Opinion ID: 609718
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Interpreting Narrative Criteria to Create Chemical-specific Limitations

Text: 8 To address these difficulties, the EPA promulgated the regulation under attack here, 40 C.F.R. § 122.44(d)(1)(vi). That rule requires NPDES permit writers to use one of three mechanisms to translate relevant narrative criteria into chemical-specific effluent limitations. Specifically, the regulation provides that a permit writer must establish effluent limits from narrative criteria by using (1) a calculated numeric water quality criterion derived from such tools as a proposed state numeric criterion or an explicit state policy or regulation interpreting its narrative water quality criterion; (2) the EPA recommended numeric water quality criteria, but only on a case-by-case basis and supplemented where necessary by other relevant information; and/or (3) assuming certain conditions are met, limitations on the discharge of an indicator parameter, i.e., a different pollutant also found in the point source's effluent. 3 9 We employ familiar principles in reviewing the disputed regulation. Unless we find that the EPA's rule contravenes the unambiguously conveyed intent of Congress as to this precise issue, we will reject the petitioners' challenge so long as the regulation appears designed to implement the statutory scheme by reasonable means. See generally Chevron USA Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 843-44, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2781-83, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). 10 In arguing that the EPA's rule flunks the first prong of this test, the petitioners highlight the alleged tension between the regulation's delegation of authority to a permit writer to interpret narrative criteria in each particular case and the CWA system, outlined above, in which generally applicable water quality standards are adopted by the states only after public input and the weighing of the competing policy considerations set out in the Act. In function if not in form, petitioners argue, the EPA regulation requires states to cede their standard-setting authority to an unaccountable bureaucrat: Under the EPA regulations challenged here ... water quality standards (or at least the required 'criteria' portion of water quality standards) are created on a case-by-case basis for individual discharges by an EPA or state permit writer.... Petitioners' Brief at 24. 11 We are unpersuaded. As we understand it, the regulation does not supplant--either formally or functionally--the CWA's basic statutory framework for the creation of water quality standards; rather, it provides alternative mechanisms through which previously adopted water quality standards containing narrative criteria may be applied to create effective limitations on effluent emissions. As long as narrative criteria are permissible--and the petitioners do not contend that they are not--and must be enforced through limitations in particular permits, a permit writer will inevitably have some discretion in applying the criteria to a particular case. The general language of narrative criteria can only take the permit writer so far in her task. Of course, that does not mean that the language of a narrative criterion does not cabin the permit writer's authority at all; rather, it is an acknowledgement that the writer will have to engage in some kind of interpretation to determine what chemical-specific numeric criteria--and thus what effluent limitations--are most consistent with the state's intent as evinced in its generic standard. The EPA's new regulation merely requires that permit writers engage in this task to create chemical-specific limitations on discharges of pollutants and gives those writers three tools with which to do this work in a fairly regularized fashion. See 54 Fed.Reg. 23,868, 23,877 (1989); see also id. at 23,875 (State narrative water quality criteria provide the legal basis for establishing effluent limits under paragraphs (d)(1)(v) and (d)(1)(vi) of today's regulations.). The regulation thus seems to provide an eminently reasonable means of effectuating the intent of the previously adopted narrative criteria as well as Congress' own intent, made explicit in section 301 of the CWA, that all state water quality standards be enforced through meaningful limitations in individual NPDES permits. 12 Petitioners' related argument that the regulation clashes with Congress' intent to give the states the leading role in creating water quality standards also fails, despite petitioners' highlighting of two additional factors they say expose improper federal usurpation of state prerogatives. First, they note that one of the three alternative interpretive mechanisms allowed under the regulation relies on the recommended federal numeric criteria to determine what a state narrative criterion means. But that option is of course only one of three choices enumerated in the regulation. See id. at 23,876-77 (EPA is not requiring states to use EPA's water quality criteria. EPA is offering the water quality criteria as one of three options available to the state for interpreting and applying narrative water quality criteria.). Moreover, the option in question does not require state or federal permit writers to apply the federal guidelines whole hog; the federal standard is to be employed on a case-by-case basis, and may be supplemented where necessary by other relevant information. 40 C.F.R. § 122.44(d)(1)(vi)(B). Thus, this alternative requires a permit writer to tailor the federal standard to any relevant site-specific circumstances in order to effectuate the intent of a particular state narrative criterion. Cf. Simpson Tacoma Kraft Co. v. Department of Ecology, 119 Wash.2d 640, 835 P.2d 1030 (1992) (invalidating, under state law, the state's adoption of a federal numeric criterion for dioxin that the state applied without considering site-specific factors). In sum, we are not persuaded that the regulation's inclusion--as one of three choices--of an interpretive mechanism that uses the recommended federal criteria only as a starting point impermissibly alters the statutorily created balance of state and federal power. 13 Petitioners' second argument based on federalism concerns stresses the fact that in the handful of states where the federal government still runs the NPDES permit program, a federal permit writer is now charged with interpreting the state standard. Of course, federal writers had been performing this function long before the promulgation of the regulation at issue here. Moreover, the CWA provides states with ample legal recourse if the federal employee strays from the state's understanding of its yardstick. Specifically, under section 401 of the Act, a state may refuse to certify a permit--and thus stop its issuance--if the permit limitations do not comply with the state's interpretation of its water quality standards. See 33 U.S.C. § 1341(a)(1) 4 ; see also In Re Ina Road Water Pollution Control Facility, NPDES Appeal No. 84-12, slip opinion at 3-4 (1985) (where state reasonably certifies a particular limitation as consistent with its water quality standards, EPA may not mandate more stringent limitations); cf. 40 C.F.R. § 124.55(e) (Review and appeals of limitations and conditions attributable to State certification shall be made through the applicable procedures of the State....). The state's ability to deny certification ultimately assures that, under the new regulatory regime as well as under the old, it has sufficient firepower to insist that its standards are accurately interpreted by federal employees. 14 Petitioners' final argument of substance against the EPA's rule derives from section 303(c)(2)(B) of the CWA, 33 U.S.C. § 1313(c)(2)(B). 5 That subsection, enacted as part of the 1987 Water Quality Amendments, required states, in their next triennial reviews, to formulate numeric criteria for certain priority toxic pollutants listed in the EPA guidelines. If numeric criteria for those listed toxics were not available, the provision mandated that states enact criteria based on biological monitoring techniques. The petitioners claim that this amendment would have been totally unnecessary if Congress thought that the EPA had the authority to interpret preexisting narrative criteria into numeric criteria. Not so. First, section 303's directives say nothing about chemicals other than the listed toxics. There are thus many pollutants of concern for which section 303 does not require numeric criteria. Additionally, even as to the listed chemicals for which states had to adopt numeric criteria, the regulation at issue complements section 303 quite nicely. The regulation allowed permit writers to put in place new chemical-specific limitations through interpretation of existing narrative criteria until states had an opportunity to adopt specific numeric criteria--which would of course avoid the inevitable marginal imprecision inherent in the interpretive task required under the EPA regulation--in the course of their next triennial review. See 54 Fed.Reg. at 23,877 (describing the EPA regulation as an interim measure until states formulate numeric criteria). Although, as the petitioners point out, Congress did not expressly authorize use of such an interim measure, the agency's initiative seems a preeminent example of gap-filling in the interest of a continuous and cohesive regulatory regime; the EPA has plugged an obvious hole in the CWA scheme in a way that is both reasonable and consistent with (1) Congress' long-standing directive that permits contain limitations necessary to meet all water quality standards and (2) Congress' more recently expressed preference, evident in section 303(c)(2)(B), for numeric criteria. In sum, we see no problem with the agency's efforts. 6 15