Opinion ID: 785944
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Monthly Average Violations

Text: 84 In a pretrial ruling the District Court held: 85 Plaintiff's Motion in Limine on Counting Days of Violation, Doc. No. 242, is GRANTED. All violations of the monthly average parameters of defendant's NPDES permits shall be counted as violations equal in number to all the days in the monitored month. See Atlantic States Legal Found'n v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 897 F.2d 1128, 1139 (11th Cir.1990). 86 ALC maintains that the District Court erred in so ruling, and in particular by improperly excluding evidence that actual exceedences occurred on fewer days. ALC relies primarily on Texaco Refining & Marketing, 2 F.3d at 507. The relevant portion of the holding of that case is that violations of the daily average limits result in penalties only for the number of days within the month that the facility operated. That decision does not, however, resolve this case. 87 The leading authority in this area is the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit's opinion in Gwaltney. Gwaltney held that a violation of a monthly average parameter constitutes a violation of each day of the month. The Court reasoned: 88 While the statute does not address directly the matter of monthly average limitations, it does speak in terms of penalties per day of violation, rather than penalties per violation. This language strongly suggests that where a violation is defined in terms of a time period longer than a day, the maximum penalty assessable for that violation should be defined in terms of the number of days in that time period. 89 791 F.2d at 314 (footnote omitted). The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has followed Gwaltney. See Atl. States Legal Found., Inc. v. Tyson Foods, Inc., 897 F.2d 1128, 1139-40 (11th Cir.1990). 90 ALC contends that charging it with a month's worth of violations based on the excedence of a monthly average permit limit yields illogical and unfair results. For example, ALC claims that a single upset caused the average of the four samples for May and September 1991 to exceed the monthly average limit, while three of the months' samples were within the effluent limits. ALC submits that the District Court's ruling automatically converted a single event into 31 violation days, despite evidence to the contrary. 91 This was the justification rejected in Gwaltney. In that case the defendant presented the Court with hypotheticals similar to ALC's contentions. 791 F.2d at 314-15. The Court noted that the defendant's hypotheticals ignored the fact that both large, isolated discharges and moderate, long-term discharges are potentially harmful. Id. at 315 n. 17. The Court also observed that the statute merely sets a maximum penalty; the District Court retains the discretion to assess a smaller penalty where appropriate. Id. The Court stressed that counting average monthly violations as a violation of each day of the month is essential to providing a framework that allows district courts sufficient flexibility to assess penalties that suit the particular circumstances of each case. Id. at 314. We find the reasoning of Gwaltney incomplete. A discharger who exceeds the monthly average maximum by a great amount will probably also have committed a number of daily violations, and the penalties for those violations will mete out at least part of the total punishment that the permittee's conduct for the month merits. The penalty for violating the average monthly maximum seems well suited to punish a pattern of discharges that, with a few exceptions, do not violate the daily maximums but are nevertheless, in the aggregate, excessive. However, we find problematic the proposition that the maximum penalty for such a course of conduct should be thirty times the maximum penalty for the worst daily violation imaginable. 92 Under 33 U.S.C. § 1319(d) a violator is subject to a civil penalty not to exceed $25,000 per day for each violation, which means that a civil penalty of $25,000 may be assessed for each day that a violation occurs. Under Gwaltney, a violation of the monthly average maximum occurs on every day of the month, which could result in a monthly penalty of roughly $750,000, but that does not seem to be the most literal reading of the statutory language. That said, we are fairly confident that no one in Congress ever thought of the question that is now before us, and it does not appear that there is any answer to be found in the text of the CWA or its legislative history. Nor do we think that the structure or purpose of the Act yields any clear answer. Certainly we can infer that Congress wanted to set an upper limit on the civil penalty that a district court can award; Congress did not want to leave this entirely to the district court's discretion. But without knowing Congress's views on the relative severity of a violation of a monthly as opposed to a daily limit, it is difficult to tell what sort of upper limit Congress wanted to propose. 93 Given the opaqueness of the statute and the consequent muddle that we have described, we urge either that the Congress amend the statute to clarify its intentions or that the EPA consider the matter and, after notice and comment, promulgate regulations that will give more guidance. 18 To that end we will direct the Clerk of Court to send copies of this opinion, directing attention to this section, to the Administrator and General Counsel of the EPA and to the counsel for the relevant House and Senate Committees. But we must still decide this case. We are not prepared to say that Gwaltney was simply wrongly decided. Instead-and the best we can do in view of the muddled state of affairs-is to follow Gwaltney on the question of the statutory maximum, and to use it as a framework, but to give guidance structuring the way in which a district court is to exercise its discretion in setting an actual penalty. This is the course we follow. 94 More particularly, in exercising its discretion, a district court should take into account the degree to which the polluter's conduct had already been punished by penalties for daily violations and to use the maximum penalty for a daily violation as a basis for comparison. Thus a district court would not assess a daily penalty of more than $25,000 as a function of the monthly average violation unless it could say that the permittee's violation of the average monthly maximum was as blameworthy (taking into account the factors enumerated in 33 U.S.C. § 1319(d) including environmental harm) as a daily violation for which the $25,000 maximum would be appropriate. This exercise will not always be simple as there is a certain incommensurability between short, intense and prolonged moderate discharges, but we are confident that the district courts, in the exercise of their discretion, can do the job. Since the District Court did not have the benefit of this standard, we must vacate and remand so that it may apply it to reconsider the penalty for monthly average violations. 95 Our modified Gwaltney approach must, however, be applied in accord with Texaco. Under such a regime, there must be excluded from the calculation days on which the facility in question did not operate. If there was evidence in this record that the plant did not operate on certain days, this District Court would have to consider that as well. As best we can ascertain, however, there is no such evidence in the record. The closest ALC comes is to represent that the Basic Oxygen Furnaces were not operating during the week of January 24, 1994, but ALC makes no claim that non-functioning furnaces establishes overall plant closure. In fact, one ALC witness testified all of our facilities typically operate 365 days a year, 24 hours a day and that Allegheny Ludlum's facilities generally operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. At all events, no date other than January 24, 1994, is identified as a date for (possible) plant shut down. Additionally, we note that the argument maintained by ALC in its briefs is not that the Court's order deprived it of the opportunity of proving that plants were not operating on given days, but rather that it was not discharging or was in compliance during parts of the month.