Opinion ID: 529912
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Consistency of EPA's Interpretation with RCRA.

Text: 47 Our role in evaluating an agency's interpretation of its enabling statute is as strictly circumscribed as it is simply stated: We first examine the statute to ascertain whether it clearly forecloses the course that the agency has taken; if it is ambiguous with respect to that question, we go on to determine whether the agency's interpretation is a reasonable resolution of the ambiguity. Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837, 842-45, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2781-83, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). 48
49 We repeat the mandate of Sec. 3004(m)(1): the Administrator is required to promulgate regulations specifying those levels or methods of treatment, if any, which substantially diminish the toxicity of the waste or substantially reduce the likelihood of migration of hazardous constitutents from the waste so that short-term and long-term threats to human health and the environment are minimized. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 6924(m)(1). 50 CMA reads the statute as requiring EPA to determine the levels of concentration in waste at which the various solvents here at issue are safe and to use those screening levels as floors below which treatment would not be required. CMA supports its interpretation with the observation that the statute directs EPA to set standards only to the extent that threats to human health and the environment are minimized. We are unpersuaded, however, that Congress intended to compel EPA to rely upon screening levels in preference to the levels achievable by BDAT. 51 The statute directs EPA to set treatment standards based upon either levels or methods of treatment. Such a mandate makes clear that the choice whether to use levels (screening levels) or methods (BDAT) lies within the informed discretion of the agency, as long as the result is that short-term and long-term threats to human health and the environment are minimized. To minimize something is, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, to reduce [it] to the smallest possible amount, extent, or degree. But Congress recognized, in the very amendments here at issue, that there are long-term uncertainties associated with land disposal, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 6924(d)(1)(A). In the face of such uncertainties, it cannot be said that a statute that requires that threats be minimized unambigously requires EPA to set levels at which it is conclusively presumed that no threat to health or the environment exists. 52 Nor are we at all persuaded by CMA's interpretation of NRDC v. EPA, 824 F.2d 1146, 1163 (D.C.Cir.1987) (en banc ), in which we held that EPA was not permitted to substitute[ ] technological feasibility for health as the primary consideration under Section 112 [of the Clean Air Act]. That provision requires the Administrator to set air pollution standards at the level which in his judgment provides an ample margin of safety to protect the public health. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 7412(b)(1)(B). EPA had set emission standards for vinyl chloride, however, based solely on the level attainable by the best available control technology, 824 F.2d at 1149, despite its finding that such levels would create health risks. It had neither stated that the risks it found were insignificant, nor explained how the risks it accepted were consistent with its statutory duty to provide an ample margin of safety. Id. This court held that EPA had erred in failing to consider whether the best available technology was sufficient to provide the statutorily mandated margin of safety. Id. at 1164-66. 53 Contrary to CMA's implication, however, the court did not hold, or even imply, the converse--that EPA could not require generators to use technologies that would reduce emissions to a point below that which would provide an ample margin of safety. Indeed, the court noted that Congress ... recognized in section 112 that the determination of what is 'safe' will always be marked by scientific uncertainty and thus exhorted the Administration to set ... standards that will provide an 'ample margin' of safety, id. at 1165; we then concluded that [o]nce 'safety' is assured, the Administrator should be free to diminish as much of the statistically determined risk as possible by setting the standard at the lowest feasible level. Id. 54 This is not to say that EPA is free, under Sec. 3004(m), to require generators to treat their waste beyond the point at which there is no threat to human health or to the environment. That Congress's concern in adopting Sec. 3004(m) was with health and the environment would necessarily make it unreasonable for EPA to promulgate treatment standards wholly without regard to whether there might be a threat to man or nature. That concern is better dealt with, however, at Chevron 's second step; for, having concluded that the statute does not unambiguously and in all circumstances foreclose EPA from adopting treatment levels based upon the levels achievable by BDAT, we must now explore whether the particular levels established by the regulations supply a reasonable resolution of the statutory ambiguity. 55
56 The screening levels that EPA initially proposed were not those at which the wastes were thought to be entirely safe. Rather, EPA set the levels to reduce risks from the solvents to an acceptable level, and it explored, at great length, the manifest (and manifold) uncertainties inherent in any attempt to specify safe concentration levels. The agency discussed, for example, the lack of any safe level of exposure to carcinogenic solvents, 51 Fed.Reg. at 1,628; the extent to which reference dose levels (from which it derived its screening levels) understate the dangers that hazardous solvents pose to particularly sensitive members of the population, id. at 1,627; the necessarily artificial assumptions that accompany any attempt to model the migration of hazardous wastes from a disposal site, id. at 1,642-53; and the lack of dependable data on the effects that solvents have on the liners that bound disposal facilities for the purpose of ensuring that the wastes disposed in a facility stay there, id. at 1,714-15. Indeed, several parties made voluminous comments on the Proposed Rule to the effect that EPA's estimates of the various probabilities were far more problematic than even EPA recognized. See, e.g., Comments of Natural Resources Defense Council, Record at 29,000-62. 57 CMA suggests, despite these uncertainties, that the adoption of a BDAT treatment regime would result in treatment to below established levels of hazard. It relies for this proposition almost entirely upon a chart in which it contrasts the BDAT levels with (1) levels EPA has defined as Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) under the Safe Drinking Water Act; (2) EPA's proposed Organic Toxicity Characteristics, threshold levels below which EPA will not list a waste as hazardous by reason of its having in it a particular toxin; and (3) levels at which EPA has recently granted petitions by waste generators to delist a particular waste, that is, to remove it from the list of wastes that are deemed hazardous. CMA points out that the BDAT standards would require treatment to levels that are, in many cases, significantly below these established levels of hazard. 58 If indeed EPA had determined that wastes at any of the three levels pointed to by CMA posed no threat to human health or the environment, we would have little hesitation in concluding that it was unreasonable for EPA to mandate treatment to substantially lower levels. In fact, however, none of the levels to which CMA compares the BDAT standards purports to establish a level at which safety is assured or threats to human health and the environment are minimized. Each is a level established for a different purpose and under a different set of statutory criteria than concern us here; each is therefore irrelevant to the inquiry we undertake today. 59 The drinking water levels, for example, are established under a scheme requiring EPA to set goals at a level at which no known or anticipated adverse effects on the health of persons occur. 42 U.S.C. Sec. 300g-1(b)(4). EPA is then to set MCLs as close to its goals as feasible, taking into account, among other things, treatment costs. 42 U.S.C. Secs. 300g-1(b)(4), (5). Since SDWA goals are set only to deal with known or anticipated adverse health effects, a mere threat to human health is not enough in that context. Moreover, SDWA levels are set without reference to threats to the environment. Finally, EPA must consider costs in setting its MCLs; there is no similar limitation in Sec. 3004 of RCRA. 60 Similarly, in promulgating the OTC levels, EPA made clear that, [i]n establishing a scientifically justifiable approach for arriving at [OTC levels], EPA wanted to assure a high degree of confidence that a waste which releases toxicants at concentrations above the [OTC level] would pose a hazard to human health. EPA Hazardous Waste Management System; Identification and Listing of Hazardous Waste ..., Proposed Rule, 51 Fed.Reg. 21,648, 21,649 (1986) (emphases added). Thus it is clear that wastes with toxicant levels below the OTC thresholds may still pose threats to human health [or] the environment. Id. at 21,648 (emphases added). 61 Finally, CMA points to the delisting levels as appropriate points of comparison. The term is a bit misleading, however. EPA delists particular wastes in response to individual petitions, see, e.g., 42 U.S.C. Sec. 6921(f)(1), and it has not adopted formal, or even de facto, levels below which any waste will be delisted. That EPA has delisted, in particular circumstances, wastes containing concentrations of solvents higher than those called for by the BDAT standards adds nothing to CMA's argument. The treatment standards establish a generic approach, requiring that all wastes deemed to be hazardous be treated to a set level in order to minimize threats to health and to the environment. If a waste is listed as hazardous, and an individual generator wants to dispose of it without meeting the BDAT standards, it may petition to have its particular waste delisted. If the agency grants the delisting petition, only the petitioner is affected; the generally required level of treatment remains the same. Hence, there is no inconsistency between a delisting level, accepted in particular circumstances, that permits a higher level of a particular contaminant then the BDAT level otherwise generally applicable. 62 In sum, EPA's catalog of the uncertainties inherent in the alternative approach using screening levels supports the reasonableness of its reliance upon BDAT instead. Accordingly, finding no merit in CMA's contention that EPA has required treatment to below established levels of hazard, we find that EPA's interpretation of Sec. 3004(m) is reasonable. 63 Our concurring colleague suggests that our discussion of the reasonableness of the BDAT standard is unnecessary, if not perhaps analytically impossible. Con.Op. at 371. Contrary to the impression given in his separate opinion, however, the basis upon which we find EPA's interpretation reasonable here is not one that we have supplied, but the one EPA itself put forth. In its Initial Rule document discussing BDAT as well as screening levels, and in its briefs to this court, EPA has presented precisely the arguments we find persuasive here. While, as we shall see, those arguments are inadequate to justify the choice made, in the Final Rule, in favor of BDAT as against screening levels--which also seem to present a reasonable approach--they do demonstrate that the BDAT approach is reasonable. 64