Opinion ID: 2685304
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Regulation of Mercury and Selenium

Text: This leaves only WildEarth’s fourth argument—namely, that as part of the FIP the EPA could have regulated mercury and selenium directly (rather than as a collateral product of other regulation, such as establishing the BART) and that this discretion to regulate triggered a duty to consult. Before we address the merits of this argument, however, we must resolve whether we have jurisdiction to do so.
“The Constitution limits the exercise of the judicial power to ‘cases’ and ‘controversies.’” WildEarth Guardians v. Pub. Serv. Co. of Colo., 690 F.3d 1174, 1181 (10th Cir. 2012). This limitation restricts the federal judicial power “to the traditional role of Anglo-American courts, which is to redress or prevent actual or imminently threatened injury to persons caused by private or official violation of the law.” Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 492 (2009). “The doctrine of standing is one of several doctrines that reflect this fundamental limitation.” Id. at 493. To establish Article III standing: a plaintiff must show (1) it has suffered an ‘injury in fact’ that is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the 16 defendant; and (3) it is likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision. Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Envtl. Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 180–81 (2000). These three requirements are commonly referred to as injury, causality, and redressability. WildEarth’s alleged injury—lack of consultation before promulgation of a final FIP—is one of process, not result. For a procedural injury, the requirements for Article III standing are somewhat relaxed, or at least conceptually expanded. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 572 n.7 (1992). First, for an injury in fact WildEarth “need not establish with certainty that adherence to the procedures would necessarily change the agency’s ultimate decision.” Utah v. Babbitt, 137 F.3d 1193, 1216 n.37 (10th Cir. 1998). It suffices that the procedures “are designed to protect some threatened concrete interest of [the person] that is the ultimate basis of standing.” S. Utah Wilderness Alliance v. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation & Enforcement, 620 F.3d 1227, 1234 (10th Cir. 2010) (emphasis and internal quotation marks omitted). “[W]here plaintiffs properly allege a procedural violation affecting a concrete interest[,] . . . the injury results not from the agency’s decision, but from the agency’s uninformed decisionmaking.” Id. at 1234 (emphasis and internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, WildEarth need show only that compliance with the procedural requirements could have better protected its concrete interests. Similarly, to establish redressibility it need show only that the injury—lack of an informed decision—could be redressed by requiring the 17 agency to make a more informed decision. See id. at 1235 (“[T]he fact that [the agency] refused to issue an updated recommendation also satisfies the causation and redressability prongs—[the agency]’s recalcitrance caused an allegedly uninformed decision, and this could be redressed by a favorable court decision, even if the Secretary’s ultimate decision was the same.”) The EPA and APS do not dispute (and we agree) that WildEarth has associational standing if Mike Eisenfeld, a WildEarth member who lives not far from the Plant in Farmington, has standing. But they challenge his standing under Article III. Eisenfeld submitted an affidavit outlining the factual basis on which WildEarth asserts standing. It describes his enjoyment of the San Juan River: My family and I enjoy floating numerous stretches of the San Juan River every year. We have a raft and our friends have river boats as well. We float the San Juan River in Farmington, as well as on stretches downstream in Utah. We swim in the river when we float. We enjoy floating the river, but normally avoid the most polluted sections as we enjoy floating in areas that are more natural and that seem cleaner. We normally float the San Juan three times a year and intend to do so throughout the foreseeable future. We intend to float the river in June and July of this summer. Aplt. Br. Attach. 2 (Declaration of Mike Eisenfe[l]d), at 7. It then goes on to explain the relationship between his river activities and the endangered fish: I enjoy looking for and viewing all species of fish in the San Juan River. When I am rafting in the San Juan River or taking a walk by the river in Farmington, I often look for fish, including the Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker. Unfortunately, their diminished numbers makes them very hard to find. I will continue to recreate in and around the San Juan River and its tributaries, and will continue to look for fish, including the Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker. I hope to point out one of these fish to my children in the future. My enjoyment of the Colorado 18 River System would be increased if the Colorado pikeminnow and razorback sucker recovered from their current endangered status and were more abundant. Id. at 8–9. APS first argues that Eisenfeld has not shown the requisite injury. According to APS, his alleged injury is not “concrete and particularized” because it shows only “concern over future environmental harm.” Intervenor Br. at 27 (internal quotation marks omitted). We disagree. Eisenfeld swore that he uses the river for recreational purposes and he often looks for and views the endangered fish while using the river. “[T]he desire to use or observe an animal species, even for purely esthetic purposes, is undeniably a cognizable interest for the purpose of standing.” S. Utah Wilderness Alliance, 620 F.3d at 1233 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Sierra Club v. U.S. Dep’t of Energy, 287 F.3d 1256, 1265 (10th Cir. 2002) (“To establish an injury-infact from failure to perform a NEPA [(National Environmental Policy Act)] analysis, a litigant must show: (1) that in making its decision without following the NEPA’s procedures, the agency created an increased risk of actual, threatened, or imminent environmental harm; and (2) that this increased risk of environmental harm injures its concrete interest.”). APS correctly points out that the FIP would not increase emissions of mercury or selenium, so Eisenfeld cannot possibly be worse off under the FIP than he was beforehand. But the proper comparison is between what happens under the FIP and what WildEarth contends could have happened had there been consultation before its promulgation. See Natural Res. Def. Council v. Jewell, 749 F.3d 776, 783–84 (9th Cir. 19 2014) (en banc) (because consultation could lead agency to revise contracts in ways beneficial to endangered species, group had standing to challenge lack of consultation); Ass’n of Battery Recyclers, Inc. v. EPA, 716 F.3d 667, 673 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (environmental groups had standing to challenge revised regulation regarding hazardous air pollutants on the ground that the revisions could have been more stringent than revised regulations adopted by agency). APS’s reliance on Wyoming v. United States Department of Interior, 674 F.3d 1220, 1237 (10th Cir. 2012), is misplaced. Our holding that the petitioners lacked standing was based on their failure to claim an environmental injury, not, as APS suggests, on the ground that the potential nonenvironmental injury was too speculative. We next turn to the argument by the EPA (joined by APS) that WildEarth has failed to show causation; that is, that WildEarth has not shown that Eisenfeld’s injury is fairly traceable to the EPA’s violation of the ESA. EPA argues that because the “FIP does not license or in any other way authorize the general or continued operations of [the Plant, it is] causally unrelated to the Plant’s mercury and selenium emissions.” Aplee. Br. at 29. WildEarth responds that the EPA had a duty to consult about the dangers from emissions of mercury and selenium to the endangered fish and that such consultation may have led to measures that would have reduced these emissions beyond what the FIP requires. Perhaps WildEarth is incorrect and there was no duty to consult; but that is a merits issue, not an issue for standing. See Sierra Club v. EPA, 699 F.3d 530, 533 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (“If correct on the merits, as we must assume for standing purposes, such a 20 challenge presents a clearly redressable injury.” (emphasis added)). And insofar as EPA is arguing that the failure to consult caused no harm to Eisenfeld’s interests because the FIP did not increase emissions of mercury or selenium from the Plant, it repeats APS’s error in the injury argument; the failure to consult may have caused injury to Eisenfeld because it eliminated the possibility that the FIP could have reduced those emissions still further. Finally, the EPA (again joined by APS) argues that WildEarth has failed to satisfy the redressibility requirement for standing. It says that this court cannot redress WildEarth’s injury because it was not permitted to regulate mercury and selenium in this rulemaking, and therefore any decision to require the EPA to consult on the effects of mercury and selenium could not influence the final decision. As with the EPA’s causation argument, this is a merits argument. To show redressibility for an alleged procedural violation of the ESA, a plaintiff “need[s] to show only that the relief requested—that the agency follow the correct procedures—may influence the agency’s ultimate decision.” Salmon Spawning & Recovery Alliance v. Gutierrez, 545 F.3d 1220, 1226 (9th Cir. 2008). WildEarth contends that the EPA could have made a decision that would have further reduced mercury and selenium emissions from the Plant. EPA argues otherwise, but that is a contention that WildEarth has standing to present. If WildEarth ultimately failed to persuade us of its contention, it would lose on the merits. In resolving a standing issue, however, we must start from the premise that the plaintiff will prevail on 21 its merits argument. See Sierra Club, 699 F.3d at 533; Salmon Spawning & Recovery Alliance v. U.S. Customs & Border Prot., 550 F.3d 1121, 1131 (Fed. Cir. 2008). Having established that WildEarth does have standing to challenge the FIP on the ground that the EPA should have consulted because the FIP could have directly regulated mercury and selenium, we turn now to the merits of the challenge.
WildEarth argues that the EPA had the duty to consult because the EPA had discretion to directly regulate mercury and selenium in the FIP. But even if the EPA had power to regulate these hazardous air pollutants in a FIP rulemaking,8 the EPA’s “action” did not encompass the possibility of such direct regulation, and the subject matter of the duty to consult is limited to the agency’s action. We explain. The ESA provides: 8 We are not convinced that the EPA has the power to directly regulate mercury and selenium through a FIP under the Tribal Authority Rule. Mercury and selenium compounds are “hazardous air pollutants,” which are regulated under Section 112 of the Clean Air Act, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 7412. That section is separate from the sections on regional haze, id. § 7491 et seq., and the sections that lay out the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, id. § 7409 et seq. State implementation plans come under the second two programs, see id. §§ 7410, 7491(b)(2); but the hazardous-air-pollutant regulations are emission standards that apply directly to source polluters, and the EPA directly enforces these regulations through civil or criminal actions. See id. § 7413(a)(3); United States v. B & W Inv. Props., 38 F.3d 362, 366 (7th Cir. 1994). Although a state can incorporate the hazardous-air-pollutant regulations in its SIP “in order to receive a general delegation of [Clean Air Act] implementation authority,” US Magnesium, LLC v. U.S. EPA, 690 F.3d 1157, 1160 (10th Cir. 2012), we fail to see how the EPA could make a finding under the Tribal Authority Rule that its own regulations were so inadequate that further regulation of such pollutants in a FIP was “necessary or appropriate to protect air quality,” 40 C.F.R. § 49.11 (2013). 22 Each federal agency shall, in consultation with and with the assistance of the Secretary [of the Interior or of Commerce], insure that any action authorized, funded, or carried out by such agency (hereinafter in this section referred to as an ‘agency action’) is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered species or threatened species. 16 U.S.C. § 1536(a)(2). Thus, the duty to consult is bounded by the agency action. Consultation is called for to ensure that the action does not jeopardize endangered or threatened species. The written request to consult does not describe all the things that the requesting agency might have power to do but includes only “[a] description of the action to be considered.” 50 C.F.R. § 402.14(c)(1) (2013) (emphasis added). Action is defined as: all activities or programs of any kind authorized, funded, or carried out, in whole or in part, by Federal agencies in the United States or upon the high seas. Examples include, but are not limited to: (a) actions intended to conserve listed species or their habitat; (b) the promulgation of regulations; (c) the granting of licenses, contracts, leases, easements, rights-of-way, permits, or grants-in-aid; or (d) actions directly or indirectly causing modifications to the land, water, or air. Id. § 402.02. “Of particular significance is the affirmative nature of these words— ‘authorized, funded, carried [out]’—and the absence of a ‘failure to act’ from this list. This stands in marked contrast to other sections of the ESA, which explicitly refer to an agency’s failure to act.” W. Watersheds Project v. Matejko, 468 F.3d 1099, 1107–08 (9th Cir. 2006). In Western Watersheds the Bureau of Land Management had interpreted the Federal Land Policy Management Act to exempt certain vested water rights on federal lands from the Bureau’s control. See 468 F.3d at 1104–05. The Bureau stated that it would regulate these existing water rights only if the right-of-way holder substantially 23 deviated from the existing use or location of the ditch or canal. See id. at 1105. Environmental groups argued that the Bureau was required to consult under the ESA because it was making a “continuing decision not to enforce its regulatory discretion,” which amounted to affirmative action. Id. at 1109. The Ninth Circuit disagreed, holding that “[t]he [Bureau]’s challenged ‘action’ stands in marked contrast to cases involving truly ‘affirmative’ actions.” Id.; see also Fund for Animals, Inc. v. Thomas, 127 F.3d 80, 83 n.3, 84 n.6 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (decision to refrain from regulating baiting was likely not an action, and therefore would probably not trigger compliance with NEPA or ESA requirements); cf. Greater Yellowstone Coal. v. Tidwell, 572 F.3d 1115, 1123 (10th Cir. 2009) (federal agency’s failure to exercise authority to amend a permit was not an action and therefore did not trigger duty to perform environmental analysis under NEPA). Just as the ESA consultation requirement cannot be invoked by characterizing agency nonaction as action, it cannot be invoked by trying to piggyback nonaction on an agency action by claiming that the nonaction is really part of some broader action. When an agency action has clearly defined boundaries, we must respect those boundaries and not describe inaction outside those boundaries as merely a component of the agency action. Expanding in that manner the scope of what constitutes the “action” would make meaningless the regulation requiring an agency seeking formal consultation to include “[a] description of the action to be considered.” 50 C.F.R. § 402.14(c)(1) (2013). The agency would have to set forth everything it might do. And requiring consultation on everything the agency might do would hamstring government regulation in general and 24 would likely impede rather than advance environmental protection. Cf. Defenders of Wildlife v. Andrus, 627 F.2d 1238, 1246 (“No agency could meet its NEPA obligations if it had to prepare an environmental impact statement every time the agency had power to act but did not do so.”). We recognized this proposition in an earlier decision involving the same Plant at issue here. In Arizona Public Service Co. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, 562 F.3d 1116, 1131 (10th Cir. 2009), we considered the 2007 FIP promulgated for the Plant by the EPA. See id. at 1121. The FIP set opacity limits and emissions limits for some pollutants. See id. Environmental groups argued that the limits were inadequate and that the Tribal Authority Rule required the EPA “to submit a plan meeting the completeness criteria [that would be required for a SIP].” Id. at 1125. We rejected the claim, holding that when regulating under the Tribal Authority Rule, the EPA had discretion to regulate in steps. See id. We said that requiring the EPA to regulate as if it were promulgating a SIP would “prevent the EPA from implementing any plan as necessary or appropriate to protect air quality, absent a comprehensive analysis of all air quality problems in an area.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). “[S]ome regulation of the Plant,” we said, “is better than none at all.” Id. Likewise, the EPA here decided to take action, but bounded the scope of that action. The EPA’s authority under the Tribal Authority Rule is limited to actions that it determines to be “necessary or appropriate to protect air quality,” 40 C.F.R. § 49.11 (2013), and the principal finding supporting the FIP was the finding that it was 25 “necessary or appropriate” to establish the BART at the Plant for NOx and PM emissions. Proposed FIP, 75 Fed. Reg. at 64222–23 (internal quotation marks omitted); Final FIP, 77 Fed. Reg. at 51621.9 The scope of the EPA’s “action” was establishing that BART. And the possibility that the EPA would have discretion—in some other regulatory proceeding—to directly regulate mercury and selenium emissions at the Plant10 did not impose a duty to consult under the ESA before taking the only action under consideration at the time. Life is short. The EPA can, and by necessity must, proceed step by step. It did not promulgate the NOx and PM haze requirements for the Plant until 35 years after the 1977 amendments to the Clean Air Act. Requiring it to consult about all pollutants 9 The FIP also “conclude[d] that it is necessary or appropriate to set enforceable fugitive dust/PM suppression measures to protect ambient air quality.” Final FIP, 77 Fed. Reg. at 51643. This additional finding does not affect our analysis. 10 We note that the EPA has promulgated a regulation that directly addresses the plant’s mercury and selenium emissions: the MATS rule. The MATS rule applies to all coalfired power plants in the United States that have a “combustion unit of more than 25 megawatts [and] serve[] a generator that produces electricity for sale.” See MATS Rule, 77 Fed. Reg. at 9367. It sets a limit on mercury emissions of 1.2 lbs/TBtu. See id. at 9367. Sources can chose to measure total filterable PM as a proxy for selenium or to measure selenium directly; the total PM limit is 3 x 10-2 lb/MMBtu and the selenium limit is 5 lb/TBtu. See id. at 9367–68. The standards will go into effect at the Plant in Spring 2015. See id. at 9407. WildEarth has made no argument that the EPA would have selected standards more stringent than the MATS standards if it had regulated mercury and selenium in the FIP. We see no reason why the EPA cannot choose to regulate hazardous air pollutants and regional-haze pollutants, which are governed by different statutory provisions with different goals, in separate rulemakings. And if WildEarth is concerned that EPA’s direct regulation of mercury and selenium under the MATS rule was not stringent enough, it can challenge that rule directly. 26 whenever it decides to address one or a few of them could only delay what is already a prolonged process.11