Opinion ID: 514191
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Allegations as to Standing.

Text: 13 The Council's member firms operate facilities in 48 states. They provide treatment or disposal services employing both established and emerging technologies and methods for treatment and management: incineration and other thermal destruction, reclamation, biological and chemical treatment, land disposal after pre-treatment, and hazardous site cleanups. A number of member companies are engaged in the reclamation of used oil, the blending of used oil for use as industrial fuel, and the treatment and disposal of used oil. 14 The Council's Articles of Incorporation declare that among its purposes is 15 To promote the protection of the environment through the adoption of environmentally sound procedures and methods of destroying and treating hazardous wastes and the proper management of residues of those treatment and destruction processes. 16 The affidavits submitted by the Council and various members reveal the members' varied relations to the substantive issues raised in this case. We can identify three different types: 17 a. Competitor claims. At least three members claim that the asserted laxity of the regulations will diminish the market for their high-tech control services. (CF Systems Corporation, Swatz Affidavit; SYSTECH Corporation, Eifert Affidavit; Ross Environmental Services, Stiff Affidavit.) Firms with contaminated used oil on hand will, they argue, be free to re-use that oil without either using the treatment services of Council members or incurring the expense of themselves providing the high-quality treatment that Council members offer. (Alternatively, such firms may sell the contaminated used oil to others for their use, again without either using the services of these Council members or incurring comparable costs.) As a result, the market for the services of these members of the Council will be smaller than it would have been if the EPA had adopted the Council's views. The affidavit of the Council's executive director, Richard C. Fortuna, refers solely to this injury. 18 Ross and yet another company (ThermalKEM) assert a variation on this claim. The variation requires special mention because it is the sole injury that the affidavits appear to link to the Council's Bevill Amendment claims (contentions that the EPA has given too broad a construction to the exemptions provided by that Amendment). These companies incur substantial costs for the disposal of ash from their own incineration facilities, costs evidently mandated by existing regulation. As a result of EPA's broad definition of the Bevill Amendment, certain utilities and smelters--Bevillized facilities, as they put it--will be free to generate ash without incurring comparable costs. Thus the EPA's ruling evidently deprives Ross and ThermalKEM of a potential market. Moreover, to the extent these member firms compete with Bevillized facilities as sellers of items produced with hazardous wastes, the EPA ruling tends to enable the Bevillized competitors to undersell them. 19 b. Consumer claims. BVER Environmental asserts that it is in the business of receiving non-hazardous used oil from heavy manufacturing industries for processing and resale as boiler fuel. It claims that its receiving facilities are injured when it receives adulterated or contaminated used oils, and that it is expensive to test every tankload. Receipt of a single 5,000-gallon contaminated tankload may cause it to lose as much as $100,000. More stringent EPA regulations would tend to protect it from this sort of injury. (Policow Affidavit.) 20 c. Claims of supply diminution. Affidavits filed by several members assert that the alleged regulatory laxity will cause their supply of contaminated used fuels to be diverted elsewhere. (SYSTECH Corporation, Eifert Affidavit; Ross Environmental Services, Stiff Affidavit; ThermalKEM Inc., Zeigler Affidavit.) These affidavits make no effort to explain how regulatory laxity reduces supply in any normal sense of the word. So far as we are able to discern, these claims must fit into one of the two categories discussed above. Either the firms suffer because there is less demand for their services or because the oils they receive are less pure. Accordingly, we drop these allegations from any separate consideration here. 21