Opinion ID: 519994
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Plant-Specific Challenges to the BPT Limitations and the Availability of Fundamentally-Different-Factor Variances

Text: 221 Several petitioners, including Union Carbide, Borg-Warner, DuPont, Monsanto, and Ethyl, claim that the BPT limitations are arbitrary because the EPA failed to account adequately for wastestream characteristics. Petitioners assert that the wastestream characteristics of certain of their plants preclude compliance with the OCPSF industry limitations. These claims are considered together because several of these petitioners raise highly individualized objections to the limitations. 222 We will address each petitioner's claim in turn. As an initial matter, however, we note that the EPA is not required to consider fundamentally different factors of particular plants in the national BPT rulemaking. Both Congress and the Supreme Court have expressed concern that the process of formulating nationally applicable water-quality standards would be unduly impeded by requiring EPA to address the idiosyncracies of individual plants in the context of a national rulemaking. The Supreme Court has held that the fundamentally-different-factors (FDF) variance procedure provides an entirely acceptable alternative to subcategorizing an industry to account for plant-specific characteristics. 163 Congress has codified the FDF procedures in the CWA, encouraging the EPA not to complicate and delay unduly the promulgation of national effluent-limitation guidelines and standards where the FDF procedure could be employed to address the concerns of individual facilities claiming to be unique. 164 223 The Supreme Court held in 1977 that the EPA may establish categorical BPT limitations, so long as some allowance is made for variations in individual plants, as EPA has done by including a variance clause in its 1977 limitations. 165 Relying heavily on legislative history that demonstrated Congress' intent to replace the site-specific approach to water-quality regulation with technology-based limitations that apply uniformly to categories of dischargers, 166 the unanimous Court reasoned that the alternative view would place an impossible burden on EPA contrary to the legislative purpose of the Act. 167 224 Addressing the EPA's identical FDF variance procedure for pretreatment standards, the Supreme Court has approved the procedure as a mechanism for insuring that [EPA's] necessarily rough-hewn categories do not unfairly burden atypical plants. 168 The Court explained: 225 EPA and CMA point out that the availability of FDF variances makes bearable the enormous burden faced by EPA in promulgating categories of sources and setting effluent limitations. Acting under stringent timetables, EPA must collect and analyze large amounts of technical information concerning complex industrial categories. Understandably, EPA may not be apprised of and will fail to consider unique factors applicable to atypical plants during the categorical rulemaking process, and it is thus important that EPA's nationally binding categorical pretreatment standards for indirect dischargers be tempered with the flexibility that the FDF variance mechanism offers.... 169 226 The Court stated that the FDF variance procedure was authorized by Congress in significant part to ensure that the national rule would not be overturned simply because of the Agency's failure to consider unique plants. 170 Several courts of appeal have subsequently relied upon the availability of an FDF variance procedure as the basis for rejecting challenges to BPT regulations that are based upon allegedly facility-specific factors. 171 227 In codifying the FDF variance procedure in the CWA, 172 Congress specifically emphasized that the procedure serves as a safety valve to the categorical statutory scheme, allowing EPA to address plant-specific variations through a separate administrative process, outside of the national rulemaking. The House Report stated: 228 There are two approaches for responding to a facility with valid grounds for arguing that it is fundamentally different from other facilities in its category. One possibility is to develop a separate subcategory within the regulation, undertake a separate data collection and analysis effort and then repropose and issue the final rule. The other alternative is to leave the national rule in place and use the FDF determination procedure to establish alternative technology-based limitations for the facility that accurately reflect its situation. The subcategorization approach would add further complications and require potentially substantial additional time in developing what are already extraordinarily complex and detailed national regulations. By contrast, the FDF determination procedure allows both implementation of the national rule and consideration of individual petitions claiming unique factors. 173 229 Given Congress' clear intent that the national rulemaking process not be unduly impeded by highly individualized objections to the regulations that would be more appropriately addressed in an FDF proceeding, we address the following claims with this concern in mind.
230 Union Carbide argues that high influent BODS concentrations at its Taft, Louisiana, plant preclude effective treatment by the model BPT technology. Union Carbide thus contends that the EPA has neither costed nor identified any BPT technology which will enable plants with high-BOD influent to comply with BPT. The EPA costed the addition of a biological treatment unit followed by a secondary clarifier to Taft's existing treatment system. 174 This additional treatment system will remove almost four million pounds of conventional pollutants at an annualized cost of $1,242,200. 175 231 The EPA reasonably concluded that the Taft plant was not so fundamentally different from the industry as a whole as to warrant exclusion from the rule simply because the Taft plant had the highest levels of BODS influent in the data base used to develop the limits. The EPA has concluded reasonably that the limitations are both achievable and practicable for the Taft plant.
232 Borg-Warner seeks a separate subcategory for wastestreams containing significant amounts of phenol, alleging that high phenol concentrations adversely impact biological treatment by inhibiting biodegradability. The EPA specifically considered the effects of phenol concentrations and found that several plants with high phenol influents achieved low levels of biological oxygen demand. 176 The EPA found that phenol-dominated wastestreams were treatable and therefore declined to create a subcategory for phenol-dominated wastestreams. The EPA's conclusion is supported by the record and is not arbitrary or capricious.
233 DuPont claims that the BPT limits for TSS are not attainable by its Chambers Works plant through the use of the technology relied upon in establishing the regulations. DuPont maintains that the EPA failed to take into account the nature of the wastewaters subject to regulation and specifically failed to take into account the fact that [d]ue to the complexity and unique aspects of its manufacturing process the wastestream of the Chamber Works plant contains TSS and mixed liquor suspended solids at significantly higher levels than did the wastestreams of the plants in the EPA's data base. DuPont argues that its wastestream is also fundamentally different from other plants in that its TSS/BODS ratio is nearly four times greater than the average. 234 While DuPont asserts that the EPA failed in general to adequately consider wastestream characteristics in its subcategorization of the industry, it does not propose any specific basis on which the EPA should have created a subcategory that would address the characteristics of the Chambers Works plant wastestream. 177 Rather, DuPont asserts that the limitations should be set aside because the EPA failed to take into account unique characteristics of the wastewater at the Chambers Works plant and rejected data submitted by DuPont that demonstrate the unachievability of the TSS limitations. 235 As we note above, the EPA is not obligated to address in its national rulemaking the fundamentally different characteristics of an individual plant; such concerns are appropriately raised in an FDF variance proceeding. 178 DuPont has filed for an FDF variance, and the claims raised here are more properly addressed in the first instance in that forum. Accordingly, we express no opinion on whether such a variance would be appropriate.
236 Petitioners Monsanto and Ethyl similarly claim that the EPA failed to adequately account for wastewater characteristics in setting BPT limits and that the EPA's subcategorization scheme is therefore unlawful. Monsanto claims specifically that plants using BPT technology may not be able to achieve the EPA's TSS limits where their wastewaters contain high total-dissolved-solids (TDS) levels and that the EPA should have created a separate subcategory for plants that have high levels of TDS in their wastewater. Monsanto maintains that two of its plants will be unable to comply with the TSS limits for this reason. Similarly, Ethyl asserts that its Elgin plant will be unable to comply with the TSS limits because the plant's wastestream contains high levels of brine. Ethyl claims that dilution is necessary to treat wastewater with high brine content but that the BPT effluent limits are based on process flow only, without allowing for dilution. Ethyl notes that it may be possible to meet the standards based on effluent only but that the EPA has not identified the appropriate technology for doing so and therefore has not accounted for the cost of such technology in its BPT limitations. 237 In response to these objections, the EPA asserts that Ethyl failed to submit any comments during the rule-making proceeding that would establish that a plant's TDS levels would preclude compliance or greatly increase the cost of compliance and that only one company in the industry, Monsanto, claimed during the rulemaking to have a compliance problem caused by high TDS levels in its wastestream. 179 The EPA states that it therefore declined to create a subcategory based on TDS levels because there was not sufficient information in the record to demonstrate that any plant in the OCPSF industry could not comply with the TSS limits as a result of elevated TDS levels. 238 The EPA notes that while CMA also commented on the relationship between TDS and TSS, its comments weighed against the creation of a separate subcategory based on TDS influent levels. 180 The EPA determined that technology does exist to clarify wastestreams with especially high levels of solids and that facilities use a variety of methods to ensure the effective biological treatment of unique wastestreams that contain pollutants that impede biological treatments. The EPA noted, for example, that technologies such as reverse osmosis can eliminate materials in a plant's wastewater which may inhibit or upset biological treatment systems. 181 239 In specific response to Monsanto's comment, the EPA stated that three facilities which have TDS levels exceeding 5,000 mg/l have nevertheless achieved good TSS removal. 182 The EPA further concluded that few, if any, OCPSF plants have TDS levels of sufficient magnitude to impair TSS removal. 183 Accordingly, the EPA rejected Monsanto's request that a correction factor for high TDS levels be incorporated into the final TSS limits. 184 240 Although Monsanto takes issue with the EPA's responses, we conclude that the EPA's decision not to establish a special subcategory based upon TDS levels was reasonable. The EPA found, based upon the record before it, that it was uncertain at best whether any plant in the industry had TDS levels that precluded effective treatment and that if there were any such problems, they would be unique to Monsanto, the only company to claim TDS problems. Therefore, Monsanto's concerns would be more properly addressed through an FDF variance proceeding than through the national rulemaking. 241 The EPA notes that, unlike Monsanto, Ethyl never submitted comments--in response to either the proposed regulations or the three subsequent public notices--to inform the EPA that it believed its Elgin plant would experience TSS compliance problems as a result of the level of TDS in the plant's wastewater. Ethyl asserts that it does not suggest that the EPA should have created a separate subcategory for its Elgin plant, but rather submits the argument that the Elgin plant cannot meet the TSS limits as evidence that the EPA failed adequately to consider wastewater characteristics in establishing BPT. To the extent that Ethyl challenges the overall validity of the EPA's subcategorization approach, based on the EPA's alleged failure to adequately consider wastestream characteristics, that issue is addressed above. Furthermore, as we also conclude above, the fact that a single plant may have difficulty in meeting BPT requirements due to unique characteristics of that plant, does not render the entire rulemaking invalid. To the extent that Ethyl does raise concerns unique to its Elgin plant, those issues are properly raised through an FDF variance proceeding rather than through the national rulemaking.
242 The highly individualized claims of DuPont, Monsanto, and Ethyl are more appropriately addressed in an FDF administrative proceeding. DuPont and Ethyl have filed for variances, and Monsanto may certainly do so in the near future. Petitioners argue, however, that we may not decline to address their claims because the EPA has not yet ruled on the applications. Thus, petitioners claim that the EPA will leave them in administrative limbo while the limitations go into effect. To the extent, however, that petitioners DuPont and Ethyl seek to compel an Agency decision on their FDF applications, such relief is outside the scope of this court's limited jurisdiction under CWA Section 509(b)(1) to review the EPA's effluent limitations guidelines, pretreatment standards, and new source performance standards. 185 243 This court would have jurisdiction to review the FDF claims only after the EPA has ruled on petitioners' applications and after review by the district court. 186 The Act's regulatory scheme is consistent with the prudential doctrine of primary jurisdiction which holds that complex scientific and technical issues, such as those presented here, should be resolved in the first instance by the EPA, the entity best suited to pass on these issues. 187 244 Congress was aware of the difficulty and corresponding delays in processing FDF variance applications for individual plants. 188 Accordingly, Congress attempted to expedite the process by specifically requiring the EPA to determine the merits of applications for FDF variances for individual plants within 180 days of the submission of the application. 189 Thus, the WQA ensures that all FDF applications on which the EPA had not previously ruled would henceforth be subject to the Act's 180-day time limit. 245 Notwithstanding Congress' 180-day deadline, the EPA admits that historically it has taken, on average, three years to process an FDF application. The EPA believes that it may require more than 180 days to complete the review of these highly technical applications. However, the fact that the Agency has exceeded the statutory time limit for issuing its decision on the OCPSF FDF applications does not permit this court to order the EPA to produce a schedule for rendering its decisions. Congress provided an explicit statutory deadline for these decisions which specifically contemplates that efforts to compel timely Agency action would be heard exclusively in the district courts. 190 Nevertheless, petitioners argue that because of this delay, and because the OCPSF limitations will require them to install costly control technology, this court should stay application of the OCPSF limitations pending the EPA's consideration of their FDF applications. 246 Section 509(b)(1) 191 of the CWA authorizes the courts of appeal to review the effluent-pollution limitations promulgated by EPA. Only the rulemaking proceedings are subject to this court's review under Section 509(b)(1), however, and the petitioners do not challenge the promulgation of the regulations. Rather, they challenge the implementation or application of the regulations and such a challenge is not subject to this court's review under Section 509(b)(1). The industrial petitioners' claim that the EPA has failed to consider their FDF applications in a timely manner, therefore, even if true, does not undermine the legality of the regulations because an FDF proceeding is collateral to the rulemaking proceedings. 247 A challenge to the implementation or application of the regulations may be brought in a civil action under CWA Section 505(a)(2), which provides: 248 any citizen may commence a civil action ... against the Administrator where there is alleged a failure of the Administrator to perform any act or duty under this Act which is not discretionary with the Administrator. 192 249 A civil action under Section 505(a)(2) must be commenced in the district court. 250 In addition, the relief requested by the petitioners is precluded by the Act. The Act provides: 251 An application for an alternative requirement under this subsection [i.e., an FDF application], shall not stay the applicant's obligation to comply with the effluent limitation guideline or categorical pretreatment standard which is the subject of the application. 193 252 Staying the regulations pending petitioners' FDF applications would be contrary to Congress' expressed intent that the effluent limits be enforced notwithstanding a pending FDF application. 253 Finally, the petitioners argue that denial of a stay will require them to install millions of dollars of technology that may prove to be redundant if they are later granted FDF variances. This seems to be the possible result of the Congressional pattern in requiring enforcement of the regulations before final action on applications for FDF variances. The impact of this requirement is, however, lessened by the likelihood that, even if each of the petitioners is eventually granted an FDF variance, each will likely be required to meet standards that require the installation of some new methods of pollution control. An FDF variance would not exempt petitioners from the limitations; it would merely subject them to less stringent limits using the best technology. 194