Opinion ID: 199493
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Equitable Discretion under the SDWA

Text: On appeal, the United States does not challenge any of the district court's factual findings, including the court's determination that the MWRA's ozonation-only approach is an acceptable alternative to filtration. Nor does the United States assert that the district court abused its equitable discretion by declining to order filtration in light of the -25- MWRA's history of avoidance-criteria noncompliance.13 Instead, its appeal essentially is confined to one argument: that under the SDWA, courts have no discretion to withhold indefinitely a provided-for remedy, such as filtration, if it has been demonstrated that a public water system has violated a substantive requirement of the Act. The district court's determination regarding the scope of its equitable discretion presents a pure issue of law, and so we review that determination de novo. Fergiste v. INS, 138 F.3d 14, 17 (1st Cir. 1998). In this case, the United States seeks to bring the MWRA into compliance with the filtration requirement by resort to the SDWA's statutory injunction provision, 42 U.S.C. § 300g-3(b). The role a court plays in deciding whether to grant a statutory injunction is different than the one it plays when it weighs the equitable claims of two private parties in a suit seeking injunctive relief. Yakus v. United States, 321 U.S. 414, 441 13The United States does suggest that the district court erred by discounting the MWRA's pre-1999 avoidance-criteria violations in its decision not to order filtration. It also contends that it has not been estopped from pointing out the MWRA's pre-1999 violations by its failure to block the ACO. However, as the United States states in its brief, under its theory of the case -- that a district court does not have the discretion to excuse SWTR violations -- the additional violations are essentially irrelevant, as even one failure to meet the avoidance criteria after the December 30, 1991 deadline creates an ongoing violation that triggers the filtration obligation under the Rule. -26- (1944). This is so because a court asked to order a statutory injunction must reconcile two sets of competing concerns. Courts asked to issue an injunction must ordinarily assume the role of a court of chancery -- a role that requires them to determine whether the equities of the case favor, and whether the public interest would be served by, the granting of injunctive relief. See United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Coop., ___ U.S. ___, 121 S. Ct. 1711, 1720 (2001) (In exercising their sound discretion, courts of equity should pay particular regard for the public consequences in employing the extraordinary remedy of injunction.) (quoting Romero-Barcelo, 456 U.S. at 312). But in the context of statutory injunctions, the court's freedom to make an independent assessment of the equities and the public interest is circumscribed to the extent that Congress has already made such assessments with respect to the type of case before the court. Burlington N. R.R. v. Bair, 957 F.2d 599, 601-02 (8th Cir. 1992) (citing Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. v. Lennen, 640 F.2d 255, 259 (10th Cir. 1981) (per curiam)); cf. Clark v. Smith, 38 U.S. (13 Pet.) 195, 203 (1839) (finding inherent in the Courts of Equity a jurisdiction to . . . give effect to the policy of the legislature). In its decisions addressing this complicated area of law, the Supreme Court has held repeatedly that the retention of a court's discretion to shape an injunction authorized by -27- statute to the equities of the case -- or not to issue an injunction at all -- is to be presumed, but that this presumption may be overcome by a proper showing of congressional intent. The grant of jurisdiction to ensure compliance with a statute hardly suggests an absolute duty to do so under any and all circumstances, and a federal judge sitting as chancellor is not mechanically obligated to grant an injunction for every violation of law. Romero-Barcelo, 456 U.S. at 313; see also id. at 322 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (Unless Congress specifically commands a particular form of relief, the question of remedy remains subject to a court's equitable discretion.); Town of Huntington v. Marsh, 884 F.2d 648, 651 (2d Cir. 1989) ([I]n the area of environmental statutes, the Supreme Court has explicitly rejected the notion that an injunction follows as a matter of course upon a finding of a statutory violation.). And while Congress certainly may intervene and guide or control the exercise of the courts' discretion, or even extinguish it entirely, courts measuring the quantum of equitable discretion preserved in a statute are not lightly [to] assume that Congress has intended to depart from established principles. Romero-Barcelo, 456 U.S. at 313 (citing Hecht Co. v. Bowles, 321 U.S. 321, 329 (1944)). This default rule can be justified, at least in part, by the fact that [w]hen Congress entrusts to an equity court the enforcement of prohibitions contained in a -28- regulatory enactment, it must be taken to have acted cognizant of the historic power of equity to provide complete relief in light of the statutory purposes. Mitchell v. Robert DeMario Jewelry, Inc., 361 U.S. 288, 291-92 (1960). In this vein, the Supreme Court has held that if Congress wishes to circumscribe these equitable powers, it must do so with clarity: Unless a statute in so many words, or by a necessary and inescapable inference, restricts the court's jurisdiction in equity, the full scope of that jurisdiction is to be recognized and applied. Porter v. Warner Holding Co., 328 U.S. 395, 398 (1946) (emphasis added). In order to ascertain whether Congress meant to constrain the equitable discretion afforded courts in SDWA cases, our examination begins -- and, for the most part, ends -- with the SDWA itself. This is so because the discretion that inheres in a statutory injunction provision is, by definition, a product of the statute, and accordingly must be cabined by the purposes for which the statute was created. United States v. Monsanto, 491 U.S. 600, 613 (1989). Where, as here, the statutory injunction provision does not explicitly delimit the court's equitable authority, it is necessary to look to the [statute's] remedial framework as a whole. Williams v. Jones, 11 F.3d 247, 256 (1st Cir. 1993). This task requires that courts not only consider the language, history and structure -29- of the legislation, TVA v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 174 (1978), but also the underlying substantive policy that the statutory procedures are designed to further, Amoco Prod. Co. v. Village of Gambell, 480 U.S. 531, 544 (1987). Under this analysis, the language and structure of the Rule regarding the need for filtration reflect policy judgments made by the EPA, not Congress, and as such, are not relevant indicia of legislative intent. Cf. Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, 467 U.S. 837, 842-43 & n.9 (1984) (directing courts to distinguish between agency policy and congressional intent and to reject administrative constructions that do not give effect to the intent of Congress). The United States does not quibble with this analytical framework. Rather, it argues that the judicial-enforcement provision of the SDWA, 42 U.S.C. § 300g-3(b), when read along with the rest of the Act, admits of only one appropriate outcome in cases where a water system fails an avoidance criterion: the delinquent water system must be directed to install a filtration system. Accordingly, in the United States's view, the SDWA does create a necessary and inescapable inference that courts may not decline to order filtration whenever a violation of the Act or the rules promulgated thereunder has been established. -30- In reaching this conclusion, the United States focuses on the SDWA's judicial-enforcement provision, 42 U.S.C. § 300g- 3(b), which states, in relevant part: The [EPA] Administrator may bring a civil action in the appropriate United States district court to require compliance with any applicable requirement [of the Act] . . . . The court may enter, in an action brought under this subsection, such judgment as protection of public health may require, taking into consideration the time necessary to comply and the availability of alternative water supplies . . . . As the United States sees it, the key words in this passage are compliance and comply. Based on their presence, as well as on the Act's command that the EPA delimit circumstances under which filtration is required, id. § 300g- 1(b)(7)(C)(i), the United States contends that, while § 300g- 3(b) may not have abrogated courts' equitable powers to specify when (the time necessary to comply) and how (the availability of alternative water supplies) a violator is to comply with the filtration requirement, the provision does deprive courts of the authority to allow SDWA violators to remain in permanent noncompliance. In this respect, the United States contends that the case at bar is most akin to Hill, a decision in which the Supreme Court found that the district court did not have the equitable discretion under the Endangered Species Act to decline the issuance of an injunction if it found that a violation of -31- the statute's substantive provisions had occurred. 437 U.S. at 193-95. To bolster this argument, the United States adverts to a passage from § 300g-3(b)'s legislative history that, it argues, evinces congressional intent to diminish courts' equitable discretion under the SDWA. This passage, appearing in the report of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee (which authored the version of the Act that ultimately became law in 1974), states: [T]he Committee intends that courts which are considering remedies in enforcement actions under [§ 300g-3] are not to apply traditional balancing principles used by equity courts. Rather, they are directed to give utmost weight to the Committee's paramount objective of providing maximum feasible protection of the public health at the times specified in the bill. H.R. Rep. No. 93-1185 (1974), reprinted in 1974 U.S.C.C.A.N. 6454, 6476. The Second Circuit has accepted this analysis, albeit in dicta, and concluded that, for largely the same reasons advanced by the United States, courts may not consider the propriety vel non of filtration in individual SDWA cases. In United States v. City of New York, 198 F.3d 360 (2d Cir. 1999), a case in which a citizens' group sued to undo a consent agreement between New York City and the EPA that required the installation of a filtration system, the court in dicta stated: -32- [T]he decision to filtrate or not is a policy choice that Congress seems to have made and that, in any event, is beyond our judicial function. Our conclusion is not altered by appellants' interesting, but ultimately unpersuasive, argument that, since the SDWA authorizes a court to enter such judgment as protection of public health may require, 42 U.S.C. § 300g-3(b), the district court has the power to refuse to order filtration in this action . . . . We think that the equitable power vested in the district court is more circumscribed than intervenors propose; it is available to ensure compliance with the statute and the regulations promulgated thereunder, not to rework or reject these legislative and regulatory determinations. Id. at 366.14 While we agree that the SDWA's text and legislative history provide evidence of Congress's intent not to allow courts in SDWA cases to apply the traditional test for issuing injunctions,15 we are not convinced that such evidence gives rise 14 This passage was dicta because the court disposed of the proposed intervenors' appeal on the alternative ground that the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying the organization's requests for intervention as a matter of right and for permissive intervention. See id. at 367-68. 15 In order to issue a permanent injunction, a district court typically must find that (1) the plaintiff has demonstrated actual success on the merits of its claims; (2) the plaintiff would be irreparably injured in the absence of injunctive relief; (3) the harm to the plaintiff from defendant's conduct would exceed the harm to the defendant accruing from the issuance of an injunction; and (4) the public interest would not be adversely affected by an injunction. E.g., A.W. Chesterton Co. v. Chesterton, 128 F.3d 1, 5 (1st Cir. 1997). At least with respect to some statutory injunction provisions, however, courts have found that when Congress decides to make available the remedy of injunction for violations of a statute's substantive -33- to a necessary and inescapable inference that the substantive remedies made available under the Act must always be ordered whenever a regulation promulgated under the Act has been violated.16 Rather, we believe that as long as a court issues a judgment as public health may require, 42 U.S.C. § 300g-3(b), thereby ensuring that the public system provides water that is safe according to standards identified by the EPA, the court retains a measure of flexibility under the Act to tailor the specifics of an equitable remedy that will help bring about that goal. Our determination on this point is bolstered by several provisions, irreparable injury is presumed to flow from such violations. E.g., United States v. City of Painesville, 644 F.2d 1186, 1194 (6th Cir. 1981). We note that, in spite of the legislative history indicating Congress's intent to narrow the scope of equitable discretion under the SDWA, at least one court has applied traditional principles of equitable balancing to determine the propriety of an injunction for violations of the Act's substantive provisions. See United States v. Midway Heights County Water Dist., 695 F. Supp. 1072 (E.D. Cal. 1988) (denying public water system's motion for stay of preliminary injunction requiring it to comply with national drinking water regulations). 16We note that in City of New York, the proposed intervenors did not argue that the equities of the case favored withholding filtration in that particular case; rather, they sought to effect a head-on challenge to filtration per se. 198 F.3d at 366. The proposed intervenors' challenge principally was based on their assertion that filtration . . . is [both] dangerous to consumers [and] fiscally wasteful. Id. at 363; see also id. at 364 ([Appellants] do[] not seek to enforce administratively established criteria; [they] seek[] to block such enforcement.). Moreover, in City of New York (unlike in the present case) the public water system conceded that it would not be able to meet the avoidance criteria in the future. Id. at 362-63. -34- factors relating to the Act's language, history and structure, Hill, 437 U.S. at 174, and its underlying substantive policy, Village of Gambell, 480 U.S. at 544. First, the critical passage of the SDWA's judicialenforcement subsection states that, following a violation of the Act's substantive provisions, the court may enter . . . such judgment as protection of public health may require . . . . 42 U.S.C. § 300g-3(b) (emphasis added). When Congress uses the permissive may in settings such as § 300g-3(b), it is eminently reasonable to presume that the choice of verbiage is a deliberate one, and that, in the context of that statute, 'may' means may.17 McCreary v. Offner, 172 F.3d 76, 83 (D.C. Cir. 1999); see also United States v. Rodgers, 461 U.S. 677, 706 (1983) (The word 'may,' when used in a statute, usually implies some degree of discretion.); Flynn v. United States, 786 F.2d 586, 591 (3d Cir. 1986) (finding that where statute states that court may grant injunctive relief, the statute's use of the conditional suggests that such relief is not mandatory in every case). This tenet of statutory construction should obtain 17 Conversely, when Congress employs the word shall in like contexts, it often means that Congress has imposed a mandatory duty upon the subject of the command. Forest Guardians v. Babbitt, 174 F.3d 1178, 1187 (10th Cir. 1999) (citing Monsanto, 491 U.S. at 607). However, even the use of the word shall does not necessarily eliminate all equitable discretion if Congress's purpose not to eliminate such discretion is manifest. Hecht Co., 321 U.S. at 329. -35- unless obvious inferences from the structure and purpose of the statute [indicate] that 'may' was intended to have something other than its ordinary meaning. Reynolds v. Spears, 93 F.3d 428, 434-35 (8th Cir. 1996) (citing United States v. Rodgers, 461 U.S. at 706) (internal quotation marks omitted). If anything, the strongest inference that may be drawn from the SDWA is that Congress did intend for may in § 300g- 3(b) to track its everyday meaning. As mentioned in Part I, supra, Congress amended the Act in 1986 to enhance the level of enforcement under the SDWA. See 42 U.S.C. § 300g-3(a)(1)(B) (providing that if the responsible state enforcement authority does not commence enforcement action within thirty days of being notified by the EPA of existence of violation, the Administrator shall issue an [administrative] order . . . or the Administrator shall commence a civil action . . . .) (emphases added); Rodgers, supra, § 4.20A, at 152 (In making these changes Congress [was] convinced that it [could] control prosecutorial options by replacing 'mays' with 'shalls' in its enforcement instructions.). But in so amending the Act, Congress left untouched the mays contained in the Act's neighboring judicial-enforcement provision, thereby making only prosecution of substantive SDWA violations an expressly mandatory undertaking. It presumably did so with the understanding that under the Act, enforcement requires the -36- actions of two entities -- the state enforcement authority or the U.S. Attorney's office, who must sue to require compliance, and the district court, which must issue an injunction -- to bring about a substantive remedy under the Act. [W]hen the same [provision] uses both 'may' and 'shall,' the normal inference is that each is used in its usual sense -- the one act being permissive, the other mandatory. Anderson v. Yungkau, 329 U.S. 482, 485 (1947); see also Barbieri v. RAJ Acquisition Corp. (In re Barbieri), 199 F.3d 616, 619-20 (2d Cir. 1999) (distinguishing neighboring subsections of same section of Bankruptcy Code based on presence of may in one provision and shall in the other provision). Additional evidence of the preservation of equitable discretion comes from the fact that, in the 1986 SDWA amendments, Congress vested power in the EPA to issue administrative orders for minor SDWA violations, and to collect fines for those violations, without first seeking authorization from the courts. See 42 U.S.C. § 300g-3(g). In the report of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (which generated the version of the bill that ultimately became law) on the enactment of these amendments, the Committee stated that [t]he purpose of adding administrative order authority is not to replace judicial enforcement, but to add a complementary enforcement mechanism. S. Rep. No. 99-56, at 9 (1986), -37- reprinted in 1986 U.S.C.C.A.N. 1566, 1574. By affording the EPA an intermediate remedy for SDWA violations that does not require court action, Congress explicitly contemplated a system in which substantive violations of the Act (particularly minor ones) would not always result in the issuance of an injunction. See Romero-Barcelo, 456 U.S. at 317-18. In sum, there is substantial evidence in the SDWA's text and legislative history to suggest that may really does mean may in § 300g-3(b). While these clues alone might not suffice to eliminate all doubt that Congress intended for may to have a permissive meaning, at a minimum, they do eliminate the possibility that the SDWA's structure and purpose generate an obvious inference that the word may in § 300g-3(b) really means shall.18 Rodgers, 461 U.S. at 706; see also Russ Winner, The Chancellor's Foot and Environmental Law: A Call for Better Reasoned Decisions on Environmental Injunctions, 9 Envtl. L. 18 The United States asserts that by creating a filtration exemption under the SDWA in 1996 for water systems with uninhabited and undeveloped watersheds in consolidated control, 42 U.S.C. § 300g-1(b)(7)(C)(v), Congress demonstrated its belief that such an amendment was needed to circumvent the mandatory command of the Act's filtration requirement. We disagree. This provision merely authorizes state enforcement agencies, who would otherwise be obliged to bring an enforcement action for avoidance-criteria violations, see id. § 300g-3(a)(1)(B) (requiring the EPA to bring suit for substantive SDWA violation if state enforcement agency fails timely to do so), to permit compliance with the Act by means other than filtration for certain types of water systems. The amendment does not touch upon the power of the court to issue -- or not issue -- an injunction. -38- 477, 506 (1979) (If . . . the legislation explicitly requires that 'an injunction must issue,' a court . . . has no choice but to comply. Most of the time, however, the legislature is silent as to injunctive remedy or merely says that an injunction 'may' issue. In this case, courts usually retain their full equitable discretion.). Our conclusion on the SDWA's preservation of equitable discretion also is reinforced by other portions of the Act's judicial-enforcement provision. While the United States relies heavily on language in § 300g-3(b) referring to compliance with the Act, and specifically on statements to the effect that the EPA Administrator is authorized to bring a civil action . . . to require compliance and that a court hearing an SDWA suit may enter . . . such judgment as protection of public health may require, taking into consideration the time necessary to comply, we find that such language, when compared to similar language in other federal enforcement statutes, does not compel the conclusion that the court must issue an injunction. Take, for example, the provision empowering the EPA to bring a civil action to require compliance. Similar language appears in a number of other statutes' judicial-enforcement provisions, and generally has been construed as leaving intact the judiciary's equitable discretion to deny the issuance of an injunction. The courts reaching this interpretation have -39- reasoned that the language simply represents Congress's grant of authority to an agency to bring a suit to require compliance -- in other words, that the agency can seek to require compliance through legal process. For instance, under the judicial-enforcement provision of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, 15 U.S.C. § 78u(d)(1), the SEC may, in its discretion, bring an action . . . to enjoin . . . acts or practices violating the statute's substantive provisions. In SEC v. Frank, 388 F.2d 486, 491 (2d Cir. 1968), Judge Friendly, writing for the panel, found such language not susceptible of the interpretation that equitable discretion had been stripped from the district court: Such bland language affords no sufficient basis for concluding that Congress meant special weight to be given the Commission's decision to allow its staff to institute suit. If Congress wishes to go further, it should say so in language all can understand. Likewise, in Federal Power Commission v. Arizona Edison Co., 194 F.2d 679, 684-86 (9th Cir. 1952), the Ninth Circuit, reaching an analogous conclusion with respect to identical language in the judicial-enforcement provision of the Federal Power Commission Act, 16 U.S.C. § 825m(a), held that the courts' traditional powers of equity had not been eviscerated by the agency's power to bring suit to require compliance. Another example of this usage, albeit in a slightly different context, -40- appears in the citizen-suit provision of the Clean Water Act; under this statute, suits may not be instituted by individuals or organizations if the EPA or the appropriate state enforcement authority has commenced and is diligently pursuing a civil or criminal action . . . to require compliance with the Act's substantive provisions. 33 U.S.C. § 1365(b)(1)(B) (emphasis added). Despite this reference to requir[ing] compliance in the statutory language, the Supreme Court held in Romero-Barcelo that the Clean Water Act does not require the issuance of an injunction in all cases where a statutory violation has been identified. 456 U.S. at 313 (holding that [t]he grant of jurisdiction to ensure compliance with a statute hardly suggests a duty to do so under any and all circumstances). These examples demonstrate that a statutory provision that gives an agency the power to litigate to require compliance, without more, does not necessarily obligate the court asked to rule on such a suit to issue any particular remedy.19 The other passage in § 300g-3(b) referred to by the United States -- the one stating that courts are to consider the time necessary to comply and the availability of alternative water supplies in fashioning equitable relief -- is better construed to mean that, to the extent a court issues a 19 As we note infra, we believe that the district court did require compliance with the SDWA in this case. -41- judgment as public health may require that does include the filtration remedy (which, as the district court noted, will usually be the case), it must allow the public water system reasonable time to comply in light of the availability of alternative water sources. From the command that a court must consider the time necessary to comply when it does order a judgment as public health may require, however, it does not necessarily follow that the court must always exact the type of compliance sought by the agency whenever a violation of the Act has been identified. This construction is supported by the fact that, in spite of the ubiquitousness of the term compliance in § 300g-3(b), courts are not expressly limited by the statute to entering judgments that require compliance, but instead have been granted the leeway to issue judgment[s] as protection of public health may require. Cf. Natural Res. Def. Council v. Southwest Marine, Inc., 236 F.3d 985, 1000 (9th Cir. 2000) (holding that, with respect to judicial-enforcement provision in Clean Water Act limiting courts to enforce[ment] of existing standards and orders, the authority to 'enforce' an existing requirement is more than the authority to declare that the requirement exists and repeat that it must be followed), cert. denied, 121 S. Ct. 2242 (2001). In sum, while the United States's position certainly is not implausible, the fact that the MWRA's interpretation of -42- the SDWA is at least as plausible effectively forecloses the possibility that a necessary and inescapable inference exists in the Act as to the necessity for filtration upon a finding of a regulatory violation. Porter, 328 U.S. at 398. The United States insists that, in terms of breadth of equitable discretion, the SDWA bears an uncanny resemblance to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) -- a statute found by the Supreme Court to have removed courts' authority to withhold injunctive relief. Hill, 437 U.S. at 193-95. In Hill, the Supreme Court found that the ESA had flatly banned federal agencies from carrying out activities which threaten to destroy or modify the habitat of endangered species. Id. at 194. Through an examination of the statute's voluminous text and legislative history, the Court found that Congress ha[d] spoken in the plainest of words, making it abundantly clear that the balance had been struck in favor of affording endangered species the highest of priorities . . . . Id. In so finding, moreover, the Court essentially ignored the statute's judicialenforcement provision, 16 U.S.C. § 1540(g), which, far from expressly requiring the issuance of an injunction upon the finding of a statutory violation, merely gives district courts jurisdiction . . . to enforce any . . . provision of the Act.20 20 This apparent omission was noted in a dissent by thenJustice Rehnquist, who, after taking note of the provision, determined that it was not strong enough to eliminate the -43- Attempting to tether this case to that precedent, the United States flags what it sees as analogous indicia of legislative intent with respect to the filtration mandate in the SDWA, and urges us to overlook the similarly permissive nature of the SDWA's judicial-enforcement provision. While there is force to this argument, in the final analysis we do not believe that it holds water. The principal problem with the United States's effort to juxtapose the ESA and the SDWA is that, for reasons discussed above, the overwhelming evidence of congressional intent that the Supreme Court found in Hill simply does not exist with respect to the filtration mandate in the SDWA. The United States points us to no specific evidence that the narrow goal of filtration (as opposed to the broader aim of safe drinking water) was to receive the overarching priority that endangered-species protection garnered under the ESA. As the district court noted, by imposing the disinfection mandate directly even as it imposed the filtration remedy indirectly, Congress stopped short of ordering filtration as an all-encompassing preventive. MWRA II, 97 F. Supp. 2d at 165. As for the Supreme Court's failure to consider the language of the ESA's judicial-enforcement provision in Hill, we note that in subsequent cases, such as United States v. presumption of retained equitable discretion. Hill, 437 U.S. at 211-13 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting). -44- Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, the Court has found that piece of legislative evidence to be particularly relevant in ascertaining the extent to which equitable discretion had been retained. See ___ U.S. ___, 121 S. Ct. 1711, 1721 (2001) (analyzing judicial-enforcement provision of Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. § 882(a), and concluding that the district court is not textually required by any clear and valid legislative command in that provision to issue an injunction) (internal quotation marks omitted). Whether or not the approach taken in Hill with respect to the ESA is still good law, we are not persuaded that a similar approach is appropriate here. Apart from its arguments concerning the text of the SDWA, the United States also pursues a broader line of attack in this appeal: that the district court's decision excuses an ongoing statutory violation, and therefore exceeds the scope of equitable discretion that may be exercised under any statute. While acknowledging the Supreme Court's statement that a federal judge sitting as chancellor is not mechanically obligated to grant an injunction for every violation of law, Romero-Barcelo, 456 U.S. at 313, the United States contends that the Court has never authorized courts to do what it claims the district court did in this case -- namely, to permit a water system in violation of the SDWA to remain in violation indefinitely. In pressing this argument, the United States -45- points to three of the Court's seminal cases in this area from the last century: Hecht Co., Romero-Barcelo, and Village of Gambell. Even though the Supreme Court endorsed the district court's exercise of equitable discretion in each of those decisions, the United States correctly observes that the district court's order in all three cases was designed to lead to compliance with the relevant statute.21 By declining to order the MWRA to install a filtration system, the United States contends, the district court was unfaithful to these precedents by allow[ing] the MWRA to remain out of compliance with the SDWA and the SWTR permanently. We agree that in all three of these cases -- and, indeed, in all cases in which the Supreme Court has spoken in this area -- the violating party was not permitted to evade the substantive requirements of the statute. We disagree, however, 21In Hecht Co., the defendant had remedied its past violations of the Emergency Price Control Act, and the district court had found that those transgressions were not likely to recur. 321 U.S. at 325-26. In Romero-Barcelo, the Court noted that the violator (the Navy) was likely in the near future to receive the permit it needed to comply with the Federal Water Pollution Control Act amendments to the Clean Water Act, and found that the statute's judicial-enforcement provision permits the district court to order that relief it considers necessary to secure prompt compliance with the Act. 456 U.S. at 320 (emphasis added). And in Village of Gambell, the Court found that because oil companies needed to receive further approval from the Secretary of the Interior before engaging in drilling off the coast of Alaska, the district court was not required, under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, to enjoin the companies' activities based on their past failures to meet the Act's procedural requirements. 480 U.S. at 544. -46- with the United States's argument that the court is permitting noncompliance in this case. [W]hen a court of equity exercises its discretion, it may not consider the advantages and disadvantages of nonenforcement of the statute, but only the advantages and disadvantages of employing the extraordinary remedy of injunction over the other available methods of enforcement. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Coop., 121 S. Ct. at 1722 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). Because the court's order is designed to ensure that the Act's paramount objective of safe drinking water remains fulfilled in the future, the district court did not, as the United States argues, sanction perpetual noncompliance with the Act. See Village of Gambell, 480 U.S. at 544 (directing courts charged with ensuring compliance with a statute to focus on the underlying substantive policy the process was designed to effect). Contrary to the situation in Hill, this is not a case where Congress' order of priorities, as expressed in the statute, would be deprived of effect if the District Court could choose to deny injunctive relief. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Coop., 121 S. Ct. at 1721 (internal quotation marks omitted) (citing Hill, 437 U.S. at 194). Although the EPA is correct that filtration is an absolute requirement under the SDWA/SWTR regime for those water systems that fail to meet the avoidance criteria, the -47- preeminence of filtration in bringing about the goal of safe drinking water is primarily a function of the Rule, not the Act. The purpose of the Act, in the words of its drafters, is to assure that water supply systems serving the public meet minimum national standards for protection of public health. H.R. Rep. No. 93-1185, reprinted in 1974 U.S.C.C.A.N. 6454, 6454. In other words, the framers of the Act were concerned with ensuring that consumers of public water systems have access to safe drinking water, with the safety of the water to be judged according to objective criteria developed by the EPA. Filtration, while serving an important role in furtherance of the objective of safe water, is merely a prophylactic remedy made available to help bring about that objective. One fact underscores this point particularly well, and demonstrates why the exercise of equitable discretion is especially appropriate with respect to this particular regulatory scheme: under the Act, if a water system never violates any of the avoidance criteria, its water is presumptively safe according to the SDWA, regardless of whether it ever installs a filtration system. In essence, the water system's compliance with the avoidance criteria makes the water safe from the EPA's perspective -- a point conceded by the United States at trial. We fail to see how accomplishment of the Act's substantive goals is undermined by overlooking past violations of regulatory -48- deadlines that have no bearing on the current or future purity of the water delivered to consumers. See Romero-Barcelo, 456 U.S. at 310 (noting that purpose of injunctive relief is to deter future violations, not to punish past ones) (citing Hecht Co., 321 U.S. at 329-30); cf. Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Envtl. Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 192 (2000) (holding that district court had discretion under Clean Water Act to determine which form of relief is best suited, in the particular case, to abate current violations and deter future ones) (emphasis added). Moreover, given that the district court has retained jurisdiction in this case for the purpose of policing any future violation, thereby allowing it to revisit the validity of its earlier decision not to order filtration, the United States has a ready forum in which to seek relief for any future avoidance-criteria violations. See Romero-Barcelo, 456 U.S. at 320 (Should it become clear that . . . compliance with the [statute] will not be forthcoming, the statutory scheme and purpose would require the court to reconsider the balance it has struck.). Besides the issue of ongoing supervision to ensure compliance, the case at bar bears a close similarity to RomeroBarcelo in at least one other respect: the district court's focus on the relevant statute's substantive purposes, rather than its technical requirements. In Romero-Barcelo, the -49- plaintiffs claimed that, by allowing the Navy to continue bombing exercises on Vieques Island without first having obtained a discharge permit, the court was countenancing an ongoing statutory violation -- namely, the unpermitted discharge of ordnance into navigable waters. 456 U.S. at 314. Disagreeing with this characterization, the Supreme Court found that, by tying future Navy activities to its procurement of a discharge permit, the district court had neither ignored the statutory violation nor undercut the purpose and function of the permit system. Id. at 315. This was the case, according to the Court, because [t]he integrity of the Nation's waters, . . . not the permit process, is the purpose of the [statute]. Id. at 314. So it is here: the manifest purpose of the SDWA is safe drinking water, not filtration. Of course, we are aware that the filtration mandate is, in some meaningful way, more substantive than the FWPCA's permit requirement, and that, through the 1986 amendments to the SDWA, Congress expressed its intent that filtration should be used by water systems that fail to meet the standards for avoidance established by the EPA. But in the end, we believe that we would do far greater violence to both the text and the purpose of the SDWA were we to strip courts of the flexibility to shape equitable decrees in appropriate situations. For as we noted infra, under § 300g-3(b), courts are authorized to issue -50- judgments as protection of public health may require. Moreover, by retaining jurisdiction in this case, the district court has assumed the responsibility of ensuring that, through continued oversight of the MWRA's avoidance-criteria compliance, the MWRA's water supply will remain safe according to the EPA's standards. The United States's final contention -- in reality, it is nothing more than a variation on the basic theme of its appeal -- is that the district court, by holding a trial on the propriety of applying the filtration requirement to the MWRA, arrogated to itself powers that had been placed by Congress in the hands of the EPA. In its view, the district court's trial amounted to little more than an improper reconsideration of the determinations that the EPA made in promulgating the Rule. Under the SDWA, the United States argues, such considerations are the exclusive province of experts in the EPA, not the courts, and if the district court's decision is left to stand, every water system that finds itself displeased with the SWTR's rigid requirements will have the opportunity to challenge the wisdom of the Rule as applied to it. This line of reasoning only is valid as far as it goes -- and it does not go as far as the United States suggests. It is certainly true that, in delegating authority to the EPA to ascertain circumstances in which filtration . . . is required -51- of public water systems, 42 U.S.C. § 300g-1(b)(7)(C)(i), Congress entrusted the EPA with the power to make policy judgments with respect to the factors that would make filtration mandatory. It is also true that, as a general matter, those judgments are not to be second-guessed by courts. But policy determinations in statutes and regulations that Congress chooses to have enforced through suits in equity are always subject to courts' equitable discretion -- that is, at least to the extent that Congress has preserved discretion in the statute and has not proscribed, through its expressions of policy, the type of equitable remedy that a court seeks to implement. If Congress has left the door open to a court to exercise equitable discretion respecting enforcement of a statute such as the SDWA, and the court senses that the equities of the case may favor alternative means of exacting compliance with the statute ( i.e., other than the issuance of an injunction), the court does not exceed the boundaries of its authority by conducting factfinding for the purpose of determining how best to wield its discretion in light of the priorities established in the statute. The district court did not hold a trial to revisit the underlying wisdom of the SWTR; rather, it held a trial to ascertain whether, based on both the particular facts of this case and the substantive goals of the Act, it was more appropriate to order filtration or to permit the MWRA to pursue -52- its alternative approach to the extent that it could satisfy the Rule's avoidance criteria and ultimately provide a safer water supply. In sum, with respect to the SDWA, a court must take as given the value choices embodied in the statutes and policies administered by the [agency], but is entitled and in fact required to consider whether the enforcement of the [agency's] order would violate equitable principles that are neutral with regard to those value choices. NLRB v. PIE Nationwide, Inc., 894 F.2d 887, 893 (7th Cir. 1990). In our view, this is precisely what the district court did in this case.