Opinion ID: 529912
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: testing responsibility

Text: 86 As part of its implementation of the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984 (HSWA), Pub.L. No. 98-616, 98 Stat. 3221, the EPA developed an enforcement plan to assure that wastes that are prohibited from land disposal will not make their way into the ground. Under the EPA's scheme, restricted wastes will follow one of two paths. First, if the generator of the waste determines that he is managing a restricted waste and the waste does not meet the applicable treatment standards, he must notify the treatment facility of the appropriate treatment standards, see 40 C.F.R. Sec. 268.7(a)(1); the treatment facility is then required, pursuant to 40 C.F.R. Sec. 268.7(b), to test the treatment residue to assure that the waste, once treated, meets those standards before forwarding the waste to a land disposal facility, 5 which is also required to test the waste, 40 C.F.R. Sec. 268.7(c). Alternatively, if a generator determines that he is managing a restricted waste, but that the waste can be land disposed without further treatment, he may ship the waste directly to landfill operators, the final handlers of the waste who, under the EPA scheme, bear ultimate responsibility for testing and determining that land disposed wastes meet the applicable treatment standards. See 51 Fed.Reg. 40,597 (November 7, 1986). 87 Although earlier handlers of wastes--both waste generators and treatment facilities--are also required by the regulations to certify that waste leaving their control and marked for land disposal meets the appropriate treatment standards, only the latter are expressly required to test the waste in order to certify compliance. See 40 C.F.R. Sec. 268.7(b). Generators of waste are recommend[ed] to conduct a comprehensive analysis of each waste stream ... at least annually, 51 Fed.Reg. at 40,598, but in the end the agency's regulations leave generators the option of certifying that their wastes comply with treatment standards on the basis of, inter alia, their knowledge of the waste: 88 If a generator determines that he is managing a restricted waste under this part, and determines that the waste can be land disposed without further treatment, with each shipment of waste he must submit, to the land disposal facility, a notice and a certification stating that the waste meets the applicable treatment standards.... 89 (ii) The certification must be signed by an authorized representative and must state the following: 90 I certify under penalty of law that I personally have examined and am familiar with the waste through analysis and testing or through knowledge of the waste to support this certification that the waste complies with the treatment standards specified in 40 C.F.R. Part 268 Subpart D and all applicable prohibitions set forth in 40 C.F.R. 268.32 or RCRA section 3004(d). I believe that the information I submitted is true, accurate and complete. I am aware that there are significant penalties for submitting a false certification, including the possibility of a fine and imprisonment. 91 40 C.F.R. Sec. 268.7(a)(2) (emphasis added). 92 HWTC and NRDC challenge the agency's decision to allow generators to rely on their knowledge to certify that wastes are within treatment standards. Petitioners note that wastes requiring treatment must be tested before being sent to land disposal facilities, and they therefore argue that it is arbitrary and capricious for the agency to fail to require generators of waste to test their waste streams in order to certify that admittedly restricted wastes conform to the applicable treatment standards. They charge that since the applicable treatment standards are stated in terms of specific and minute concentrations of hazardous constituents, without actual test data, generators cannot possibly determine whether their wastes are generated meet these treatment standards and can be land disposed. Brief for Petitioners HWTC and NRDC at 14. 6 They urge this court to replace the agency's rule with a requirement of their own: [W]astes, which a generator has determined (by whatever means) to be: 1) hazardous and 2) subject to a land disposal restriction (e.g., they are a listed solvent or dioxin waste), must be tested by the generator if the generator is to certify that the wastes meet treatment standards and can be transported directly to a land disposal facility. HWTC/NDRC Reply Br. at 12 (emphasis in original). This is a requirement we are unwilling to impose. 93 First, unlike petitioners we find it neither nonsensical nor absurd to expect that generators may to some extent know their waste without testing each batch produced. Indeed, waste generators who apply the same methods to the same inputs in the same manner as part of the same production process every day are, after a while, likely to be in a very good position to know the hazardous contents of their waste. As we read the EPA's rules and statements during the rulemaking process, the agency's scheme does not allow generators to make guesses about the hazardous nature of their wastes without empirical or analytical foundation. Rather, waste generators are allowed to rely on actual knowledge they have acquired only if such knowledge enables them to certify that their waste complies with applicable treatment standards. Generators are required to keep records of all data that goes into their certifications, see 40 C.F.R. Sec. 268.7(a)(4), and they are subject to penalties for erroneous certifications. Thus, contrary to petitioners' assertion that nothing in the rule itself ... requires generators shipping wastes directly to a landfill to test the waste to determine compliance with the treatment standards, Letter from HWTC (March 28, 1989) at 2, the EPA's scheme will necessarily require at least some initial testing of generators' waste stream in order to comply with the rules' plain directives. 7 If down the road the generators' familiarity with their wastes does indeed render them capable of certifying the wastes' contents without conducting more frequent testing, then we see no reason to compel the EPA to require such unnecessary testing. 94 Furthermore, we do not find the EPA's decision to require treatment facilities to conduct testing but to allow generators to rely on their knowledge to be arbitrary. The rulemaking record adequately reflects the EPA's sense that while generators can be expected to have reasonable knowledge of familiar wastes, off-site treatment facilities do not always have similar familiarity with the waste they handle. Moreover, it is the treatment facility's job to transform waste otherwise deemed too dangerous to permit into landfills into acceptable form. It is therefore not irrational for the EPA to introduce a backup, arguably redundant testing stage for these wastes requiring treatment, and even to consider this a critical stage in the process. See 51 Fed.Reg. at 40,597. 95 Although the agency's certification system may be somewhat imprecise with regard to generators of waste, this imprecision is not fatal. Rather, the EPA has explicitly stated that the crucial stage in the process, upon which the agency has placed its most heavy reliance, is the point at which the waste reaches the land disposal facility: at this juncture, just prior to land disposal, waste must be rigorously tested to confirm that it is what others have represented it to be and that it may permissibly be land disposed. Given the agency's reliance on testing by landfill owners and operators to intercept erroneously identified waste, we cannot say that the EPA acted arbitrarily or capriciously in deciding not to require elaborate and even redundant testing 8 by generators presumably able to identify in a large number of cases the hazardous components of the waste they generate. 96 HWTC and NRDC further argue that the testing required of disposal facilities will be inadequate to assure that only wastes that are permitted to be land disposed will actually enter landfills. 9 In particular, they complain that substantial percentages of individual waste shipments received by a landfill operator are not required to be tested for compliance with the treatment standards by actual testing. Letter from HWTC (March 28, 1989) at 3. Despite these concerns, however, the regulations are structured to assure that the frequency of testing is sufficient to identify wastes that do not comply with treatment standards.For the purposes of compliance with the land disposal restrictions rule, a waste analysis plan for an off-site disposal facility must address the procedures for screening incoming shipments of waste to ensure that wastes received conform to the certification made by the generator or treatment facility. That is, the waste analysis plan must address the procedures necessary for determining whether an extract of the waste or treated waste meets the treatment standards. 97 51 Fed.Reg. at 40,598. 10 In a sense, then, petitioners' concerns are premature: while the EPA's scheme is designed to assure adequate testing, which includes case-by-case determinations of the frequency with which actual testing will need to be conducted on waste shipments, petitioners anticipate that the EPA will authorize testing schedules that are inadequate. We prefer to anticipate that the agency will faithfully execute its responsibilities under the statute, and will impose testing requirements that will guarantee that Congress' purposes in enacting the statute are implemented. If the agency does not live up to this expectation, there will be time and opportunity for petitioners' challenge. 98 At its base, the challenge of HWTC and NRDC is undergirded by a peculiar set of epistemological assumptions. In brief, these petitioners appear to argue that only much more frequent testing of waste at every stage of its handling would ever allow us to know whether any given batch of waste (itself an arguably arbitrary dividing line) conforms to the EPA's treatment standards. Absent continuous testing at the point of generation, they argue, generators cannot certify what levels of hazardous constituents their waste contains; and if landfill operators are not required to test each individual waste shipment for compliance with the treatment standards by the stringent Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure testing method, then the testing requirement at the land disposal stage cannot be relied upon to catch waste that generators have erroneously certified as falling naturally within these standards. 99 While we have no desire to enter a metaphysical debate over the source and nature of all knowledge, common sense compels recognition of the fact that much of what we think of as knowledge in the practical world is nothing more than extrapolation from a more limited set of experiences. As relevant to the present case, we cannot say that the statute requires testing beyond what is practically necessary to assure with a high degree of confidence that prohibited wastes are not being land disposed. We therefore hold that the EPA's decision to allow generators to rely in appropriate circumstances on their knowledge of their restricted waste to certify that it naturally meets treatment standards is reasonable.