and it will establish an alternate concentration level for a constituent that does not pose such a hazard below that concentration. 40 C.F.R. Secs. 264.93, 264.94(a) & (b). 26 The petitioner contends that the EPA acted arbitrarily and capriciously by failing categorically to exempt from detection monitoring any site above an aquifer that is both completely cut off from other bodies of groundwater or surface water and so contaminated that [it] cannot be put to any meaningful use. The agency also exceeded its statutory authority, according to the petitioner, because further contamination of such an isolated and unusable aquifer poses no conceivable threat to human health [or] the environment. 27 The EPA responded skeptically to this claim in its rule-making decision: EPA believes that this would be an extremely rare situation, if indeed such a location exists, and has therefore, chosen not to establish an exemption at this time. 47 Fed.Reg. at 32,293. The agency also points out that the interim final regulation allows for adjustment in the response to a leak consistent with the quality of the aquifer, and that looking toward a final rule, it requested comments on the existence of such unusable aquifers as the petitioner posits. Absent evidence in the record before it, the agency declined the petitioner's invitation to fashion a special rule for a speculative circumstance. 28 The EPA cannot reasonably be required to create a blanket exemption for a hypothetical case unsupported by any evidence in the record, and the reality of which it doubts. Even in our leading case on the desirability of providing for the possibility of exemption from general rules, WAIT Radio v. FCC, 418 F.2d 1153 (D.C.Cir.1969), upon which the petitioner principally relies, we spoke only of requests for waivers accompanied by supporting data. Id. at 1157. The agency has stated that it is open to just such a showing. It is now up to the petitioner to make a record that will support its claim that it is unreasonable for the agency not to provide for the exemption of unusable aquifers.