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

Heading: Environmental Defense Fund, Inc. v. EPA

Text: 9 In Environmental Defense Fund, the court reviewed the 1988 Rule and found it failed to comply with the Congress's directives in two respects. 10 First, the court concluded that EPA's incremental approach was incomplete. The court approved as reasonable EPA's construction of subsection 166(d)'s mandate that EPA provide specific measures at least as effective as the increments established in section 7473, 42 U.S.C. § 7476(d), as requiring that the Set II rules be at least as stringent as those for Set I, i.e., that increments be set no lower, as percentages of a pollutant's ambient standards, than the Set I increments were as percentages of their respective ambient standards. Envtl. Def. Fund, 898 F.2d at 187 (emphasis original); see id. at 188 (approving stringency interpretation as both workable and completely faithful to a broad vision of the relevant goals and purposes (emphasis original)). Nonetheless, the court concluded EPA's interpretation overlook[ed] two indicators of the Congress's intent in enacting section 166:(1) the language of subsection (c) that mandates the Set II regulations fulfill the goals and purposes set forth in section 7401 and section 7470 of [title 42], 42 U.S.C. § 7476(c); and (2) the vector of forces represented by the Senate bill, which originally wanted more study conducted on the Set II pollutants, with Congress to make the final choice, see supra note 1, and, in its final form, still appears to manifest much of this intention, merely substituting the EPA for Congress as decisionmaker. 898 F.2d at 188. Given EPA's lapse, the court concluded section 166 does not afford EPA an absolute safe harbor to establish Set II increments that mimic the Set I increments because a failure to assess a pollutant in terms of the PSD goals breaches the agency's duty to consider all the relevant statutory factors and EPA candidly admit[ted] it did not make that inquiry. Id. 188-89 (citing Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass'n of U.S. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983); Specialty Equip. Mkt. Ass'n v. Ruckelshaus, 720 F.2d 124, 132 (D.C.Cir.1983)). 11 While rejecting an absolute safe harbor, the court did endorse a contingent safe harbor approach (among three hypothesized interpretations). The court explained that EPA's selected increment methodology would provide a safe harbor if but only if the Administrator determines (without being arbitrary and capricious) that the criteria under subsection (c) do not call for a more, or a less, stringent standard. Id. at 189 (footnote omitted). The court then concluded it could not uphold EPA's regulations based on the contingent safe harbor theory: The reading that we have hypothesized of § 166(d) as a contingent safe harbor requires the agency first to adopt that view, then to determine that the inquiry under subsection (c) does not require a more stringent standard. It has done neither. Id. at 189. 12 Second, the court found fault with EPA's promulgating an increment based solely on the NAAQS, which resulted in EPA's defining increments for only one compound of nitrogen oxides (NO 2 ), and defining them only in terms of annual averages. Id. at 190. The court concluded EPA's decision ignored the different natures of the NAAQS and the PSD measures, noting that the NAAQS provisions seem to encompass everything imaginable, id. (citing 42 U.S.C. § 7409(b)(2), which requires NAAQS requisite to protect the public welfare), while the PSD program emphasizes special considerations, such as national wilderness areas and their `natural, recreational, scenic, or historic value[s],' id. (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 7470(2) (alteration in original)). Thus a pollutant that has only mild public health effects but severe effects on wilderness areas might demand a lower increment (measured as a percentage of its ambient standards) than one with severe health effects but only mild effects on wilderness areas. Id. 13 Based on these two shortcomings, the court remanded the 1988 Rule to EPA to develop an interpretation of § 166 that considers both subsections (c) and (d), and if necessary to take new evidence and modify the regulations. Id. It did not vacate the regulations, which have therefore remained in effect. 3