Opinion ID: 184866
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: The Clean Air Act requires EPA to promulgate and periodically revise national ambient air quality standards________ 1Judge Williams wrote Parts I and III.B; Judge Ginsburg wroteParts II, III.A, and IV.D; Judge Tatel wrote Parts IV.A-C. (NAAQS) for each air pollutant identified by the agency asmeeting certain statutory criteria. See Clean Air Actss 108-09, 42 U.S.C. ss 7408-09. For each pollutant, EPAsets a primary standard--a concentration level requisite toprotect the public health with an adequate margin of safety--and a secondary standard--a level requisite to protect the public welfare. Id. s 7409(b). In July 1997 EPA issued final rules revising the primaryand secondary NAAQS for particulate matter (PM) andozone. See National Ambient Air Quality Standards forParticulate Matter, 62 Fed. Reg. 38,652 (1997) (PM FinalRule); National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone,62 Fed. Reg. 38,856 (1997) (Ozone Final Rule). Numerouspetitions for review have been filed for each rule. In Part I we find that the construction of the Clean Air Acton which EPA relied in promulgating the NAAQS at issuehere effects an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power. See U.S. Const. art. I, s 1 (All legislative powers hereingranted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.). We remand the cases for EPA to develop a construction ofthe act that satisfies this constitutional requirement. In Part II we reject the following claims: that s 109(d) ofthe Act allows EPA to consider costs; that EPA should haveconsidered the environmental damage likely to result fromthe NAAQS' financial impact on the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund; that the NAAQS revisions violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Unfunded MandatesReform Act (UMRA), and Regulatory Flexibility Act(RFA). In Part III we decide two ozone-specific statutory issues,holding that the 1990 revisions to the Clean Air Act limitEPA's ability to enforce new ozone NAAQS and that EPAcannot ignore the possible health benefits of ozone. Finally, in Part IV we resolve various challenges to the PMNAAQS. We agree with petitioners that EPA's choice ofPM10 as the indicator for coarse particulate matter wasarbitrary and capricious; we reject petitioners' claims thatEPA must treat PM2.5 as a new pollutant, that EPA mustidentify a biological mechanism explaining PM's harmful effects, and that the Clean Air Act requires secondary NAAQSto be set at levels that eliminate all adverse visibility effects. The remaining issues cannot be resolved until such time asEPA may develop a constitutional construction of the act(and, if appropriate, modify the disputed NAAQS in accordance with that construction).
Certain Small Business Petitioners argue in each casethat EPA has construed ss 108 & 109 of the Clean Air Act soloosely as to render them unconstitutional delegations oflegislative power. We agree. Although the factors EPAuses in determining the degree of public health concernassociated with different levels of ozone and PM are reasonable, EPA appears to have articulated no intelligible principle to channel its application of these factors; nor is oneapparent from the statute. The nondelegation doctrine requires such a principle. See J.W. Hampton, Jr. & Co. v.United States, 276 U.S. 394, 409 (1928). Here it is as thoughCongress commanded EPA to select big guys, and EPAannounced that it would evaluate candidates based on heightand weight, but revealed no cut-off point. The announcement, though sensible in what it does say, is fatally incomplete. The reasonable person responds, How tall? Howheavy? EPA regards ozone definitely, and PM likely, as nonthreshold pollutants, i.e., ones that have some possibility ofsome adverse health impact (however slight) at any exposurelevel above zero. See Ozone Final Rule, 62 Fed. Reg. at38,863/3 (Nor does it seem possible, in the Administrator's judgment, to identify [an ozone concentration] level at whichit can be concluded with confidence that no 'adverse' effectsare likely to occur.); National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Ozone and Particulate Matter, 61 Fed. Reg. 65,637,65,651/3 (1996) (proposed rule) ([T]he single most importantfactor influencing the uncertainty associated with the riskestimates is whether or not a threshold concentration existsbelow which PM-associated health risks are not likely tooccur.). For convenience, we refer to both as non-thresholdpollutants; the indeterminacy of PM's status does not affectEPA's analysis, or ours. Thus the only concentration for ozone and PM that isutterly risk-free, in the sense of direct health impacts, is zero. Section 109(b)(1) says that EPA must set each standard atthe level requisite to protect the public health with anadequate margin of safety. 42 U.S.C. s 7409(b)(1). Theseare also the criteria by which EPA must determine whether arevision to existing NAAQS is appropriate. See 42 U.S.C.s 7409(d)(1) (EPA shall promulgate such new standards asmay be appropriate in accordance with ... [s 7409(b)]); seealso infra Part II.A. For EPA to pick any non-zero level itmust explain the degree of imperfection permitted. Thefactors that EPA has elected to examine for this purpose inthemselves pose no inherent nondelegation problem. Butwhat EPA lacks is any determinate criterion for drawinglines. It has failed to state intelligibly how much is too much. We begin with the criteria EPA has announced for assessing health effects in setting the NAAQS for non-thresholdpollutants.1 They are the nature and severity of the health ________ 1Technically, EPA describes the criteria as used only forsetting the adequate margin of safety. There might be thoughtto be a separate step in which EPA determines what standardwould protect public health without any margin of safety, and thatstep might be governed by different criteria. But EPA did not usesuch a process, and it need not. See NRDC v. EPA, 902 F.2d 963, effects involved, the size of the sensitive population(s) at risk,the types of health information available, and the kind anddegree of uncertainties that must be addressed. OzoneFinal Rule, 62 Fed. Reg. at 38,883/2; EPA, Review of theNational Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter: Policy Assessment of Scientific and Technical Information: OAQPS Staff Paper, at II-2 (July 1996) (PM StaffPaper) (listing same factors). Although these criteria, sostated, are a bit vague, they do focus the inquiry on pollution's effects on public health. And most of the vagueness inthe abstract formulation melts away as EPA applies thecriteria: EPA basically considers severity of effect, certaintyof effect, and size of population affected. These criteria, longago approved by the judiciary, see Lead Industries Ass'n v.EPA, 647 F.2d 1130, 1161 (D.C. Cir. 1980) (Lead Industries), do not themselves speak to the issue of degree. Read in light of these factors, EPA's explanations for itsdecisions amount to assertions that a less stringent standardwould allow the relevant pollutant to inflict a greater quantum of harm on public health, and that a more stringentstandard would result in less harm. Such arguments onlysupport the intuitive proposition that more pollution will notbenefit public health, not that keeping pollution at or belowany particular level is requisite or not requisite to protectthe public health with an adequate margin of safety, theformula set out by s 109(b)(1). Consider EPA's defense of the 0.08 ppm level of the ozoneNAAQS. EPA explains that its choice is superior to retaining the existing level, 0.09 ppm, because more people areexposed to more serious effects at 0.09 than at 0.08. SeeOzone Final Rule, 62 Fed. Reg. at 38,868/1. In defending thedecision not to go down to 0.07, EPA never contradicts theintuitive proposition, confirmed by data in its Staff Paper,that reducing the standard to that level would bring aboutcomparable changes. See EPA, Review of National AmbientAir Quality Standards for Ozone: Assessment of Scientific ___________________ 973 (D.C. Cir. 1990). Thus, the criteria mentioned in the textgovern the whole standard-setting process. and Technical Information: OAQPS Staff Paper, at 156(June 1996) (Ozone Staff Paper). Instead, it gives threeother reasons. The principal substantive one is based on thecriteria just discussed: The most certain O3-related effects, while judged to be adverse, are transient and reversible (particularly at O3 exposures below 0.08 ppm), and the more serious effects with greater immediate and potential long-term impacts on health are less certain, both as to the percentage of individuals exposed to various concentrations who are likely to experience such effects and as to the long-term medical significance of these effects. Ozone Final Rule, 62 Fed. Reg. at 38,868/2. In other words, effects are less certain and less severe atlower levels of exposure. This seems to be nothing morethan a statement that lower exposure levels are associatedwith lower risk to public health. The dissent argues that insetting the standard at 0.08, EPA relied on evidence thathealth effects occurring below that level are transient andreversible, Dissent at 5, evidently assuming that those athigher levels are not. But the EPA language quoted abovedoes not make the categorical distinction the dissent says itdoes, and it is far from apparent that any health effectsexisting above the level are permanent or irreversible. In addition to the assertion quoted above, EPA cited theconsensus of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee(CASAC) that the standard should not be set below 0.08. That body gave no specific reasons for its recommendations,so the appeal to its authority, also made in defense of otherstandards in the PM Final Rule, see PM Final Rule, 62 Fed.Reg. at 38,677/2 (daily fine PM standard); id. at 38,678/3(annual coarse PM standard); id. at 38,679/1 (daily coarse PMstandard), adds no enlightenment. The dissent stresses theundisputed eminence of CASAC's members, Dissent at 4, butthe question whether EPA acted pursuant to lawfully delegated authority is not a scientific one. Nothing in what CASACsays helps us discern an intelligible principle derived by EPAfrom the Clean Air Act. Finally, EPA argued that a 0.07 standard would be closerto peak background levels that infrequently occur in someareas due to nonanthropogenic sources of O3 precursors, andthus more likely to be inappropriately targeted in some areason such sources. Ozone Final Rule, 62 Fed. Reg. at38,868/3. But a 0.08 level, of course, is also closer to thesepeak levels than 0.09. The dissent notes that a single background observation fell between 0.07 and 0.08, and says thatEPA's decision ensured that if a region surpasses the ozonestandard, it will do so because of controllable human activity,not uncontrollable natural levels of ozone. Dissent at 6. EPA's language, coupled with the data on background ozonelevels, may add up to a backhanded way of saying that, giventhe national character of the NAAQS, it is inappropriate toset a standard below a level that can be achieved throughoutthe country without action affirmatively extracting chemicalsfrom nature. That may well be a sound reading of thestatute, but EPA has not explicitly adopted it. EPA frequently defends a decision not to set a standard ata lower level on the basis that there is greater uncertaintythat health effects exist at lower levels than the level of thestandard. See Ozone Final Rule, 62 Fed. Reg. at 38,868/2; PM Final Rule, 62 Fed. Reg. at 38,676/3 (annual fine PMstandard); id. at 38,677/2 (daily fine PM standard). And suchan argument is likely implicit in its defense of the coarse PMstandards. See PM Final Rule, 62 Fed. Reg. at 38,678/3- 79/1. The dissent's defense of the fine particulate matterstandard cites exactly such a justification. See Dissent at 6(The Agency explained that 'there is generally greateststatistical confidence in observed associations ... for levelsat and above the mean concentration [in certain studies]' )(emphasis added in dissent). But the increasing-uncertaintyargument is helpful only if some principle reveals how muchuncertainty is too much. None does. The arguments EPA offers here show only that EPA isapplying the stated factors and that larger public healthharms (including increased probability of such harms) are, asexpected, associated with higher pollutant concentrations. The principle EPA invokes for each increment in stringency (such as for adopting the annual coarse particulate matterstandard that it chose here)--that it is possible, but notcertain that health effects exist at that level, see PM FinalRule, 62 Fed. Reg. at 38,678/32--could as easily, for any nonthreshold pollutant, justify a standard of zero. The sameindeterminacy prevails in EPA's decisions not to pick a stillmore stringent level. For example, EPA's reasons for notlowering the ozone standard from 0.08 to 0.07 ppm--that themore serious effects ... are less certain at the lower levelsand that the lower levels are closer to peak backgroundlevels, see Ozone Final Rule, 62 Fed. Reg. at 38,868/2--couldalso be employed to justify a refusal to reduce levels belowthose associated with London's Killer Fog of 1952. In thatcalamity, very high PM levels (up to 2,500 Sg/m3) are believedto have led to 4,000 excess deaths in a week.3 Thus, theagency rightly recognizes that the question is one of degree,but offers no intelligible principle by which to identify astopping point. The latitude EPA claims here seems even broader thanthat OSHA asserted in International Union, UAW v. OSHA(Lockout/Tagout I), 938 F.2d 1310, 1317 (D.C. Cir. 1991),which was to set a standard that would reduce a substantialrisk and that was not infeasible. In that case, OSHA thoughtitself free either to do nothing at all or to require precautions that take the industry to the brink of ruin, with allpositions in between ... evidently equally valid. Id. Here,EPA's freedom of movement between the poles is equallyunconstrained, but the poles are even farther apart--themaximum stringency would send industry not just to the ________ 2EPA did cite qualitative evidence for further support for itsannual standard, and argued that the evidence does not provideevidence of effects below the range of 40-50 Sg/m3, the standardlevel. PM Final Rule, 62 Fed. Reg. at 38,678/3. The referenceddocument, however, bears no indication that the qualitative evidencedemonstrates effects at the level of the standard, either. See EPA,Air Quality Criteria for Particulate Matter, at 13-79 (April 1996). 3See W.P.D. Logan, Mortality in the London Fog Incident,1952, The Lancet, Feb. 4, 1953, at 336-38. brink of ruin but hurtling over it, while the minimum stringency may be close to doing nothing at all. In Lockout/Tagout I certain special conditions that havejustified an exceptionally relaxed application of the nondelegation doctrine were absent, id. at 1317-18, and they areequally absent here. The standards in question affect thewhole economy, requiring a more precise delegation thanwould otherwise be the case, see A.L.A. Schechter PoultryCorp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 553 (1935). No specialtheories justifying vague delegation such as the war powersof the President or the sovereign attributes of the delegateehave been or could be asserted. Nor is there some inherentcharacteristic of the field that bars development of a far moredeterminate basis for decision. (This is not to deny thatthere are difficulties; we consider some below.) EPA cites prior decisions of this Court holding that whenthere is uncertainty about the health effects of concentrationsof a particular pollutant within a particular range, EPA mayuse its discretion to make the policy judgment to set thestandards at one point within the relevant range rather thananother. NRDC v. EPA, 902 F.2d 962, 969 (D.C. Cir. 1990); American Petroleum Inst. v. Costle, 665 F.2d 1176, 1185(D.C. Cir. 1981); Lead Industries, 647 F.2d at 1161 (D.C. Cir.1980). We agree. But none of those panels addressed theclaim of undue delegation that we face here, and accordinglyhad no occasion to ask EPA for coherence (for a principle,to use the classic term) in making its policy judgment. Thelatter phrase is not, after all, a self-sufficient justification forevery refusal to define limits. It was suggested at oral argument that EPA's vision of itsdiscretion in application of s 109(b)(1) is no broader than thatasserted by OSHA after a remand by this court and upheldby this court in International Union, UAW v. OSHA (Lockout/Tagout II), 37 F.3d 665 (D.C. Cir. 1994). But there, infact, OSHA allowed itself to set only standards falling somewhere between maximum feasible stringency and some moderate departure from that level. Id. at 669. As our priordiscussion should have indicated, here EPA's formulation of its policy judgment leaves it free to pick any point betweenzero and a hair below the concentrations yielding London'sKiller Fog. The dissent argues that a nondelegation challenge similarto this one was rejected in South Terminal Corp. v. EPA, 504F.2d 646 (1st Cir. 1974), and cites that case's language thatthe rationality of the means can be tested against goalscapable of fairly precise definition in the language of science,id. at 677. See Dissent at 2. But the action challenged inSouth Terminal was EPA's adoption of a plan for ending orpreventing violations in Boston of already-establishedNAAQS, not its promulgation of the NAAQS themselves. Thus, it seems likely that the means were the plan's provisions--e.g., a prohibition on most new parking in the city, see504 F.2d at 671, and the fairly precise[ly] defin[ed] goalswere the NAAQS themselves. Where (as here) statutory language and an existing agencyinterpretation involve an unconstitutional delegation of power,but an interpretation without the constitutional weakness isor may be available, our response is not to strike down thestatute but to give the agency an opportunity to extract adeterminate standard on its own. Lockout/Tagout I, 938 F.2dat 1313. Doing so serves at least two of three basic rationalesfor the nondelegation doctrine. If the agency develops deter-