Opinion ID: 519964
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Is Petitioners' Claim Time-Barred?

Text: 53 The agency makes two related arguments based on the 1980 regulations. First, the EPA asserts that these regulations clearly established that contaminated environmental media would be considered hazardous wastes. Therefore, the agency argues, [t]he Court need not consider petitioners' argument further, since it has been made eight years too late. Brief for EPA at 46. Second, the agency contends that to treat contaminated soil and groundwater as hazardous waste is in any event a reasonable interpretation of the 1980 rules. These arguments, while related, have quite different ramifications, and we will consider them in turn. 54 If the 1980 regulations (or the preamble thereto) clearly stated that contaminated environmental media would be covered, then petitioners' challenge would indeed be barred. The EPA correctly notes that the RCRA's ninety-day limit for seeking judicial review of agency regulations is jurisdictional. See Natural Resources Defense Council v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 666 F.2d 595, 602 (D.C.Cir.1981). We do not believe, however, that the 1980 rules clearly provided that contaminated environmental media would be considered hazardous wastes. Neither the mixture nor the derived-from rule is by its terms directly applicable to contaminated soil or groundwater. 14 No other portion of the rules plainly applies, and the preamble issued by the agency at that time does not explicitly address the question. 55 Of course the EPA retains broad authority to issue interpretations of its rules which are reasonable though not compelled by the plain language of the rules themselves. And such interpretive statements, as we have seen, are not subject to the notice and comment requirements imposed by the APA. But to say that the agency is interpreting a preexisting regulation does not mean that judicial review of that interpretation is barred simply because a direct challenge to the rule itself would be untimely. The petitioners were required, within ninety days after the promulgation of the 1980 rules, to challenge any aspect of the rules which was clearly discernible from the language of the rules or from the agency's contemporaneous statements. The petitioners were not required, however, to anticipate every construction which the agency might later place upon its regulations. 15 Such an approach to the statutory time limits would impose hardships on individual petitioners; moreover, to require that challengers file these protective lawsuits would enmesh courts and agencies in irksome litigation concerning regulatory interpretations which had not been adopted and might never be adopted. Judicial review of an agency's interpretation of its own rules is, as we shall see, highly deferential, but deferential review is not the same as no review at all. 56