Opinion ID: 186946
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Duty to Preserve, Protect and Enhance Air Quality

Text: 35 The petitioner's primary objection is that EPA violated its duty under section 160(2), as incorporated into section 166, to make a finding that the NO x PSD regulations fulfill the statutory goal to preserve, protect and enhance the air quality in parks and other natural areas. See 42 U.S.C. § 7470(2); see also id. § 7401. Additionally, the petitioner argues, EPA could not reasonably have made such a finding because the increments as promulgated do not fulfill this goal. We find this double-barreled challenge unpersuasive. 36 First, EPA did expressly find that the PSD regulations fulfill the statutory goal to preserve, protect, and enhance air quality—among the several goals EPA is called upon to balance. See Envtl. Def. Fund, 898 F.2d at 189 (subsection (c) commands a broad weighing of factors). In particular EPA must, as it recognized in the 2005 Rule, see 70 Fed.Reg. at 59,588, balance the potentially conflicting goals in subsections 160(2) and 160(3) to protect air quality and to promote economic growth. See 898 F.2d at 184 (The stated purpose of these `PSD' provisions was (roughly) to protect the air quality in national parks and similar areas of special scenic or recreational value, and in areas where pollution was within the national ambient standards, while assuring economic growth consistent with such protection. (citing 42 U.S.C. § 7470)); id at 187-88 (`protectiveness' reading of subsection (d) escapes the extreme intractability of the optimality reading, but it accomplishes this only by slighting the `economic growth' goal of § 160); see also NRDC v. EPA, 937 F.2d 641, 645-46 (D.C.Cir.1991) (Nothing in the legislative history undermines the inference that Congress believed that its PSD provisions should balance the values of clean air, on the one hand, and economic development and productivity, on the other, and much confirms it.). And this is precisely what EPA did. The 2005 Rule includes an extensive explanation of how EPA balanced the eight statutory factors and how the repromulgated regulations satisfy various of them. See 70 Fed.Reg. at 59,596-99. Of particular importance here, EPA expressly found that the statutory goal to preserve, protect and enhance air quality is fulfilled through the area classifications system, id. at 59,597, the AQRV review, id. at 59,597-98, the Additional Impacts Analysis, id. at 59,599, and the use of the BACT standard, id. at 59,599; see supra pp. 1326, 1328-29. 37 For the second part of its argument, the petitioner relies largely on the historical evidence that in the fifteen years since the Set II increments were first promulgated in 1988, air quality in parks and natural areas has deteriorated. We see two flaws in the petitioner's reasoning. 38 First, it overlooks the Congress's apparent intent when it expressly adopted an increment program for Set I pollutants in section 163 and authorized EPA to do so for Set II pollutants in section 166. By its nature, such an increment limitation system does not reduce existing concentration levels but rather limits increases. Thus, EPA reasonably viewed the statutory PSD program as designed to be a growth management program that limits the deterioration of air quality beyond baseline levels that may be caused by the construction of major new and modified sources. Id. at 59,589. The petitioner's real beef is with EPA's determination that this goal is met by using the same increment methodology for Set II pollutants (and NO x in particular) that the Congress used for Set I and thereby setting the significant deterioration bar at the same level as the Congress did for Set I. Given EPA's adherence to the statute's requirements, as the court delineated them in Environmental Defense Fund, we do not believe that in doing so EPA abused the considerable discretion that section 166 grants it to establish Set II PSD measures. 39 Second, in the 2005 Rule, EPA noted that the deterioration that has occurred has not been nationwide but is limited to specific areas, primarily in the West, id. at 59,603, a problem EPA did not believe could be directly alleviated through the PSD program because the Congress intended EPA to establish nationally uniform PSD measures (as the Congress itself established for Set II pollutants). EPA explained: 40 We continue to believe that the PSD program is intended to allow the air quality in each area of the country attaining the NAAQS, and with the same area classification, to deteriorate by the same amount for each subject pollutant, regardless of the existing air quality when the increment is initially triggered in a particular area, as long as such growth allowed within the constraints of the increment does not cause adverse impacts on site-specific AQRVs or other important values. In this way, the PSD increments avoid having a disproportionate impact on growth that might disadvantage some communities, recognizing that the increments in themselves would not address existing negative impacts but cannot allow significant new adverse impacts. Congress established the foundation for uniform national increments when it created increments for SO 2 and PM under section 165 of the Act. 41 Id. at 59,601 (footnote omitted); see also id. at 59,602 ([W]e do not believe it is permissible or appropriate for us to establish uniform increments at levels so stringent that they prevent any adverse impact on the most sensitive receptors in any part of the U.S.). EPA's construction of the statute is consistent with the path the Congress chose in mandating specific uniform national increments for Set I pollutants in section 163. It is also supported by the legislative history of section 163, which indicates that the Congress deliberately selected uniform increments because it deemed locally individualized increments to be inequitable. See H.R.Rep. No. 95-294, at 153 (1977), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1977, pp. 1077, 1232 (expressing belief that the adoption of increments based on percentage of the national standards means equity for all areas of a similar class and rejecting suggestions . . . that the pollution increments should be calculated as a function of existing levels of pollution in each area because the inequities inherent in such an approach are readily evident); S.Rep. No. 95-127, at 30 (1977), (These increments are the same for all nondeterioration areas, thus providing equity for all areas.).