Opinion ID: 2798554
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: New York's Small MS4 General Permit

Text: Petitioners allege that the General Permit relies on an impermissible self-regulatory system, one that is dependent on the MS4 implementing pollution controls unverified by DEC for compliance with federal and state requirements. Specifically, petitioners claim that under federal law, the General Permit must contain effluent limitations that reduce pollutant discharges to the maximum extent practicable, and also ensure compliance with water quality standards. Petitioners explain that New York's General Permit scheme fails to ensure the adoption of legally sufficient pollution controls because DEC authorizes an MS4 to develop and implement a stormwater discharge management program, without DEC first making an administrative determination that the specific measures chosen by the MS4 will satisfy statutory pollutant reduction standards. DEC responds that by requiring an MS4 to adopt the six minimum control measures and certain best management practices, DEC has set the benchmark for compliance with the CWA's maximum extent practicable standard. According to DEC, so long as the MS4 agrees to the minimum control measures and management practices, the MS4 has chosen a course of action that meets legal requirements. - 23 - - 24 - No. 48 The majority concludes that the General Permit is in compliance with the CWA and ECL, and that the petitioners merely seek for this Court to hold the SPDES General Permit to the same standards applicable to a SPDES individual permit, in contravention of the state legislature's intent (see majority op at 27-29). Essentially, the majority adopts DEC's position that the stormwater general permit scheme is lawful because it complies with EPA stormwater regulations and ECL requirements, and reflects the legislative preference for a streamlined regulatory process which reduces or eliminates administrative burdens (see id. at 27). I agree with the majority that the General Permit is designed to reduce the administrative burdens associated with the SPDES individual permit program, and that our analysis of petitioners' claims must consider that these are different permitting schemes. Where I disagree with the majority is with its conclusion that the state's stormwater General Permit complies with the CWA and ECL when it does no more than allow those who seek to discharge pollutants to determine for themselves the pollution controls that satisfy the federal standard, and as a consequence insulate themselves from liability should they fall short of the federal mandate to reduce discharges to the maximum extent practicable. DEC's own description of the General Permit and its regulatory efforts establishes that DEC has created an - 24 - - 25 - No. 48 impermissible scheme that allows pollution without first ensuring that the MS4s' pollution controls comply with the CWA and ECL. While the General Permit sets forth certain control measures and management practices that every MS4 must incorporate as part of its pollutant discharge control program, the MS4 is wholly responsible for the task of identifying, developing and implementing the activities and measurable goals necessary to achieve the reduction of stormwater discharges to the maximum extent practicable. This is not itself unlawful because DEC could reasonably conclude there are administrative and substantive benefits associated with allowing the state's several hundred municipalities to develop pollution control programs designed to address local circumstances. However, by leaving to an MS4 the development and adoption of its pollutant discharge controls, and granting General Permit coverage without DEC having reviewed the MS4's program to ensure compliance with the CWA and ECL, the state has abdicated its essential regulatory role, in violation of the CWA and ECL.6 The mechanics of the General Permit scheme are 6 DEC contends it reviews every NOI before accepting it. However, DEC can point to only three instances in which it has rejected an NOI under the 2010 General Permit. In all three, the offending MS4 failed to identify certain best management practices that it is implementing or intends to implement. Stated differently, DEC has only rejected NOIs where the MS4 left portions of the NOI's menu blank. Despite DEC's contention to the contrary, this review hardly amounts to anything more than a rubber stamp. - 25 - - 26 - No. 48 undisputed. The General Permit replaces the individual permit system with a single permit applicable to a class of dischargers. New York's General Permit contains the six minimum control measures identified by the EPA as appropriate to reducing pollutant discharges to the maximum extent practicable. DEC contends that it has determined that these measures can be achieved by application of certain best management practices and has included those in the General Permit, grouped according to their corresponding control measure. Thus, the measures, as expanded by the specified management practices, are the foundation of the DEC's approach to ensuring an MS4's reduction of stormwater pollutant discharges within the mandates of the CWA. In directing an MS4 to employ these control measures and management practices in order to achieve compliance with the maximum extent practicable standard, the General Permit does little to explain the standard, other than to state that if an MS4 utilizes all the applicable management practices it will satisfy the federal standard. However, the text of the controls and management practices lacks the type of quantitative explication of objective standards which an MS4 can apply to assess whether its stormwater system's protocols actually reduce pollutant discharges to a legally sufficient level. For example, the minimum control measure titled Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination, which refers to - 26 - - 27 - No. 48 mixed stormwater discharges such as sanitary sewage, garage drain effluent, and waste motor oil, requires as a management practice that an MS4 develop, implement and enforce a program to detect and eliminate illicit discharges to the MS4 (see General Permit, Part VII. Minimum Control Measures - Traditional Land Use Control, Subsection A Traditional Land-Use Control MS4 Minimum Control Measures, Subpart 3 Illicit Discharge Detection and Elimination [IDDE] - SWMP Development/Implementation, at 34-35). This, of course, says nothing more than that the MS4 must establish a program to comply with the law. This is but one example of the vague management practices that provide little by way of instruction on how an MS4 develops and implements specific controls to achieve sufficient reduction of discharge levels. Each and every one of those six control measures requires that the MS4 develop (for newly authorized MS4s), record, periodically assess, and modify as needed, measurable goals, and also that the MS4 select and implement appropriate ... [activities or best management practices] and measurable goals to ensure the reduction of all [pollutants of concern] in stormwater discharges to the [maximum extent practicable] (General Permit, Part VII. Minimum Control Measures - Traditional Land Use Control at 29, 33, 35, 39, 46). As the General Permit requires, the SWMP describe[s] the best management practice/measurable goal, identif[ies] time lines/schedules and milestones for development and - 27 - - 28 - No. 48 implementation; includes quantifiable goals to assess progress over time; and describes how the covered entity will address pollutants of concern (General Permit, Part X, Acronyms and Definitions, at 95). These are hardly the type of highly specific controls DEC claims them to be. While the General Permit references other guidance, the guidance is non-binding. Moreover, it is still the case that the MS4 could choose to ignore the guidance, believing it has complied with the maximum extent practicable standard only to learn later that it has violated the CWA. This is not a merely speculative assessment of the General Permit structure because as the permit itself states [i]f a covered entity chooses only a few of the least expensive methods, it is likely that MEP has not been met. On the other hand, if a covered entity employs all applicable BMPs except those where it can be shown that they are not technically feasible in the locality, or whose cost would exceed any benefit to be derived, it would have met the standard. MEP required covered entities to choose effective BMPs, and to reject applicable BMPs only where other effective BMPs will serve the same purpose, the BMPs would not be technically feasible, or the cost would be prohibitive (General Permit, Part X. Acronyms and Definitions, at 91). As this suggests, something less than adoption of all of the management practices may comply with the maximum extent practicable standard, but when that would be the case and under what circumstances is uncertain and subject to the particularities of the MS4. - 28 - - 29 - No. 48 More significant than the opportunity for an MS4 to select additional management practices -- or even substitute mandatory best management practices with management practices the MS4 determines on its own are better suited or economically feasible, and yet still designed to ensure achieve reduction to the maximum extent practicable -- is the fact that, even if the mandatory management practices were clearer and specific, the General Permit does not, alone, set the limitations that each MS4 will implement. Instead, DEC delegated that task to the MS4. The General Permit requires that in order to utilize the measures and management practices, the MS4 must determine the details and logistics of the management practices it has selected. Thus, the General Permit scheme depends on each MS4's determination and eventual adoption of the most efficacious practices that the MS4 will apply to achieve the statutory goal of pollutant discharge reductions to the maximum extent practicable. To that end, the General Permit specifically requires that the MS4 develop and implement a SWMP designed to reduce the discharge of pollutants from the small MS4 to the maximum extent practicable [], to order to protect water quality, and to satisfy the appropriate water quality requirements of the ECL and [CWA] (see General Permit, Part IV. Stormwater Management Program (SWMP) Requirements, Subsection A. SWMP Background, at 14). Although the General Permit requires the SWMP contain the six measures and the mandatory management practices, the SWMP does - 29 - - 30 - No. 48 more than merely recite them. Rather, the SWMP expounds upon them, and thus reflects the MS4's determination of the appropriate limits necessary to achieve CWA compliance. That determination is set forth in the measurable goals the MS4 develops for each of the management practices. These goals are intended to help the covered entities assess the status and progress of their program (General Permit, Part X, Acronyms and Definitions, at 95). They should reflect the needs and characteristics of the covered entity and the areas served by its small MS4. Furthermore, the goals should be chosen using an integrated approach that fully addresses the requirements and intent of the [minimum control measures] (id. at 91). This is not a static process, because as the General Permit indicates, [t]he assumption is that the program schedules would be created over a 5 year period and goals would be integrated into that time frame (id.). Particularly troubling is the fact that DEC does not review the SWMP or the Plan. In fact, it appears DEC has gone to great lengths to avoid formal consideration of both by prohibiting inclusion of the SWMP with the MS4's NOI, and by allowing up to 3 years after the effective date of permit coverage for the MS4 to develop and implement the Plan. If, as DEC argues, all that is required to result in discharge reductions sufficient to comply with the CWA is the - 30 - - 31 - No. 48 employment of the minimum control measures and the mandatory management practices, there would be no need for municipal development and articulation of activities, measurable goals and other techniques. In reality, the MS4 is left to details where none have been provided, and to craft a SWMP and Plan to guide the implementation of its storm water discharge reduction efforts. Notably, DEC anticipates that those efforts will change over time, and thus allows the Plan to be developed and implemented up to three years after the MS4 gains coverage under the General Permit. The majority concludes that [t]here is no doubt that the 2010 General Permit complies with EPA's 1999 regulations (majority op at 18). However, those very same federal regulations for small municipal separate storm sewer systems were deemed to violate the CWA in EDC because they failed to provide for meaningful administrative review (see 344 F3d 832, 856 [9th Cir 2003]). In that case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals considered a challenge to the EPA's Storm Water Phase II Rule, under which small MS4s were authorized by an NPDES general permit to immediately commence the discharge of storm water after submitting an NOI. Unlike the traditional general permitting model, the court explained, the Phase II Rule requires that each NOI contain information on an individualized pollution control program that addresses each of the six general criteria specified in the Minimum Measures (id. at 853). Under the Rule, - 31 - - 32 - No. 48 the EPA was not required to conduct a review of each NOI prior to discharge authorization, as it is required to conduct before granting an application for an individual permit (id. at 854-856). The Ninth Circuit held that the permitting scheme violated 33 USC § 1342 (p) (3) (B) (iii) because nothing prevents the operator of a small MS4 from misunderstanding or misrepresenting its own stormwater situation and proposing a set of minimum measures for itself that would reduce the discharges by far less than the maximum extent practicable (EDC, 344 F3d at 855). Moreover, in order to receive the protection of a general permit, the operator of a small MS4 needs to do nothing more than decide for itself what reduction in discharges would be the maximum practical reduction. No one will review that operator's decision to make sure that it was reasonable, or even good faith (id.). As a consequence, the EPA would allow permits to issue that would do less than require controls to reduce the discharge of pollutants to the maximum extent practicable (id. [emphasis in original]). Accordingly, the court remanded that aspect of the Rule. The Second Circuit applied similar reasoning to reject EPA's NPDES permitting scheme, albeit in a case involving different water pollutants, namely emissions from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) proscribed by the EPA's CAFO Rule. In Waterkeeper, the Circuit Court concluded that the CAFO Rule did not require NPDES permitting authorities to review the - 32 - - 33 - No. 48 management plans to ensure that the plans were developed and implemented so as to reduce discharges as required by the federal regulations (Waterkeeper, 399 F3d at 500). New York's General Permit similarly fails for the reasons articulated by the Circuit Courts in EDC and Waterkeeper. Although the Appellate Division concluded that the General Permit includes[s] a variety of enforcement measures that are sufficient to comply with the maximum extent practicable standard (Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 120 AD3d at 1243), that is besides the point because the issue is not the propriety of the measures or the management practices, because those alone do not establish the details of any particular MS4's stormwater discharge program. Indeed, petitioners do not challenge DEC's choice of minimum controls or management practices. Rather, they challenge DEC's failure to assess for legal adequacy the pollutant discharge proscriptions actually developed by the municipalities, and intended to be applied by the MS4s. The fact that DEC provides a menu of management practices cannot save the General Permit scheme because nothing requires that the combination of items that the operator of a small MS4 selects from this 'menu' will have the combined effect of reducing discharges to the maximum extent practicable (EDC, 344 F3d 832, n 32). Moreover, it is not the amount of choices that matters here--as the DEC suggests by arguing that it imposes - 33 - - 34 - No. 48 forty four mandatory management practices--because more practices are meaningless if there is no assessment as to whether the MS4 understands how those practices work and how to apply them to ensure pollutant discharge reduction to the level required by the CWA. This is certainly the case here where the CWA's maximum extent practicable standard is intentionally undefined, and where DEC's management practices are vague and generalized, often redundant of the minimum controls. The majority appears to marginalize the decision in EDC, characterizing it as part of a Federal Circuit Court split (see majority op at 25).7 However, in EDC, the Ninth Circuit vacated the EPA regulations to the extent they did allow permits to issue that would do less than require controls to reduce the discharge of pollutants to the maximum extent practicable (EDC, 344 F3d at 855-56, citing 64 Fed. Reg. at 68753). Rather than a division among the Circuit Courts, the Ninth Circuit decision is the only Circuit decision on the validity of the regulations' content. While the United States Supreme Court is the final word on the proper interpretation of the CWA and the EPA regulations, that Court has chosen not to take up the case (see Texas Cities Coalition on Stormwater v E.P.A., 541 US 1085 [2004] [denying petition for writ of certiorari]). Moreover, the Ninth Circuit decision has affected the EPA's application of the regulations. 7 The majority treats Waterkeeper similarly, relegating it to a footnote because that decision, however interpreted, does not eliminate the circuit split (see majority op at 25 n 14). - 34 - - 35 - No. 48 Indeed, the EPA issued post-EDC guidance to Water Management Division Directors stating that [t]he permitting authority will need to conduct an appropriate review of Phase II MS4s' NOIs to ensure consistency with the permit.8 Even assuming we could simply ignore that the EPA regulations have been vacated in relevant part, notwithstanding the majority's conclusion that the state's General Permit concededly complies with the EPA regulations, the fact is that the EPA regulations require implementation of best management practices consistent with the SWMP (see 40 CFR 122.34 [a] [Implementation of best management practices consistent with the provisions of the storm water management program required pursuant to this section and the provisions of the permit required pursuant to § 122.33 constitutes compliance with the standard of reducing pollutants to the 'maximum extent practicable'”]). Therefore, so long as DEC allows General Permit coverage to an MS4 without ensuring the intended consistency between management practices and the individualized protocols set forth in the SWMP, the state is in violation of the CWA (see 33 8 This guidance pre-dates the Seventh Circuit's decision in Texas Ind. Producers and Royalty Owners Assn. v E.P.A. (410 F3d 964 [7th Cir 2005]) which held, contrary to the Ninth Circuit, that NOIs are not subject to the CWA public participation requirements. However, the EPA guidance has not been rescinded and there is nothing to suggest the obsolescence of the guidance with respect to agencies ensuring consistency with the permit and compliance with the CWA. - 35 - - 36 - No. 48 USC § 1342 [p] [3] [B] [iii] [providing that MS4 permits shall require controls to reduce the discharge of pollutants to the maximum extent practicable, including management practices, control techniques and system, design and engineering methods, and such other provisions as the Administrator or the State determines appropriate for the control of such pollutants]). It is undeniable that DEC has made efforts to adopt a general permit scheme that complies with the CWA and ECL, and which provides an administratively feasible approach to the difficult task of reducing stormwater pollutant discharges. Nevertheless, DEC's current approach is legally impermissible. Of course, it is for the state, and not the judiciary, to establish the state's review and assessment protocols (see Akpan v Koch, 75 NY2d 561, 570 [1990] [courts may not substitute their judgment for that of the agency for it is not their role to weigh the desirability of any action or to choose among alternatives”]). It very well may be that the state determines, as have other jurisdictions,9 that review of the SWMP and the 9 Texas and Mississippi, for example, require the submission of a full SWMP contemporaneously with the filing of an NOI for substantive review (see Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, General Permit to Discharge Under the Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, § II.E.1 [2013] available at https://www.tceq.texas.gov/assets/public/permitting/stormwater/tx r040000_issued_permit.pdf [accessed April 13, 2015]; Mississippi Department Environmental Quality, Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) General Permit, Condition S-1. [2009] available at http://www.deq.state.ms.us/mdeq.nsf/pdf/epd_MS4PhaseIIStormWater GeneralPermit/$File/22General.pdf?OpenElement [accessed April 14, 2015]). - 36 - - 37 - No. 48 Plan is but one way by which the state may comprehensively and expeditiously comply with its regulatory mandate. How best to address this issue should be left to New York.