Opinion ID: 722370
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: tmpa

Text: 63 Section 402(4)(A) of the Clean Air Act Amendments specifies that the Administrator may adjust a unit's emission allowances for accidents that caused prolonged outages. 42 U.S.C. § 7651a(4)(A). That provision reads, in pertinent part: 64 For each utility unit that was in commercial operation prior to January 1, 1985, the baseline shall be the annual average quantity of mmBtu's [heat energy] consumed in fuel during calendar years 1985, 1986 and 1987.... The Administrator, in the Administrator's sole discretion, may exclude periods during which a unit is shutdown for continuous period of four calendar months or longer, and make appropriate adjustments under this paragraph. Upon petition of ... any unit, the Administrator may make appropriate baseline adjustments for accidents that caused prolonged outages. 65 Id. (emphasis added). 66 As a response to EPA's general request for applications for outage adjustments in the July 1991 Notice, see 56 Fed.Reg. 33,282 (July 19, 1991), but prior to any establishment of standards guiding EPA review of these applications, TMPA submitted an application for an adjustment to its baseline for a 33-day outage during the calendar years 1985, 1986 [or] 1987 that was caused by the failure of the plant's cooling bars. Having received several applications for similar adjustments, EPA proposed to dispense with these applications by distributing them among several categories based on the statutory requirements. One proposed category would have allowed adjustments for applications that demonstrated that an outage was prolonged--tentatively defined as being four months or longer--and caused by an accident--that is, the occurrence of a natural phenomenon ... or an incident unrelated to the operation of the unit that is unpreventable, unforeseeable, and not caused by worker error. Acid Rain Provisions, 57 Fed.Reg. 30,034, 30,036-38 (July 7, 1992). 67 As TMPA's adjustment application stated that its outage lasted only 33 days in the relevant period, it did not qualify for this proposed category (or any proposed category that would have granted it an adjustment). See id. at 30,037 & 30,038 Table 2. Moreover, because the EPA refused to accept any revised applications lest the EPA be unable to publish a corrected NADB by the statutory deadline, see id., TMPA could not supplement its application to show that its outage might qualify for such a category. Instead, TMPA submitted comments about the suggested categories, and it directed the attention of the EPA to a colloquy between two representatives during the floor discussion of § 402(4)(A)--the Barton-Lent colloquy, see 136 Cong. Rec. H12,876-77 (daily ed. Oct. 26, 1990)--that supported TMPA's position that its outage merited some adjustment. 68 In March 1993, the EPA issued a final interpretation of § 7651a(4)(A). This final rule generally maintained the proposed definition for accident, but redefined a prolonged outage by reducing the necessary minimum from four to three months. Notice of Availability of the National Allowance Data Base, 58 Fed.Reg. 15,720, 15,723 (March 23, 1993). EPA explained this reduction as necessary in order to avoid rendering the statutory language governing accidentally-caused outages mere surplus, as another segment of § 402(4)(A) already provided that a utility that suffered a four-month outage, for whatever reason, could apply for an adjustment. See 42 U.S.C. § 7651a(4)(A). The EPA also concluded that, as three months was longer than the average outage according to a NERC study added to the record by the EPA one day prior to the promulgation of the final rule, three months could reasonably be deemed prolonged. See id. At that time, the EPA made a final list of applicants that would not receive adjustments, including TMPA. 69 TMPA challenges the EPA's decisions and its decision-making on several grounds.
70 Substantively, TMPA challenges EPA's definitions of prolonged and accident. EPA ultimately interpreted prolonged to mean longer than three months, which is well longer than the average outage, but shorter than the four months specified in another sentence of § 402(4)(A) required for an adjustment for outages not caused by accidents. See 58 Fed.Reg. at 15,723. TMPA argues that the unambiguous meaning of prolonged denies this definition, and that the term clearly intends to encompass any outage longer than the mean or median outage. TMPA also protests the narrowness of EPA's definition of accident. 71
72 We reject TMPA's challenge to EPA's statutory interpretation of what constitutes prolonged. Again, we perform the Chevron two-step in reviewing EPA's interpretations of the Clean Air Act and its amendments. See supra Section III.A.2.b. 73 Having reviewed § 402(4)(A), we conclude that the term prolonged, as used in that section, is ambiguous. The common meaning of prolonged denotes an extended duration. See, e.g., Webster's Third International Dictionary 1815 (1961). What qualifies as extended, however, is not fixed. At best, the context of the term as used in § 402(4)(A) may suggest that Congress intended any definition of a prolonged outage[ ] to be less than a four-month outage, as a unit that suffered an outage lasting four months or more may have been able to receive an adjustment whether or not that outage was caused by an accident. This implication from the statutory context, however, hardly clarifies the meaning of the term sufficiently for us to reach an unmistakable conclusion that Congress had an intention on the ... question. Ohio v. U.S. Dep't of Interior, 880 F.2d 432, 441 (D.C.Cir.1989). 74 No other accepted form of statutory interpretation achieves some clearer understanding of prolonged as used in the provision. In particular, the presence of the Barton-Lent colloquy does not affect our result. As we have warned in the past, judges must  'exercise extreme caution before concluding that a statement made in floor debate, or at a hearing, or printed in a committee document may be taken as statutory gospel,'  in light of the  'endemic interplay, in Congress, of political and legislative consideration[s]'  likely unrelated to the interpretive tasks of a court. Gersman v. Group Health Ass'n, Inc., 975 F.2d 886, 892 (D.C.Cir.1992) (quoting Antolok v. United States, 873 F.2d 369, 377 (D.C.Cir.1989)), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 114 S.Ct. 1642, 128 L.Ed.2d 363 (1994). This caution is especially warranted when, as in this case, it appears that a colloquy was a direct result of a single member ... attempting to reassure his own constituency or even to create legislative history for citation by courts. Id. In this case, the colloquy in question does not give reason for us to draw the unmistakable conclusion that Congress intended prolonged, as used in § 402(4)(A), to have some fixed meaning. 75 Undertaking the second step of the Chevron inquiry, we also conclude that EPA's definition of a prolonged outage to mean an outage that lasts at least three months is reasonable. A baseline of three months is substantially longer than the average outage, but it is still sufficiently short as not to effectively write the prolonged outage language out of the statute. For instance, at least one party described in the record, which actually received an adjustment under another provision, could have sought an adjustment under the prolonged outage provision instead. See 58 Fed.Reg. at 15,724 (allowing adjustment for the George Neal plant). EPA thus acted within its authority when it denied TMPA's application for a baseline adjustment under § 402(4)(A). See id. (Table 3). 76
77 As TMPA conceded at oral argument, a determination that EPA's definition of prolonged is valid moots any claim by TMPA that EPA's interpretation of accident is also valid. We thus conclude that TMPA cannot prevail on either of its substantive challenges to EPA's interpretation of § 402(4)(A).
78 In addition to its substantive challenges, TMPA also raises several procedural arguments. Of these, only three merit any discussion. TMPA contends that the EPA was arbitrary in universally denying any re-application for adjustments after the final rule was issued and that the EPA failed to give TMPA proper notice of the standards it was expected to meet by acting on TMPA's application before the final rule was published. TMPA also claims that the EPA improperly relied on a statistical study that was added to the record after the comment period had closed. Finally, TMPA argues that the EPA was arbitrary because it did not sufficiently discuss TMPA's comments directing the EPA's attention to the Barton-Lent colloquy. We dismiss the first two allegations because they are not properly before us and the last because the EPA did not err in its lack of specific response to the Barton-Lent colloquy. 79 As noted in the discussion of AMP-Ohio's procedural challenges, 42 U.S.C. § 7607(d) specifies what a petitioner must demonstrate to prevail on a procedural challenge to an EPA action pursuant to subchapter IV, which includes 42 U.S.C. § 7651a(4)(A). See 42 U.S.C. § 7607(d)(1)(T). Under that statutory provision, we may only review claims that have been first raised with reasonable specificity before the agency, 42 U.S.C. § 7607(d)(7)(B), and we may reverse only procedural errors that are prejudicial. 42 U.S.C. § 7607(d)(8). Of course, the question of exhaustion precedes any examination of whether any errors were prejudicial. See Cross-Sound Ferry Servs., Inc. v. ICC, 934 F.2d 327, 343-46 (D.C.Cir.1991) (Thomas, J., concurring); cf. UDC Chairs Chapter, American Ass'n of University Professors v. Board of Trustees, 56 F.3d 1469, 1475 (D.C.Cir.1995) (noting that exhaustion is a jurisdictional requirement). 80 Here, no party suggests that TMPA has properly raised two of these three procedural challenges before the agency. TMPA could have--and, under the statute, should have--addressed its complaints to the agency about the alleged lack of notice and the agency's delayed inclusion of the statistical study either in a specific statement to the agency during an appropriate comment period or in a suggestion for agency reconsideration. 42 U.S.C. § 7607(d)(7)(B). Because TMPA did not do so, however, we cannot review these procedural claims. In particular, we explicitly decline TMPA's invitation to read the futility exception present in common-law exhaustion doctrine, see UDC Chairs Chapter, American Ass'n of University Professors, 56 F.3d at 1475, into a statutory provision that permits only objections raised before the agency to be raised during judicial review. 42 U.S.C. § 7607(d)(7)(B). 81 We must also reject TMPA's remaining procedural challenge. The EPA simply did not err when it did not more extensively address TMPA's comments regarding the Barton-Lent colloquy. According to our precedent, [t]he failure to respond to comments is significant only insofar as it demonstrates that the agency's decision was not based on a consideration of the relevant factors. Thompson v. Clark, 741 F.2d 401, 409 (D.C.Cir.1984) (internal quotations and citations omitted). In this case, TMPA has not approached showing that the EPA did not consider the relevant factors in denying TMPA's request for an outage adjustment. Moreover, the EPA's general statement that it would consider all floor colloquies as to specific utilities to the extent appropriate, see 56 Fed.Reg. at 33,282, adequately demonstrates that the agency did not improperly overlook this colloquy, which would be of dubious value as a guide to agency conduct in any case. On this ground, then, we again affirm the EPA.