Opinion ID: 786772
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Alleged Conflicts with the Energy Policy Act

Text: 105 NEI argues that EPA's inclusion of a separate ground-water standard conflicts with EnPA's plain language in three ways. First, NEI claims that by relying on the critical organ dose methodology, EPA's ground-water standard violates EnPA section 801(a) because, according to the association, that section authorizes EPA to promulgate only standards that protect individual members of the public based on the effective dose equivalent (EDE) methodology. EnPA section 801(a)(1) contains three sentences: The first states that the Administrator shall, based upon and consistent with the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, promulgate, by rule, public health and safety standards for protection of the public from releases from radioactive materials stored or disposed of in the repository at the Yucca Mountain site; the second sentence, emphasized by NEI, then says, [s]uch standards shall prescribe the maximum annual effective dose equivalent to individual members of the public from releases to the accessible environment from radioactive materials stored or disposed of in the repository; and the third sentence concludes, [t]he standards shall be promulgated not later than 1 year after the Administrator receives the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences ... and shall be the only such standards applicable to the Yucca Mountain site. 106 Parsing this language, NEI argues that the provision's second sentence — [s]uch standards shall prescribe the maximum annual effective dose equivalent to individual members of the public - defines the scope of the public health and safety standards that the first sentence requires EPA to promulgate. Therefore, NEI argues, in executing Congress's mandate to issue public health standards, the agency may promulgate only EDE-based safety rules that protect the public, not rules using a different methodology that protect ground water. If Congress had thought of EDE standards as merely a subset of EPA's overall public health standards, NEI continues, then it would have used the word include in section 801(a)(1)'s second sentence, not prescribe. NEI also claims that the third sentence's phrase, shall be the only such standards applicable to the Yucca Mountain site, limits EPA's authority to promulgation of the EDE-based standards referenced in the preceding sentence. In other words, each time Congress used the term standards, NEI argues, it meant only the EDE standards described in section 801(a)(1)'s second sentence. 107 In Chevron terms, the precise question presented by NEI's challenge is this: Did Congress clearly authorize EPA to promulgate more than just individual-protection, EDEbased standards? Unlike NEI, we think it did. To begin with, section 801(a)(1)'s first sentence expressly requires EPA to develop public health and safety standards — not just EDE-based standards. The second sentence's directive — that EPA's standards shall prescribe the maximum annual effective dose equivalent to individual members of the public — neither restates nor defines the first sentence's directive that the agency promulgate public health and safety standards for protection of the public. Rather, the two sentences, read together, require EPA to establish a set of health and safety standards, at least one of which must include an EDE-based, individual-protection standard. Indeed, NEI's reading of section 801(a)(1) would render much of that provision's first sentence superfluous, for if Congress had intended to delegate to EPA authority to adopt an EDE standard only, it would not have directed the agency to promulgate public health and safety standards for protection of the public. For essentially the same reason, section 801(a)(1)'s third sentence, which provides that [t]he standards ... shall be the only such standards applicable to the Yucca Mountain site, offers no support for NEI's position. As we have explained, Congress required EPA to promulgate public health and safety standards, not just EDE-based standards. Therefore, the limitation contained in section 801(a)(1)'s third sentence cannot plausibly be read as referring to the second sentence's EDE-based standards. 108 NEI also calls our attention to EnPA section 801(a)(3), which provides that [t]he provisions of this section shall apply to the Yucca Mountain site, rather than any other authority of the Administrator to set generally applicable standards for radiation protection. According to NEI, this section precludes the Government's interpretation of the first sentence of (a)(1) as giving [it] general authority to prescribe any health and safety standards. Oral Argument Tr. at 73. This argument begs the question: Precisely what authority does section 801(a)(1) delegate to the agency? The answer, as we have just explained, is that section 801 authorizes EPA to promulgate not merely EDE-based standards, but rather  public health and safety standards for protection of the public. 109 For its second statutory argument, NEI, echoing Nevada's challenge to the 10,000-year compliance period, contends that part 197's ground-water standard violates EnPA's requirement that EPA's rule be based upon and consistent with the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences. EnPA § 801(a)(1). As NEI sees it, EPA impermissibly promulgated a separate ground-water standard, like the one in the generic part 191 standards, despite what NEI regards as NAS's conclusion that adding such a standard to regulate Yucca Mountain waste disposal is unnecessary and lacks scientific foundation. 110 Although we concluded earlier in this opinion that EPA violated section 801's based upon and consistent with requirement by adopting a 10,000-year compliance period, see supra at 1266-73, we reach the opposite conclusion here because NAS treated the compliance-period and ground-water issues quite differently. Whereas NAS expressly rejected a 10,000-year compliance period, it said nothing at all about the need to add a separate ground-water standard. The NAS Report states: 111 40 CFR 191 includes a provision to protect ground water from contamination with radioactive materials that is separate from the 40 CFR 191 individual-dose limits. These provisions have been added to 40 CFR 191 to bring it into conformity with the Safe Drinking Water Act, and have the goal of protecting ground water as a resource. We make no such recommendation, and have based our recommendations on those requirements necessary to limit risks to individuals. 112 NAS REPORT at 121. In other words, the Academy never even considered a ground-water standard. As EPA explained: 113 In its report, NAS did not recommend specifically that we include a separate ground water protection provision in our environmental protection standards for Yucca Mountain. Neither, however, did NAS state that we should not include such a provision.... Our decision to include separate ground water standards is a policy decision that we make pursuant to our statutory authority under the Energy Policy Act. 114 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,107; see also Response to Comments at 6-16 (stating that the ground-water standard is not inconsistent with NAS's findings because NAS clearly identified the ground-water pathway as one of the significant pathways of exposure and because the Academy did not make a specific recommendation that EPA either include or not include a separate ground-water protection provision). Put another way, NAS made no finding or recommendation that EPA's regulation could fail to be based upon and consistent with. We thus agree with EPA that section 801 left it free to add a ground-water standard. 115 NEI points out that the Academy sharply criticized EPA's ground-water standard in a letter submitted during part 197's notice-and-comment period. See NAS Comments at 10-12. But EnPA does not require EPA to conform its rule to comments that NAS submits during the rulemaking process. Instead, EnPA section 801(a)(1) requires EPA to base its standards on the Academy's findings and recommendations. EnPA section 801(a)(2), in turn, requires EPA to obtain those findings through a formal study conducted by the Academy: [T]he [EPA] Administrator shall contract with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study to provide ... findings and recommendations on reasonable standards for protection of the public health and safety.... EnPA § 801(a)(2) (emphasis added). Reading these provisions together, we think it clear that Congress directed EPA to conform its rule to those  findings and recommendations that appear in the NAS Report. See Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 570, 115 S.Ct. 1061, 1067, 131 L.Ed.2d 1 (1995) ([I]dentical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning.). Indeed, NAS itself stated that its  [f]indings and recommendations to EPA on the technical bases for Yucca Mountain standards were provided in the [NAS Report]. NAS Comments at 2. Given that report's silence on the need for a separate ground-water standard, EPA's decision to add distinct ground-water protections rests on a permissible construction of EnPA section 801. See Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843, 104 S.Ct. at 2782. 116 NEI's final statutory argument requires little discussion. Pointing out that EnPA directs EPA to protect the public from releases from radioactive materials stored or disposed of in the repository at the Yucca Mountain site, EnPA § 801(a)(1), NEI argues that the regulation impermissibly applies not just to releases, but to preexisting background radiation as well. It is true, as NEI observes, that the ground-water standard caps the permissible level of radiation contamination by requiring inclusion of natural background radiation in the calculation of [c]ombined radium-226 and radium-228 as well as [g]ross alpha activity. 40 C.F.R. § 197.30 (Table 1); see also 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,114 (requiring that DOE combine certain estimated releases from the Yucca Mountain disposal system with the pre-existing naturally occurring or man-made radionuclides to determine the concentration in the representative volume [of ground water]). Part 197, however, does not regulate background radiation. See 40 C.F.R. § 197.30 (requiring DOE to demonstrate that  releases of radionuclides from waste in the Yucca Mountain disposal system into the accessible environment will not cause the level of radioactivity ... to exceed the limits in ... Table 1. (emphasis added)). As EPA explains, the rule requires only that DOE take background levels into account when measuring permissible releases of radionuclides from the repository. See id. (Table 1). Therefore, part 197 could not possibly run afoul of EnPA's focus on released radiation.