Opinion ID: 179005
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Regulatory Overreach

Text: Finally, we address several additional points relied on by the district court and raised on appeal by EnergySolutions. The first is that allowing the Northwest Compact to exclude out-of-region waste from the Clive Facility would give it power to regulate the facility out of business. Such power would discourage investors from developing new disposal sites and thereby undermine congressional objectives behind the 1985 Actdeveloping sufficient LLRW disposal capacity to meet the nation's needs. The second argument is that since the Clive Facility is the only disposal facility in existence that is not operating as a regional disposal facility, a decision that the Northwest Compact has no exclusionary authority over the Clive Facility would not affect the authority of other compacts. This first argument over-simplifies the purposes that led Congress to enact the 1985 Act, and misapprehends the potential consequences of concluding that compacts are powerless to exclude out-of-region waste (except in the case of regional disposal facilities, as defined by the 1985 Act). Congress had in mind not only the creation of new disposal capacity when it passed the 1985 Act, but also the ability of states to prevent themselves from becoming dumping grounds for the nation's LLRW. Therefore, in interpreting these statutes, we must not focus on one motivation to the complete abandonment of the other. Next, it is important to remember the state of Utah conditioned the license it granted on the Clive Facility's compliance with the authority of the Northwest Compact. We are not implying reliance trumps a constitutional constraint. If we had concluded the Compact's claimed authority was prohibited by the dormant Commerce Clause, Utah's reliance would be irrelevant absent some other regulatory authority. But Utah's license is instructivefrom what the record indicates, it is unlikely Utah would have agreed to issue the necessary licenses if it was powerless to control the flow of waste past its borders. Why would any other state behave differently in the future? Indeed, were the states to lose exclusionary authority, they would refuse to license facilities in the first place or to re-license them after the fact with necessary limitations. Such an interpretation could actually hasten the closing of the Clive Facility, and enhance the reluctance on the part of other states to permit the construction of new disposal sites. As to the second argument, it is true the Clive Facility is the only currently operating disposal facility with this unique arrangement. In that sense, no other compacts would be affected by a conclusion that the Northwest Compact lacks exclusionary authority over the Clive Facility. But the only way we could conclude the Northwest Compact lacks this exclusionary authority is to declare the 1985 Act, not the Compact, provides an important limitation on compact authority. This legal conclusion does affect all the other compacts, and could greatly undermine the agreements made by other states. Accordingly, we reject EnergySolutions' arguments that the Northwest Compact lacks the authority to regulate out-of-region waste disposal at the Clive Facility.