Opinion ID: 185760
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Extension of the Attainment Deadline

Text: 13 We agree with the Sierra Club that the plain terms of the Act preclude an extension of the sort the EPA granted here. Pursuant to § 181(a)(1), 42 U.S.C. § 7511(a)(1), each area of serious nonattainment was required to meet the NAAQS by November 15, 1999. That deadline could be extended in certain limited circumstances or when an area was reclassified as one of severe nonattainment. Id. § 7511(b)(2)(i), (3). In this case, the EPA neither determined that the Washington Area fit those limited circumstances nor acknowledged that the Area was reclassified as severe. 14 The EPA characterizes the issue before the court as follows: whether an attainment date extension is available without an accompanying reclassification to `severe' nonattainment status where the Washington area's ability to attain has been demonstrably compromised by upwind emissions outside its control. Fair enough, but as the Sierra Club points out, the Act details the conditions in which the EPA may extend the attainment deadline, without reclassification, to account for upwind emissions that compromise an area's ability to come into attainment, and none of them is implicated here. For example, the Act exempts from the attainment deadlines any area that would be in attainment but for emissions emanating from outside of the United States, 42 U.S.C. § 7509a(b); and an[y] ozone nonattainment area that does not include, and is not adjacent to, any part of a Metropolitan Statistical Area, id. § 7511a(h)(1), provided the emissions within the area do not make a significant contribution to the ozone concentrations measured in the area or in other areas, id. § 7511a(h)(2). We cannot but infer from the presence of these specific exemptions that the absence of any other exemption for the transport of ozone was deliberate, and that the Agency's attempt to grant such a dispensation is contrary to the intent of the Congress. 15 The EPA also contends the Approval falls within this Court's parameters for when it will look beyond a `literal' reading of a statute, but the Agency does not show that this is one of those rare cases [in which] the literal application of a statute will produce a result demonstrably at odds with the intentions of its drafters. Engine Mfrs. Ass'n v. EPA, 88 F.3d 1075, 1088 (D.C.Cir.1996). Because our role is not to `correct' the text so that it better serves the statute's purposes, id., we will not ratify an interpretation that abrogates the enacted statutory text absent an extraordinarily convincing justification, Appalachian Power Co. v. EPA, 249 F.3d 1032, 1041 (D.C.Cir.2001). Here the EPA asserts that [a]s a matter of `logic and statutory structure,' Congress `almost surely' could not have meant to require the Agency to treat the Washington Area as one of severe nonattainment merely because its attainment has been temporarily stalled due to transported pollution. This assurance does nothing to persuade us that, although § 181(a)(1), 42 U.S.C. § 7511(a)(1), as written sets a deadline without an exception for setbacks owing to ozone transport, all the other evidence from the statute points the other way, United States Nat'l Bank of Oregon v. Indep. Ins. Agents of Am., Inc., 508 U.S. 439, 455, 113 S.Ct. 2173, 2182, 124 L.Ed.2d 402 (1993); see also Engine Mfrs., 88 F.3d at 1088 (there must be evidence that Congress meant something other than what it literally said before a court can depart from plain meaning). 16 We reject also the EPA's argument that we must accept its interpretation of the Act in order to give effect to the broader congressional intent not to punish downwind areas affected by ozone transport. The most reliable guide to congressional intent is the legislation the Congress enacted and, as we have seen, the Act itself reveals no intention to allow for an extension in circumstances like those affecting the Washington Area. Similarly, it is of no moment that the extension may be, as the Agency claims, a reasonable accommodation of ... the statutory attainment date and interstate transport provisions; it is not the accommodation the Congress made. An agency may not disregard the Congressional intent clearly expressed in the text simply by asserting that its preferred approach would be better policy. Engine Mfrs., 88 F.3d at 1089. 17 Finally, the EPA argues that our decision in Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc. v. EPA, 22 F.3d 1125, 1135 (D.C.Cir.1994), approving its extension of the deadlines by which states had to submit elements of their SIPs, compels a similar result in this case. Although we upheld the EPA's decision in that case to extend the deadline for compliance with a procedural requirement of the Act, the Agency's failure to meet its own deadline for providing guidance to the states necessitated that we do so, see id., 22 F.3d at 1135 (The agency's failure to meet its November 15, 1991 deadline ... made it impossible for states... to meet their November 15, 1992 ... submission deadline). In extending another procedural deadline under similar circumstances, we since have emphasized the importance that the attainment deadlines remain intact, complete with additional program obligations in the event of nonattainment, irrespective of a state's dereliction of the SIP process, NRDC v. Browner, 57 F.3d 1122, 1127 (D.C.Cir.1995). Unlike the various deadlines by which the states must submit proposals, the attainment deadlines are central to the ... regulatory scheme and ... leave[ ] no room for claims of technological or economic infeasibility. Union Elec. Co. v. EPA, 427 U.S. 246, 258, 96 S.Ct. 2518, 2526, 49 L.Ed.2d 474 (1976). 18 In sum, to permit an extension of the sort urged by the EPA would subvert the purposes of the Act. Cf. NRDC v. Browner, 57 F.3d at 1128 (extension of procedural deadline not incompatible with the multi-faceted statutory scheme as a whole). Therefore, we hold that the EPA was without authority in the Act or in our precedent to extend the attainment deadline for the Washington Area.