Opinion ID: 185760
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Reasonably Available Countermeasures

Text: 19 Section 172(c)(1) of the Act directs that a state's revised SIP shall provide for the implementation of all reasonably available control measures [RACM] as expeditiously as practicable. 42 U.S.C. § 7502(c)(1). As the EPA has interpreted § 172(c)(1), a state must consider all potentially available measures to determine whether they [a]re reasonably available for implementation in the area, and whether they would advance the [area's] attainment date. Approval, 66 Fed.Reg. at 607/3. The state may reject measures as not being RACM, however, if they would not advance the attainment date, would cause substantial widespread and long-term adverse impacts, or would be economically or technologically infeasible. Id. at 608/1. 20 The proposed revisions to the SIPs for the Washington Area contained no measures adopted for the sole purpose of satisfying the RACM requirement, id. at 609/3, so the EPA reviewed on its own initiative all control measures that could qualify as RACM under its definition, see id. at 607/3. After considering all potential categories of stationary and mobile sources that could provide additional emission reduction, id. at 611/2, the EPA concluded that additional emission control measures would not advance the attainment date and therefore do not constitute RACM, id. at 608/1. 21 The Sierra Club maintains that treating as potential RACM only those measures that would advance the date at which an area reaches attainment conflicts with the Act's text and purpose and lacks any rational basis. This is a misreading of both text and context. 22 The Act, on its face, neither elaborates upon which control measures shall be deemed reasonably available, nor compels a state to consider whether any measure is reasonably available without regard to whether it would expedite attainment in the relevant area. Further, the EPA reasonably concluded that because the Act use[s] the same terminology in conjunction with the RACM requirement as it does in requiring timely attainment, compare 42 U.S.C. § 7502(c)(1) (requiring implementation of RACM as expeditiously as practicable but no later than the applicable attainment deadline), with id. § 7511(a)(1) (requiring attainment under same constraints), the RACM requirement is to be understood as a means of meeting the deadline for attainment, Approval, 66 Fed.Reg. at 610/2. Because the statutory provision is ambiguous and the EPA's construction of the term RACM is reasonable, we defer to the Agency. See Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843, 104 S.Ct. at 2781-82. 23 The Sierra Club also claims it was unreasonable for the EPA to reject certain measures as RACM on the ground that they could not be implemented without intensive and costly effort. Far from erecting thereby an unreasonably subjective and undefined standard, as the Sierra Club argues, see Pearson v. Shalala, 164 F.3d 650, 660-61 (D.C.Cir.1999), the EPA here did no more than give familiar content to an insufficiently specified concept. The Congress's choice of the phrase reasonably available clearly bespeaks its intention that the EPA exercise discretion in determining which control measures must be implemented, and neither that phrase nor any other in § 172(c)(1) suggests that the Congress intended to preclude the EPA, in so doing, from considering the costs of its decisions. Compare Natural Res. Def. Council, Inc. v. EPA, 824 F.2d 1146, 1157 (D.C.Cir.1987) (en banc) (rejecting position that, as a matter of statutory interpretation, cost and technological feasibility may never be considered under the Clean Air Act unless Congress expressly so provides), with Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass'n, 531 U.S. 457, 465, 121 S.Ct. 903, 908, 149 L.Ed.2d 1 (2001) (cost considerations precluded when statute instructs the EPA to set primary ambient air quality standards `the attainment and maintenance of which ... are requisite to protect the public health' with `an adequate margin of safety') (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 7409(b)(1)). 24 That the EPA's definition of RACM is valid does not end the matter, however; as the Sierra Club points out, the Agency failed to consider whether any particular measures fell within that definition. In its Proposed Approval, the EPA noted that measures ... such as retrofitting diesel trucks and buses, and controlling ground service equipment at airports [could] ... if taken together ... provide significant emission reductions for attainment purposes. 64 Fed.Reg. at 70,468. The EPA made no mention of these measures or measures like them, however, either in its analysis of potential RACM for the Washington Area or in the Approval document. This omission — whether the result of inadvertence or of an unexplained change of course — renders the EPA's decision arbitrary and capricious. See Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass'n v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 57, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 2874, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983) (an agency changing its course must supply a reasoned analysis). Consequently, we must invalidate the Approval of the revised SIPs and remand this matter to the EPA to determine which measures, if any, are RACM to be implemented by the States in this case.