Opinion ID: 509500
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: EPA's Decision to Withdraw its Reinterpretation

Text: 86 Petitioners contend that EPA did not provide a rational justification for withdrawing its proposed reinterpretation of the Bevill exclusion. Petitioners argue that EPA's sole justification for withdrawing its reinterpretation was that it was having difficulty determining whether certain additional waste streams were 'high volume/low toxicity' wastes. Petitioners' Brief at 45. They contend that while this might justify further refinement of the proposal, it is not a rational justification for abandoning all efforts to narrow the scope of the Bevill exclusion to conform to Congress's intent. Petitioners argue, moreover, that regardless of the status of any additional waste streams, the six hazardous smelter wastes are not properly within the scope of the Bevill exclusion. 87 EPA responds that the withdrawal of its proposed reinterpretation was reasonable in light of the numerous practical problems with the proposal and the fact that the Agency was required by court order to make its final determination by September 30, 1986. The Agency contends that it was reasonable for it to withdraw the proposed reinterpretation in full rather than adopt various intermediate options. Respondents' Brief at 22-26. When questioned about the six hazardous smelter wastes at oral argument, counsel for EPA responded that the Agency felt uncomfortable taking the partial step of removing the six hazardous wastes from the Bevill exclusion and preferred to address the matter as a whole. 88 We agree with petitioners' claim that EPA's withdrawal of the proposed relisting of the six hazardous smelting wastes was arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law. The Agency's withdrawal of its proposal to relist the six hazardous smelter wastes is inconsistent with Congress's intent in enacting the Bevill Amendment. Moreover, the fact that EPA did not quantify all the parameters of the high volume, low hazard standard in its 1985 proposal, impeding judgment in borderline cases involving other wastes, is not a rational justification for withdrawing the proposal to relist the six hazardous smelting wastes which clearly would not qualify under any acceptable definition, however precise, of special wastes. Since EPA found that those six smelter wastes are low volume and high hazard wastes, it cannot refuse to list them. Those six wastes are not properly within the scope of the Bevill exclusion regardless of the status of any additional wastes. 89 This is not to say that it was unreasonable for the EPA to conclude that it needed more time to refine and clarify its proposed reinterpretation in light of the ambiguities discovered and questions encountered in classifying additional processing wastes in the grey areas. However, it was arbitrary and capricious for the EPA to withdraw the proposed reinterpretation in its entirety before first determining whether the district court would have granted it an extension of time within which to refine the proposal and work out the unanticipated problems and ambiguities. Moreover, at whatever point EPA took final action on the proposed reinterpretation it was obliged to resolve those ambiguities consistent with Congressional intent. The Agency did not meet its obligations because it chose to withdraw its proposed reinterpretation in full, including the proposed relisting of the six hazardous smelter wastes, and to reinstate by default an impermissibly overbroad interpretation of the Bevill Amendment. 90 We also note that by reaffirming its 1980 interpretation which included all wastes from primary smelting and refining within the scope of the Bevill Amendment, the EPA placed itself in violation of the court order in Adamstown. EPA promised to either study those wastes or exclude them from the scope of the Bevill Amendment. It did neither. Specifically, under the Adamstown order, EPA was to propose its reinterpretation of the Bevill Amendment by September 30, 1985 (which the EPA did), and to submit a study of the Bevill mining wastes to Congress by December 31, 1985 (which the EPA did). However, that study covered only extraction and beneficiation wastes. No processing wastes were studied because the 1985 reinterpretation proposed to remove most of those wastes (including the six hazardous smelter wastes) from the scope of the Bevill Amendment. However, by withdrawing that reinterpretation in its entirety in 1986, EPA allowed processing wastes to fall through the cracks--they were neither studied by EPA nor excluded from the Bevill Amendment's scope. 91