Opinion ID: 194858
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the massachusetts regulations and epa approval

Text: 36 Our concern with the district court case is not quite over. Even if Congress did not designate the ventilation facilities in this case as stationary sources, the possibility remains that Massachusetts has adopted in its state implementation plan--and then sought to ignore for its own construction project--pertinent legal restrictions that can be implemented through a suit under the Clean Air Act. Of course, not every state-law restriction on a project is a matter of federal concern, but a state restriction that is part of a federally approved state implementation plan under the Clean Air Act may at least in some circumstances be within the purview of a citizens suit under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 7604. 37 At one point in its brief, the Sierra Club seems to argue that whatever Congress may have meant by stationary source, Massachusetts in its general permit requirement regulation 7.02, 310 C.M.R. Sec. 7.02, has required pre-construction approval of a class of facilities that includes the ventilation buildings in this case. One version of regulation 7.02 has been approved by the EPA as part of Massachusetts' state implementation plan. Although Massachusetts has adopted a later version not yet approved, we will assume arguendo that the original, approved version of the regulation still exists as a matter of federal law and that a violation of this version might well be remedied by a citizen suit under the federal statute. 7 38 The difficulty with the Sierra Club's argument, as the government brief points out, is that this regulation on its face applies to a short list of specific facilities (e.g., chemical products manufacturing plants) that do not include highways, tunnels or associated ventilation systems. The regulation also applies to such other facilities as the [state] Department [of Environmental Protection] may require, but that state agency has not required pre-construction review of the ventilation buildings under this version of the regulation. The most that the Sierra Club can extract from the affidavit submitted by the head of the agency is that his agency wobbled over the issue of how to regulate the ventilators at issue in this case, and finally decided to propose the indirect source regime now embodied in regulation 7.38. 39 Regulation 7.38 which now governs tunnel ventilation systems says that they are not subject to regulation 7.02. We think that this exclusion seeks to remove ambiguity and is very weak evidence that the new version of regulation 7.02 would otherwise cover such systems, and no evidence at all of the meaning of the old version. Nor do we agree with the Sierra Club that its reading of old regulation 7.02 is borne out by Town of Brookline v. Commissioner of Department of Environmental Quality Engineering, 387 Mass. 372, 439 N.E.2d 372 (1982). That case involved the application of regulation 7.02 to a diesel fuel-powered facility (in fact, an electrical generating station), which is listed as a facility automatically covered by old regulation 7.02. 40 To construe the old version of regulation 7.02 definitively is a daunting task, for it was complex, ill-structured, and apparently confusing even to the state agency that administered it. But the Sierra Club's argument depends upon a showing by it that the old regulation 7.02 did govern highway and tunnel ventilation systems. Such systems do not fall within the list of specifically named facilities in the regulation. Similarly, the Sierra Club has not shown that the state agency ever extended that version of the regulation to such systems under the may require clause. 41 This brings us to the attack on regulation 7.38 that is the subject of the Sierra Club's direct review petition. One might at first wonder why the Sierra Club is interested in overthrowing a regulation which, if less stringent than the pre-construction permit requirement for major stationary sources, is at least a sizable step in the direction of regulating ventilation systems, a step that the state need not take at all if--as the EPA has ruled--such systems are not stationary sources but merely adjuncts to indirect sources. Indeed, the EPA's notice approving the new regulation notes that the Conservation Law Foundation endorsed it. 57 Fed.Reg. 46310, 46311 (1992). 42 The answer is that the Sierra Club, with considerable imagination, has constructed the following argument: the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act contained a savings clause that sought to forbid states from softening pre-amendment control requirement[s] in areas that had not attained the national air quality standard for a pollutant, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 7515; the Boston area has admittedly not met these standards for certain pollutants; and therefore (says the Sierra Club) regulation 7.38 is in violation of the savings clause because it substitutes as to tunnel ventilation systems the softer regime of the new regulation 7.38 for the more stringent, previously applicable regime of regulation 7.02. 43 We will assume without deciding that the savings clause would prevent the weakening of a state implementation plan. But even so we do not read the savings clause to refer to anything other than an effective, federally approved state implementation plan. 8 It is the older version of regulation 7.02 which alone was federally approved at the time of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. And, as already explained, the Sierra Club has failed to establish that the pertinent older version of regulation 7.02 did apply to covered highway or tunnel ventilation systems. Accordingly, regulation 7.38 does not weaken a federally approved state implementation plan but rather strengthens it by extending a new regime to such ventilation systems where previously no federally approved regime applied at all. 44 We are left with two further arguments in relation to regulation 7.38. First, it is claimed that regulation 7.38 is invalid because, according to the Sierra Club, the state was required by M.G.L. ch. 111, Sec. 142A, to obtain the approval of the Governor of Massachusetts and the Executive Council but did not do so. This argument was made, it appears, on the premise that regulation 7.38 was needed by the government defendants in order to remove a bar otherwise presented by regulation 7.02. As we have seen, the premise is mistaken, and invalidating regulation 7.38 would probably free the ventilation systems from any federally enforceable regulation. 45 Nevertheless, the issue of governor-and-council approval, although irrelevant to the injunction action, is raised by the Sierra Club's petition to review the EPA's approval of the new regulation. Since the direct review statute has a time limit on petitions, 42 U.S.C. Sec. 7607(b)(1), we cannot properly defer decision on the validity of regulation 7.38 to some future point. Indeed, the EPA in approving the regulation, noted that Massachusetts' Secretary of State had attested that the regulation was properly adopted, and the EPA itself ruled that the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection had authority to adopt such regulations without approval by the Governor and Council. 57 Fed.Reg. at 46312. 46 It is difficult for anyone but a Massachusetts court to pronounce with certainty on this issue. But when the regulation is attested by the state secretary as validly adopted and its procedural validity is supported in a brief signed by the state's attorney general, it would take a rather strong showing to persuade us to hold that the regulation is invalid on procedural grounds. Assuming (as seems likely) that its procedural validity is open to review in this court and that the state secretary's attestation is necessary but not conclusive, 9 we think that the EPA correctly concluded that the regulation was properly adopted without the approval of governor and council. 47 The state in submitting regulation 7.38 to the EPA said that it was adopted pursuant to M.G.L. ch. 111, Secs. 142B and 142D, not section 142A. Section 142B establishes a Boston area pollution control district and gives the Department of Environmental Protection authority to issue rules and regulations to prevent pollution in the district. Regulation 7.38, which is directed exclusively to the Boston district, appears to fit comfortably within the ambit of section 142B. The rulemaking provision of section 142B, unlike section 142A, contains no requirement for approval of rules by the state's governor or council. 48 The Sierra Club's contrary argument is based on confusing language in M.G.L. ch. 111, Sec. 142A, a broader provision governing air pollution in general. In its opening sentence, this section says that the Department of Environmental Protection, in this section and in sections one hundred and forty-two B to one hundred and forty-two E, inclusive, hereinafter called the department may subject to the approval of the governor and council adopt regulations to control pollution. Id. The Sierra Club apparently reads this sentence as extending the governor-and-council approval requirement of section 142A to rules made under section 142B. 49 We think the more natural reading of the quoted language in section 142A is to specify that the term department, when used without further explanation in the cited later sections, means the Department of Environmental Protection. Section 142B, for example, does refer only to the department. Nor is there anything remarkable about requiring governor-and-council approval for general regulations while not doing so for those directed to a single district; indeed, the Sierra Club reading would make the grant of rulemaking power in section 142B redundant. Accordingly, we reject this challenge to the EPA's approval and dismiss the petition to review. 50 The government brief construes the Sierra Club's argument to embrace, in addition to the claim just rejected, a further claim that regulation 7.38 cannot be applied retroactively to the central artery and tunnel at issue in this case. The regulation by its terms is intended to apply to the project. See 310 C.M.R. Sec. 7.38(1). In response the government argues at length that under Massachusetts law whatever retroactivity may be involved in applying the new regime to a previously planned but unbuilt portion of a project is permissible. 51 It is not entirely clear that the Sierra Club is making the argument attributed to it by the government. However this may be, the EPA did not suggest that its approval of the regulation depended on how or whether it would be applied to existing projects; the EPA's notice of approval does not discuss retroactivity at all. There is no reason to suppose that the EPA's approval is at all dependent on the retroactivity issue. We have no need, in fact no warrant, to decide an issue that is not material either to the district court judgment nor to the validity of the EPA action that is the subject of the petition to review. 52 The judgment of the district court is affirmed. The petition for review is denied.