Opinion ID: 529709
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Disposal Firms' Consumer Environmental Claims

Text: 44 HWTC's second claim of injury tracks a claim we heard on the merits in HWTC II, viz., that EPA's California List rule improperly permits land disposal, at its members' facilities, of inadequately treated wastes, thereby increasing the risk that such facilities will later be held liable for leakage. EPA responds that this claim is barred by our subsequent decision in Petro-Chem (which HWTC intimates was wrongly decided), where we held, on a constitutional ground, that HWTC lacked standing to raise a similar challenge. Because we conclude that this case is not controlled by HWTC II, and that the disposal firms lack prudential standing to raise their consumer claims here, we do not explore the application of Petro-Chem's constitutional analysis to this case. 45 In HWTC II, BVER Environmental, a member of HWTC, alleged that it was in the business of receiving non-hazardous used oil from heavy manufacturing industries for processing and resale as boiler fuel, and that its receiving facilities were damaged when it received used oil that was contaminated. 861 F.2d at 281. In order to protect itself, BVER would have had to undertake expensive (and extensive) testing. Id. We held that its injury was sufficient to confer standing upon it, and through it, upon HWTC. Id. at 282. 46 Like defense contractors, treatment firms, and the disposal firms whose consumer claims are our subject here, BVER's ultimate interest was in money, of course. That the injury is commercial is no obstacle, HWTC II, 861 F.2d at 282, however, for if it were, no person, business, or association whose ultimate interest was pecuniary would ever be within the zone of interests of a statute adopted for any purpose other than its direct financial benefit. This result would be at war both with the Supreme Court's and our own cases and with common sense. It is in the methods by which BVER and the disposal firms, respectively, earn their money that we see the relevant distinction. 47 BVER was a recycler of used oil. So far as appears, its only direct concern with the stringency of EPA's implementation of RCRA was that the regulation in suit provide a remedy for the injury it claimed to suffer from the receipt of oil contaminated by hazardous constituents. That injury was caused by precisely the environmental problem that the relevant statutory provision was designed to eradicate, and we have no basis upon which to think that the nature of BVER's business gave it an incentive to propose an interpretation of RCRA at odds with Congress's purpose. 48 Here, on the other hand, the immediate interest claimed by the disposal facilities is in avoiding liability, which may or may not coincide with the public interest in protecting human health and the environment. It may be in the public interest, for example, for disposal firms to be liable for the disposal of inadequately treated waste, but they would presumably support an interpretation of the statute that placed upon waste generators all liability for inadequate disposal. That their economic interest might, in this or another case, coincide with the congressional interest in safeguarding health and the environment, would be but happenstance; and short of resolving the merits, we have no way of determining whether this case presents that happy coincidence. Again, we are concerned with the challenger, not the challenge; here, the challenger's interest in reduced liability is so marginally related to the purpose of the statute, Clarke, 479 U.S. at 399, 107 S.Ct. at 757, that we must infer that Congress did not permit a suit at its behest. 49 Thus, while a business consumer of a contaminated substance (like BVER in HWTC II ) is an adequate proxy for the environmental interest of those whom the statute is designed to protect and is therefore a suitable challenger of agency action, a participant in the waste disposal process has interests that may be fundamentally inconsistent with the interests Congress had in mind when it enacted the statute. A waste disposal firm is therefore a peculiarly unsuitable proxy for those whom Congress intended to protect, and is therefore not within the zone of interests.