Opinion ID: 2812638
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Error in the Record

Text: Along with the Permit, the EPA issued three documents that, taken together, explain the bases for the EPA’s permitting decision: (1) its Response to Comments, which includes the EPA’s responses to all comments it received; (2) its Ocean Discharge Criteria Evaluation, issued “to review the discharges authorized under [the Permit] and evaluate their potential [to] cause unreasonable degradation of the marine environment[,]”; and (3) its Environmental Justice Analysis in support of the Permit. In its response to a comment requesting a seasonal restriction on the discharge of non-contact cooling water and related chemicals, sanitary and domestic wastes, and bilge water, “because these waste streams risk deflecting bowhead whales from their migratory paths,” the EPA stated that it “concluded that non-contact 8 ALASKA ESKIMO WHALING COMM’N V. EPA cooling water will not result in an unreasonable degradation to the marine environment due to the permit restrictions and monitoring requirements placed on this discharge and because temperature is expected to dissipate and achieve complete mixing within 100 meters of the discharge location.” Similarly, in the Ocean Discharge Criteria Evaluation, the EPA stated that it used a model to evaluate the dilution of all the drilling-related effluents associated with each of the discharges authorized by the Beaufort general permit, and that “[t]he predicted dilution for th[e] worst-case scenario was approximately 600:1 at 100 meters from the discharge point.” On the eve of oral argument, the EPA filed with this court a letter in which it candidly acknowledged its discovery of a misstatement in the record and in its brief. In its letter, the EPA reported that the modeling it cited in support of its statements that the temperature of cooling water would dissipate and mix within 100 meters of discharge, and that all discharges would dilute to a ratio of 600:1 within 100 meters of discharge, in fact did not include non-contact cooling water in the model. That model was for drilling-related effluents, not cooling water. EPA’s letter further stated that cooling water was included in other modeling that applied to a wide range of discharges. An attachment to the letter contained a table (“Table 6”) that included a list of numbers and figures for the temperature effects at various cooling water discharges. Under the controlling rule for the review of administrative agency actions, “a reviewing court, in dealing with a determination or judgment which an administrative agency alone is authorized to make, must judge the propriety of such action solely by the grounds invoked by the agency. If those ALASKA ESKIMO WHALING COMM’N V. EPA 9 grounds are inadequate or improper, the court is powerless to affirm the administrative action by substituting what it considers to be a more adequate or proper basis.” SEC v. Chenery Corp. (Chenery II), 332 U.S. 194, 196 (1947). We must remand rather than combing the record for evidence on which the agency may have relied. Id. Here, neither the EPA’s letter and its attachment, nor the EPA’s representations at oral argument, explained the import of the agency’s error. In addition to the table in its attachment, the letter discusses a list of other figures and tables in the Further Excerpts of Record. These figures and tables are no substitute for the agency’s on-the-record explanation of what the evidence showed and how that evidence supports its ultimate conclusions. The EPA’s erroneous statement that cooling water would be mixed and diluted to a ratio of 600:1 suggested that this level of mixing and dilution was unlikely to change the behavior of bowhead whales. We are unable to extract a similar conclusion from the figures supplied or referred to in the EPA’s letter. With the record in this posture, we cannot properly answer the question whether the EPA’s error affected its decision. We conclude, therefore, that the error in the record to which the EPA drew our attention requires remand to address the issue involved. We remand to the EPA to reconsider, in light of its acknowledged error, its determination that discharge of noncontact cooling water (alone or along with other authorized discharges) will not cause unreasonable degradation of the marine environment, and to identify evidence in the record sufficient to support its reconsidered decision concerning the possible effect, or non-effect, of the discharge of non-contact 10 ALASKA ESKIMO WHALING COMM’N V. EPA cooling water on the bowhead whale migration and subsistence hunting season in the Beaufort Sea. For the reasons and in the manner discussed below, we deny the petition for review in all other respects.