Opinion ID: 786772
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: NEI's Challenge to the Ground-Water Standard

Text: 97 The Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade association representing the nuclear energy industry, also takes issue with part 197. Specifically, it challenges EPA's inclusion of a separate ground-water-protection standard. See 40 C.F.R. § 197.30. As NEI sees it, requiring DOE to demonstrate compliance with a distinct ground-water standard is unnecessary because the rule's individual-protection standard already limits overall radiation exposure, including exposure received through contaminated ground water.
98 Before addressing the merits of NEI's challenge, we must consider EPA's claim that the organization lacks standing. To maintain its petition for review, NEI, like the environmental petitioners, must demonstrate that it satisfies both associational and prudential standing requirements. See Hunt, 432 U.S. at 343, 97 S.Ct. at 2441 (articulating the standing requirements for associations); Reytblatt v. United States Nuclear Regulatory Comm'n, 105 F.3d 715, 720 (D.C.Cir.1997) (stating that the Hobbs Act, which authorizes [a]ny party aggrieved to challenge final agency orders, 28 U.S.C. § 2344 (2000), requires parties to demonstrate both constitutional and prudential standing). 99 NEI claims that it has associational standing because part 197's ground-water standard will complicate and delay the completion of the Yucca Mountain repository. According to NEI, EPA's addition of a separate ground-water requirement will force the Energy Department to expend additional resources - both time and money — which will in turn inflict concrete harm on NEI members who, under the NWPA, not only bear the cost of storing their spent nuclear fuel until the Yucca Mountain repository is constructed, but also foot the repository's bill through fee assessments paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund. See 42 U.S.C. § 10131(a)(5) (stating that nuclear waste generators have the primary responsibility to provide for, and the responsibility to pay the costs of, the interim storage of [nuclear] waste ... until [it] is accepted by the Secretary of Energy for disposal); id. § 10222 (requiring nuclear waste generators to pay fees into the Nuclear Waste Fund to finance the building and operation of the Government's underground repository). Affidavits submitted by NEI state (1) that nuclear power plants spend millions of dollars constructing and operating storage facilities, see Decl. of Eileen M. Supko ¶¶ 16, 18-21, and (2) that imposition of a ground-water standard will require DOE to undertake additional work at the characterization, design, and licensing stages - which will both delay the date on which the Energy Department will take stored waste off NEI members' hands and increase repository costs, see Decl. of Steven P. Kraft ¶¶ 8-11. 100 Disputing these contentions, EPA argues that the separate ground-water standard imposes no additional cost on the repository program because the data and analysis required to assess compliance with the ground-water standard are the same as those required for the individual-protection standard. See United States Environmental Protection Agency, Public Health and Environmental Radiation Protection Standards for Yucca Mountain, Nevada —Final 40 CFR 197: Evaluation of Potential Economic Impacts of 40 CFR Part 197 (Economic Impact Assessment) at ES-1 to ES-2, 6-5, 7-1 (June 2001); see also Decl. of Ronald A. Milner ¶ 10 ([I]t is speculative whether compliance with the final EPA ground-water standard would increase costs to the [Nuclear Waste] Fund so as to require an increase to the ... per kilowatt-hour fee in the future or whether compliance with the standard would cause delays in the construction of a repository....). Moreover, the agency argues that NEI's requested relief — striking the ground-water standard from part 197 — will not redress the organization's alleged injury because, with or without a separate ground-water standard, DOE will retain the same repository design. 101 Based on the record before us, we conclude that NEI has standing to bring its petition for review. As to injury-in-fact, we have no doubt that delaying the opening of the Yucca Mountain repository would inflict concrete harm on NEI members, for as NEI's affidavit explains, NEI members expend substantial sums to operate their own storage facilities. See Supko Decl. ¶¶ 16, 19. We likewise think NEI has shown a substantial probability, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, 330 F.3d at 542, that the addition of a separate ground-water standard will cause these delays and that the organization's requested relief will likely redress this harm. As NEI points out, part 197 requires DOE to demonstrate compliance with a separate ground-water standard in NRC licensing proceedings, see 40 C.F.R. §§ 197.13, 197.30 — a requirement that both DOE and NAS found could complicate the licensing process, see Letter from Lake H. Barrett, to United States Environmental Protection Agency at B-4 ([T]he proposed separate, single-pathway, ground-water standard could, depending on how it was implemented, prohibitively complicate licensing....); Letter from Michael Kavanaugh, Chair and John Ahearne, Vice Chair, Board on Radioactive Waste Management, National Research Council, to Carol M. Browner, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency 11 (Nov. 26, 1999) [hereinafter NAS Comments] (Such separate [ground-water] limits may greatly complicate the licensing process....); see also Kraft Decl. ¶ 10 (asserting that during the NRC licensing process, DOE and NRC will have to spend time and resources ensuring that the repository complies with the separate ground-water standard). Moreover, although EPA vigorously disputes NEI's claim that the ground-water standard will increase the cost of repository design and construction, the agency says virtually nothing about possible delays in the licensing process. Given this record, NEI has carried its burden of satisfying Article III's irreducible constitutional minimum. Finally, pursuing litigation to speed the licensing of a permanent repository is germane to the organization's purpose[,] and ... neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit. Hunt, 432 U.S. at 343, 97 S.Ct. at 2441. EPA never suggests otherwise. 102 To demonstrate prudential standing, NEI must show that its members'grievance [s] ... arguably fall within the zone of interests protected or regulated by the statutory provision... invoked in the suit. Bennett, 520 U.S. at 162, 117 S.Ct. at 1161. This test is not meant to be especially demanding. Indeed, a petitioner is outside the statute's zone of interests only if [the petitioner's] interests are so marginally related to or inconsistent with the purposes implicit in the statute that it cannot reasonably be assumed that Congress intended to permit the suit. Nat'l Petrochemical & Refiners Ass'n v. EPA, 287 F.3d 1130, 1147 (D.C.Cir.2002) (per curiam) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Furthermore, there does not have to be an indication of congressional purpose to benefit the would-be [petitioner]. Nat'l Credit Union Admin. v. First Nat'l Bank & Trust Co., 522 U.S. 479, 492, 118 S.Ct. 927, 935, 140 L.Ed.2d 1 (1998) (internal quotation marks omitted). To analyze prudential standing, we look to the particular provision of law upon which the [petitioner] relies, Bennett, 520 U.S. at 175-76, 117 S.Ct. at 1167-68; Congress's purposes in enacting the overall statutory scheme are relevant only insofar as they may help reveal its purpose in enacting the particular provision, Grand Council of the Crees v. FERC, 198 F.3d 950, 956 (D.C.Cir.2000). 103 EPA contends that NEI falls outside the zone of interests that EnPA section 801(a) protects or regulates because that provision was designed to safeguard public health and safety, not to minimize regulatory burdens. Although EPA is correct that Congress enacted section 801(a) to protect the public from radiation releases at Yucca Mountain, we think it equally obvious that Congress intended section 801(a) to facilitate construction of a permanent nuclear waste repository — the very interest that NEI advances here. As evinced in the NWPA and later in EnPA, Congress viewed EPA standards as a basic prerequisite for developing an underground repository. Indeed, because section 801(a) focuses exclusively on a disposal facility at Yucca Mountain — the statute regulates no preexisting environmental or health threat — the required EPA standards would have no purpose whatsoever were repository construction not to move forward. Finally, section 801's requirement that EPA promulgate health and safety standards no later than one year after receiving NAS's recommendations further demonstrates Congress's intent to move the federal government expeditiously toward licensing and operating a repository at Yucca Mountain. In light of this congressional purpose, NEI's interests arguably fall within section 801(a)'s zone of interests, thus giving the organization prudential standing to pursue its petition for review. We therefore turn to the merits. 104
105 NEI argues that EPA's inclusion of a separate ground-water standard conflicts with EnPA's plain language in three ways. First, NEI claims that by relying on the critical organ dose methodology, EPA's ground-water standard violates EnPA section 801(a) because, according to the association, that section authorizes EPA to promulgate only standards that protect individual members of the public based on the effective dose equivalent (EDE) methodology. EnPA section 801(a)(1) contains three sentences: The first states that the Administrator shall, based upon and consistent with the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, promulgate, by rule, public health and safety standards for protection of the public from releases from radioactive materials stored or disposed of in the repository at the Yucca Mountain site; the second sentence, emphasized by NEI, then says, [s]uch standards shall prescribe the maximum annual effective dose equivalent to individual members of the public from releases to the accessible environment from radioactive materials stored or disposed of in the repository; and the third sentence concludes, [t]he standards shall be promulgated not later than 1 year after the Administrator receives the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences ... and shall be the only such standards applicable to the Yucca Mountain site. 106 Parsing this language, NEI argues that the provision's second sentence — [s]uch standards shall prescribe the maximum annual effective dose equivalent to individual members of the public - defines the scope of the public health and safety standards that the first sentence requires EPA to promulgate. Therefore, NEI argues, in executing Congress's mandate to issue public health standards, the agency may promulgate only EDE-based safety rules that protect the public, not rules using a different methodology that protect ground water. If Congress had thought of EDE standards as merely a subset of EPA's overall public health standards, NEI continues, then it would have used the word include in section 801(a)(1)'s second sentence, not prescribe. NEI also claims that the third sentence's phrase, shall be the only such standards applicable to the Yucca Mountain site, limits EPA's authority to promulgation of the EDE-based standards referenced in the preceding sentence. In other words, each time Congress used the term standards, NEI argues, it meant only the EDE standards described in section 801(a)(1)'s second sentence. 107 In Chevron terms, the precise question presented by NEI's challenge is this: Did Congress clearly authorize EPA to promulgate more than just individual-protection, EDEbased standards? Unlike NEI, we think it did. To begin with, section 801(a)(1)'s first sentence expressly requires EPA to develop public health and safety standards — not just EDE-based standards. The second sentence's directive — that EPA's standards shall prescribe the maximum annual effective dose equivalent to individual members of the public — neither restates nor defines the first sentence's directive that the agency promulgate public health and safety standards for protection of the public. Rather, the two sentences, read together, require EPA to establish a set of health and safety standards, at least one of which must include an EDE-based, individual-protection standard. Indeed, NEI's reading of section 801(a)(1) would render much of that provision's first sentence superfluous, for if Congress had intended to delegate to EPA authority to adopt an EDE standard only, it would not have directed the agency to promulgate public health and safety standards for protection of the public. For essentially the same reason, section 801(a)(1)'s third sentence, which provides that [t]he standards ... shall be the only such standards applicable to the Yucca Mountain site, offers no support for NEI's position. As we have explained, Congress required EPA to promulgate public health and safety standards, not just EDE-based standards. Therefore, the limitation contained in section 801(a)(1)'s third sentence cannot plausibly be read as referring to the second sentence's EDE-based standards. 108 NEI also calls our attention to EnPA section 801(a)(3), which provides that [t]he provisions of this section shall apply to the Yucca Mountain site, rather than any other authority of the Administrator to set generally applicable standards for radiation protection. According to NEI, this section precludes the Government's interpretation of the first sentence of (a)(1) as giving [it] general authority to prescribe any health and safety standards. Oral Argument Tr. at 73. This argument begs the question: Precisely what authority does section 801(a)(1) delegate to the agency? The answer, as we have just explained, is that section 801 authorizes EPA to promulgate not merely EDE-based standards, but rather  public health and safety standards for protection of the public. 109 For its second statutory argument, NEI, echoing Nevada's challenge to the 10,000-year compliance period, contends that part 197's ground-water standard violates EnPA's requirement that EPA's rule be based upon and consistent with the findings and recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences. EnPA § 801(a)(1). As NEI sees it, EPA impermissibly promulgated a separate ground-water standard, like the one in the generic part 191 standards, despite what NEI regards as NAS's conclusion that adding such a standard to regulate Yucca Mountain waste disposal is unnecessary and lacks scientific foundation. 110 Although we concluded earlier in this opinion that EPA violated section 801's based upon and consistent with requirement by adopting a 10,000-year compliance period, see supra at 1266-73, we reach the opposite conclusion here because NAS treated the compliance-period and ground-water issues quite differently. Whereas NAS expressly rejected a 10,000-year compliance period, it said nothing at all about the need to add a separate ground-water standard. The NAS Report states: 111 40 CFR 191 includes a provision to protect ground water from contamination with radioactive materials that is separate from the 40 CFR 191 individual-dose limits. These provisions have been added to 40 CFR 191 to bring it into conformity with the Safe Drinking Water Act, and have the goal of protecting ground water as a resource. We make no such recommendation, and have based our recommendations on those requirements necessary to limit risks to individuals. 112 NAS REPORT at 121. In other words, the Academy never even considered a ground-water standard. As EPA explained: 113 In its report, NAS did not recommend specifically that we include a separate ground water protection provision in our environmental protection standards for Yucca Mountain. Neither, however, did NAS state that we should not include such a provision.... Our decision to include separate ground water standards is a policy decision that we make pursuant to our statutory authority under the Energy Policy Act. 114 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,107; see also Response to Comments at 6-16 (stating that the ground-water standard is not inconsistent with NAS's findings because NAS clearly identified the ground-water pathway as one of the significant pathways of exposure and because the Academy did not make a specific recommendation that EPA either include or not include a separate ground-water protection provision). Put another way, NAS made no finding or recommendation that EPA's regulation could fail to be based upon and consistent with. We thus agree with EPA that section 801 left it free to add a ground-water standard. 115 NEI points out that the Academy sharply criticized EPA's ground-water standard in a letter submitted during part 197's notice-and-comment period. See NAS Comments at 10-12. But EnPA does not require EPA to conform its rule to comments that NAS submits during the rulemaking process. Instead, EnPA section 801(a)(1) requires EPA to base its standards on the Academy's findings and recommendations. EnPA section 801(a)(2), in turn, requires EPA to obtain those findings through a formal study conducted by the Academy: [T]he [EPA] Administrator shall contract with the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study to provide ... findings and recommendations on reasonable standards for protection of the public health and safety.... EnPA § 801(a)(2) (emphasis added). Reading these provisions together, we think it clear that Congress directed EPA to conform its rule to those  findings and recommendations that appear in the NAS Report. See Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 570, 115 S.Ct. 1061, 1067, 131 L.Ed.2d 1 (1995) ([I]dentical words used in different parts of the same act are intended to have the same meaning.). Indeed, NAS itself stated that its  [f]indings and recommendations to EPA on the technical bases for Yucca Mountain standards were provided in the [NAS Report]. NAS Comments at 2. Given that report's silence on the need for a separate ground-water standard, EPA's decision to add distinct ground-water protections rests on a permissible construction of EnPA section 801. See Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843, 104 S.Ct. at 2782. 116 NEI's final statutory argument requires little discussion. Pointing out that EnPA directs EPA to protect the public from releases from radioactive materials stored or disposed of in the repository at the Yucca Mountain site, EnPA § 801(a)(1), NEI argues that the regulation impermissibly applies not just to releases, but to preexisting background radiation as well. It is true, as NEI observes, that the ground-water standard caps the permissible level of radiation contamination by requiring inclusion of natural background radiation in the calculation of [c]ombined radium-226 and radium-228 as well as [g]ross alpha activity. 40 C.F.R. § 197.30 (Table 1); see also 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,114 (requiring that DOE combine certain estimated releases from the Yucca Mountain disposal system with the pre-existing naturally occurring or man-made radionuclides to determine the concentration in the representative volume [of ground water]). Part 197, however, does not regulate background radiation. See 40 C.F.R. § 197.30 (requiring DOE to demonstrate that  releases of radionuclides from waste in the Yucca Mountain disposal system into the accessible environment will not cause the level of radioactivity ... to exceed the limits in ... Table 1. (emphasis added)). As EPA explains, the rule requires only that DOE take background levels into account when measuring permissible releases of radionuclides from the repository. See id. (Table 1). Therefore, part 197 could not possibly run afoul of EnPA's focus on released radiation.
117 NEI also attacks EPA's ground-water standard as arbitrary and capricious. Part 197 requires DOE to show that the level of radioactivity in the ground water outside the designated controlled area will not exceed the maximum contaminant levels for radionuclides that the agency established under the Safe Drinking Water Act. See id. ; 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,106. Challenging these MCL limits, NEI claims that their underlying critical organ dose methodology rests on obsolete science, yields erratic health risks beyond the high and low limits of EPA's risk range, and conflicts with other federal radiation-protection standards. NEI advances a number of highly complex scientific arguments in support of these attacks, but we need not address them here because we rejected the same arguments last year in City of Waukesha v. EPA. 118 In City of Waukesha, we denied NEI's challenge to EPA's Safe Drinking Water Act regulations, finding the agency's chosen methodology for its beta/photon MCLs consistent with the SDWA's best available science requirement and reasonable under the APA. See 320 F.3d at 255-57. Specifically, we saw nothing unreasonable about EPA's assertion that [its] approach was consistent with the `best available science,' and nothing arbitrary about its decision to [use older MCL standards] under these circumstances. Id. at 256. NEI's obsolete science claim therefore cannot prevail here. Nor can we accept NEI's second argument — that EPA acted arbitrarily by failing to choose a methodology for the Yucca Mountain site that would yield consistent risk levels — because City of Waukesha upheld EPA's decision to use the selected MCLs despite their failure to provide uniform protection levels. See id. at 256-57 (concluding that the agency acted reasonably in declining to promulgate uniform standards because risk variations in virtually all cases were confined to the acceptable range). NEI's third argument — that EPA's Yucca rule conflicts with other federal radiation-protection standards —likewise founders in light of City of Waukesha, which concluded that EPA's MCL standards relied on prevailing federal radiation guidance. See id. at 255-56. Finally, even if City of Waukesha had not disposed of this issue and even were there some inconsistency between part 197's ground-water standard and other official radiation-protection guidance, NEI has nonetheless failed to show why any such inconsistency would make EPA's use of these standards at Yucca unreasonable. See id. at 248 (We may reject an agency's choice of scientific model only when the model bears no rational relationship to the characteristics of the data to which it is applied. (internal quotation marks omitted)). 119 NEI also contends that EPA acted arbitrarily by justifying its decision to adopt a ground-water standard on cost grounds without first conducting a cost-benefit analysis. The preamble to part 197's final version states that [b]ecause of the expenses and difficulties associated with remediation of contaminated ground water, it is prudent and cost-effective to prevent the occurrence of such contamination. 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,106. In our view, however, EPA adequately explained its reasons for adopting the ground-water standard: Not only did the agency conclude (unremarkably) that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but it explained that adding a ground-water standard would produce other salutary effects, i.e., encourag[ing] a robust containment and isolation design that will not result in unacceptable contamination during the regulatory time frame. Id. at 32,108; see also Response to Comments at 6-12 (We believe that ground-water protection standards will confer greater protection to aquatic or biological communities [than an individual-protection standard alone] by limiting the contamination of ground water that would discharge to the surface, such as springs or seep areas.). 120 Finally, NEI contends that EPA acted unreasonably by regulating ground water with MCLs that were designed to apply at the tap, i.e., after treatment. But even if the MCLs were intended to apply at the tap in the SDWA context, NEI gives us no basis for second-guessing EPA's decision to import these standards to the Yucca Mountain site. As we have explained, EPA has offered an entirely rational reason for protecting water resources while they remain underground: Preventing ground water contamination is more cost-effective and environmentally protective, and applying MCL standards will encourage a robust containment and isolation design. See 66 Fed. Reg. at 32,106-08. By contrast, if the repository contaminates local ground water, future generations will have to decide whether to forego use of the ground-water resource or to expend substantial resources to clean [it] up.... This would violate one of the primary principles in radioactive waste management... that radioactive waste disposal should place no undue burdens upon future generations. Response to Comments at 6-13.