Opinion ID: 501787
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Off-Site Facilities

Text: 119 Under this heading, NWF challenges the Secretary's interpretation of the jurisdictional scope of the Act. The Act, in Sec. 701(28), states that it covers surface coal mining operations. In 1983, however, the Secretary excluded from his definition of that term facilities that process coal but do not separate coal from its impurities. Additionally, the Secretary defined that statutory term to exclude off-site facilities beyond a certain distance from a mining operation. 15 120 The district court concluded that the affidavits produced by NWF adequately alleged standing. See Findings on Standing, at 20-21 (citing McBride Aff.; Fretwell Aff.). Industry challenges this determination, arguing that the affiants in question did not spell out the types of off-site operations they fear with sufficient specificity to cover all the contingencies NWF now raises. See Brief for Industry at 27. We disagree. Contrary to Industry's assertions, the McBride affidavit, for example, does voice concern about off-site injuries, citing coal crushing tipples and rail loadout facilities alongside two Tennessee highways. See McBride Aff. at 5. 121 More generally, as in its arguments about NWF's standing to challenge the regulations imposing minimum environmental standards, Industry adopts too parsimonious a reading of the standing requirement, one too hypertechnical to be supportable. Both the above-named affiants, as well as others, see, e.g., Combs Aff., allege ongoing harms stemming from the failure to restrict certain off-site operations. Standing on this issue does not require meticulous specificity, or the affiants' intimate familiarity with operations on neighboring land. The core issue here is the scope of jurisdiction over offsite facilities, an issue the affiants identified by the district court surely have standing to raise. In attempting to disaggregate this issue so as to require NWF to name plaintiffs suffering from every conceivable side-effect of the Secretary's narrower conception of the Act's jurisdiction, Industry would turn the standing requirement from a means of identifying genuine controversies into a barrier blocking challenges by all but the most greviously afflicted plaintiffs. 122