Opinion ID: 529709
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Suitable Challengers

Text: 31 As we have said, HWTC may still have representational standing if any of its members, while not a direct or express object of Congressional beneficence, is a suitable challenger to EPA's decision implementing RCRA. In order to determine whether the interests of HWTC's member firms coincide--i.e., systematically, not fortuitously--with the interests of those whom Congress intended to protect, we must, of course, consider what the interests of those firms are. 32 HWTC argues its case for standing in terms of the interests that its member firms are assertedly pursuing in this specific case. Accordingly, it claims first that EPA's alleged regulatory laxity will hurt the competitive position of HWTC member companies engaged in the waste treatment business. Were EPA to lower the permissible concentration levels for California List wastes, that is, generators of hazardous waste would have greater need to treat their wastes prior to disposal, and the member treatment firms would gain economically by providing the required treatment. 33 HWTC's second allegation is that EPA's actions affect the consumer environmental interests of its member land disposal facilities, in that waste generators will send to the disposal site, for example, a California List waste that is merely solidified. Because EPA has not required the waste to meet more stringent treatment standards, we are told, the likelihood that the waste will migrate from the waste disposal site into the surrounding environment and the severity of the consequences of such migration will be greater than they would be had EPA fulfilled its statutory duty. Thus will member facilities be subject to an increased risk of liability for clean-up costs, damages and regulatory penalties. 3 34
35 We have already held that the treatment firms are not among Congress's intended beneficiaries. HWTC claims, however, that as the chosen instrument for achieving Congress's goal in RCRA, those firms are nonetheless suitable challengers because their interests are so likely to coincide with the interests of those who are beneficiaries of the statute. This claim flies in the face of common sense. 36 HWTC represents, with respect to its competitor claims, treatment firms. The ultimate interest of those firms is in making money, of course. Their immediate interest is in more stringent treatment standards, on the theory that such standards will result in their selling more treatment services, which will, in turn, generate more earnings. But there is not the slightest reason to think that treatment firms' interest in getting more revenue by increasing the demand for their particular treatment services will serve RCRA's purpose of protecting health and the environment. Every merchant wants to maximize its earnings, and any merchant will, to the extent practicable, steer its customers to those of its goods or services that generate the greatest profit margins. Thus, we would expect the treatment firms, like any other merchant, to pursue regulation that encourages the alternatives with the greatest profit potential at the expense of others (say, recycling or incineration) that might be less profitable. 37 This is not, moreover, the only way in which the firms' interests might differ from those Congress intended to protect. Faced with a similar challenge in HWTC II, we described as perfectly plausible the scenario that stricter EPA regulation of a particular substance would have the boomerang effect of increasing illegal dumping and thus would result in net harm to the environment. 861 F.2d at 283. Similarly, stricter treatment standards for California List wastes might lead to the substitution of manufacturing methods that generate other, more dangerous but less strictly regulated wastes. Cf. HWTC II, 861 F.2d at 284. (A regulatory extension sought by the competitor interests in the Council might benefit recyclers' profits (e.g., by forcing the use of more advanced recycling techniques) but harm the environment (because, for example, its costs might lead to substitution of more environmentally harmful fuels).). 38 Nor does the treatment firms' interest in even more demanding treatment requirements miraculously end at the point where the levels of hazardous constituents are entirely safe. The watchword of those firms must be, in short, that treatment is good and more treatment is better--whether the effect on health and the environment is good, bad, or indifferent. HWTC's claim to standing here is precisely analogous to a defense contractor's claim to standing under an appropriations law in order to challenge the Defense Department's decision to purchase one type of weapon rather than another. The interest of such a firm in profits is not limited by the public's need for its type of weapon, and notwithstanding the sometimes contrary impression one encounters, the annual defense appropriation is not passed in order to benefit defense contractors, benefit them though it may. 39 Because we have no way of knowing (short of deciding the merits of HWTC's claim) the extent to which HWTC's interest in more rigorous treatment standards will be likely to further rather than to frustrate Congress's interest in protecting human health and the environment, and because judicial intervention may defeat statutory goals if it proceeds at the behest of interests that coincide only accidentally with those goals, HWTC II, 861 F.2d at 283, HWTC is without standing under Hunt. 40 As is apparent, in the foregoing analysis, we have asked not whether a particular case raises a suitable challenge, but whether the interests of the particular party make it suitable to raise that challenge. Perhaps because this distinction was not consequential in the cases it has decided, the Supreme Court has sometimes spoken of the suitably of the challenge, sometimes of that of the challenge it brings. In both Clarke and Data Processing, for example, the Court treated the two approaches as if they were identical, variously describing the zone test in Clarke as an inquiry into whether the would-be plaintiffs [are] 'arguably within the zone of interests ...'  and as an attempt to discern whether  'the interest sought to be protected by the complainant [is] arguably within the zone of interests....'  479 U.S. at 397, 396, 107 S.Ct. at 756, 755-56 (both quoting Data Processing ). See also Data Processing, 397 U.S. at 153, 157, 90 S.Ct. at 830, 831-32. 41 Although the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the question, we have no doubt that it is the interests that the challenger seeks to protect and not the challenge with which we must be concerned. As we have explained, the foundation underlying the zone of interests test is the notion that those plaintiffs whose suits are more likely to frustrate than to further statutory objectives should not be permitted to sue. Clarke, 479 U.S. at 397 n. 12, 107 S.Ct. at 756 n. 12 (emphasis added). The standing requirement asks who may bring a particular challenge, not what particular challenges may be brought. The same claim may be viable in the hands of one challenger and not in those of another that, for example, has interests that make it less than a reliable private attorney general to litigate the issue of the public interest in the ... case. Id. (quoting Data Processing, 397 U.S. at 154, 90 S.Ct. at 830). Thus, we have no doubt that injured environmental groups or landowners would have standing to pursue the very claims raised here. Significantly, however, they have not done so. 42 Moreover, were standing to depend upon the claim and not the claimant, the court would be required, in order to resolve that issue, to explore whether the challenge would further the goal of the statute. We would, in short, have to decide either the ultimate merit of the challenge (whether petitioner's interpretation of the statute reflects congressional intent)--or at least a closely related question (whether petitioner's interpretation of the statute would further Congress's purpose)--in order to decide the threshold standing question. As we proceed here, however, we avoid the necessity to decide the merits before we determine whether we should decide the merits. If the two issues were coextensive, the doctrine of prudential standing would be of no independent significance. 43
44 HWTC's second claim of injury tracks a claim we heard on the merits in HWTC II, viz., that EPA's California List rule improperly permits land disposal, at its members' facilities, of inadequately treated wastes, thereby increasing the risk that such facilities will later be held liable for leakage. EPA responds that this claim is barred by our subsequent decision in Petro-Chem (which HWTC intimates was wrongly decided), where we held, on a constitutional ground, that HWTC lacked standing to raise a similar challenge. Because we conclude that this case is not controlled by HWTC II, and that the disposal firms lack prudential standing to raise their consumer claims here, we do not explore the application of Petro-Chem's constitutional analysis to this case. 45 In HWTC II, BVER Environmental, a member of HWTC, alleged that it was in the business of receiving non-hazardous used oil from heavy manufacturing industries for processing and resale as boiler fuel, and that its receiving facilities were damaged when it received used oil that was contaminated. 861 F.2d at 281. In order to protect itself, BVER would have had to undertake expensive (and extensive) testing. Id. We held that its injury was sufficient to confer standing upon it, and through it, upon HWTC. Id. at 282. 46 Like defense contractors, treatment firms, and the disposal firms whose consumer claims are our subject here, BVER's ultimate interest was in money, of course. That the injury is commercial is no obstacle, HWTC II, 861 F.2d at 282, however, for if it were, no person, business, or association whose ultimate interest was pecuniary would ever be within the zone of interests of a statute adopted for any purpose other than its direct financial benefit. This result would be at war both with the Supreme Court's and our own cases and with common sense. It is in the methods by which BVER and the disposal firms, respectively, earn their money that we see the relevant distinction. 47 BVER was a recycler of used oil. So far as appears, its only direct concern with the stringency of EPA's implementation of RCRA was that the regulation in suit provide a remedy for the injury it claimed to suffer from the receipt of oil contaminated by hazardous constituents. That injury was caused by precisely the environmental problem that the relevant statutory provision was designed to eradicate, and we have no basis upon which to think that the nature of BVER's business gave it an incentive to propose an interpretation of RCRA at odds with Congress's purpose. 48 Here, on the other hand, the immediate interest claimed by the disposal facilities is in avoiding liability, which may or may not coincide with the public interest in protecting human health and the environment. It may be in the public interest, for example, for disposal firms to be liable for the disposal of inadequately treated waste, but they would presumably support an interpretation of the statute that placed upon waste generators all liability for inadequate disposal. That their economic interest might, in this or another case, coincide with the congressional interest in safeguarding health and the environment, would be but happenstance; and short of resolving the merits, we have no way of determining whether this case presents that happy coincidence. Again, we are concerned with the challenger, not the challenge; here, the challenger's interest in reduced liability is so marginally related to the purpose of the statute, Clarke, 479 U.S. at 399, 107 S.Ct. at 757, that we must infer that Congress did not permit a suit at its behest. 49 Thus, while a business consumer of a contaminated substance (like BVER in HWTC II ) is an adequate proxy for the environmental interest of those whom the statute is designed to protect and is therefore a suitable challenger of agency action, a participant in the waste disposal process has interests that may be fundamentally inconsistent with the interests Congress had in mind when it enacted the statute. A waste disposal firm is therefore a peculiarly unsuitable proxy for those whom Congress intended to protect, and is therefore not within the zone of interests.