Opinion ID: 796659
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: TIOP Provision

Text: 95 The Phase II Rule's TIOP provision, 40 C.F.R. § 125.94(d), permits a facility to comply with the national performance standards determined on the basis of whether the facility has complied with the construction, operational, maintenance, monitoring, and adaptive management requirements of a Technology Installation and Operation Plan. Id. § 125.94(d)(1). The petitioners contend that this provision impermissibly allows a facility's compliance to be determined not by reference to the performance standards themselves, but by evaluating whether a facility has complied with a plan to achieve the performance standards. In other words, they argue that the TIOP provision essentially allows for an unauthorized margin of error. The petitioners also argue that the EPA denied the public an opportunity to comment on the provision. Like the cost-cost compliance alternative, remand is appropriate here on two grounds: (1) the EPA did not give adequate notice regarding the provisions in section 125.94(d)(2); and (2) the record justification for the TIOP provision depends on the EPA's selection of a suite of technologies as BTA, a selection which has been remanded for further explanation. Given this, we remand the TIOP provision without reaching the merits here. 96 The Rule provides that during the first permit term, a facility may request that its compliance be determined based on whether it has complied with its TIOP, which must be designed to meet the performance standards, 40 C.F.R. § 125.94(d)(1), and submitted with a permit application, id. § 125.95(b)(4)(ii). During subsequent permit terms, if a facility has complied with its TIOP but is not meeting the performance standards, the facility may request that its compliance with the standards during the following term be based on whether it remains in compliance with its TIOP, revised in accordance with the facility's adaptive management plan. 40 C.F.R. § 125.94(d)(2). The EPA explained in the Rule's preamble that it is difficult to determine reductions in impingement mortality and entrainment relative to what would have occurred in the absence of control technologies given natural variability and the vagaries of sampling methods. 69 Fed.Reg. at 41,613. The EPA explained further that it established the TIOP compliance options to account for these variabilities on the ability of a technology to meet the performance standards consistently over time. Id. at 41,613-14. 97 As previously noted, a final rule must be a `logical outgrowth' of the rule proposed. Nat'l Black Media Coalition, 791 F.2d at 1022. The final rule must have roots in the proposal, Envtl. Integrity Project, 425 F.3d at 996, which must fairly apprise interested persons of the subjects and issues involved in the rulemaking, Nat'l Black Media Coalition, 791 F.2d at 1022. An agency cannot pull a surprise switcheroo on interested parties between a proposal and the issuance of a final rule. See Envtl. Integrity Project, 425 F.3d at 996. 98 Although the Rule's proposal notified interested parties that the Agency was considering a provision that would give facilities time to achieve the performance standards after implementing new technologies, the EPA gave inadequate notice of the potentially indefinite scope of this provision. Specifically, the EPA failed to provide notice of the Rule codified at 40 C.F.R. § 125.94(d)(2), which permits a facility to be deemed in compliance with the Phase II Rule in subsequent permit terms if it continues to adhere to its TIOP. 99 In the Rule's proposal, the EPA stated only that it was considering the need for regulatory language that would allow facilities time to come into compliance [with the performance standards] if they choose to install technologies to meet the performance standards. 68 Fed.Reg. at 13,586. The proposal indicated further that the EPA was evaluating and considering allowing six months, one year, two years, or five years (one permit term) for a facility to come into compliance after issuance of its permit. Id. The TIOP provision in the final Rule, by contrast, does not simply allow facilities additional time, up to one permit term, to come into compliance with the performance standards. Instead, it appears to permit a facility to satisfy the Rule's requirements in subsequent permit terms, for an indefinite period, without ever demonstrating compliance with the performance standards, so long as the facility has adhered to its TIOP. 40 C.F.R. § 125.94(d)(2) (stating that [d]uring subsequent permit terms a facility may request that compliance ... be determined based on whether [it] remain[s] in compliance with its TIOP). This aspect of the TIOP provision appears then not to be a logical outgrowth of the proposal, see Nat'l Black Media Coalition, 791 F.2d at 1022, because interested parties would not have divined from the proposal that facilities could be given an indefinite period to come into compliance with the national performance standards. 100 We thus remand the rule for failure to provide notice and comment and because the record justification for the TIOP provision depends on the EPA's selection of BTA, which has been remanded. 101