Opinion ID: 722370
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: IMPA's Substantive Claim

Text: 57 IMPA contends that the EPA was arbitrary and capricious in denying IMPA's new facility allowances simply because IMPA did not comply with the deadlines established in the July 1991 Notice. IMPA does not challenge the EPA's authority to define when and how a utility must request allowances for its units under the Clean Air Act. Instead, IMPA argues that we should not interpret the July 1991 Notice to have applied to units, like the ones at issue, that were still under construction in 1991. 58 Although we normally extend great deference to an agency's interpretation of its own regulations, see, e.g., Consarc Corp. v. Office of Foreign Assets Control, 71 F.3d 909, 914 (D.C.Cir.1995), IMPA observes that our precedent has refused to extend this deference to an unclear agency policy that would, if applied, result in a drastic penalty to the private party. See General Elec. Co. v. EPA, 53 F.3d 1324, 1328-29 (D.C.Cir.1995); Radio Athens, Inc. v. FCC, 401 F.2d 398, 404 (D.C.Cir.1968). Instead, in these drastic cases, we have generally accepted the threatened petitioner's reasonable interpretation of the agency's policy, see, e.g., Satellite Broadcasting Co., Inc., v. FCC, 824 F.2d 1, 3-4 (D.C.Cir.1987); Gates & Fox Co., Inc. v. OSHRC, 790 F.2d 154, 156 (D.C.Cir.1986), unless the petitioner, through a good-faith review of the statements issued by the agency, should have been able to determine, with ascertainable certainty, the criteria that the agency expected the petitioner to satisfy. General Elec. Co., 53 F.3d at 1329 (citation and internal quotations omitted). Consequently, IMPA contends that we should accept its interpretation that the Notice did not apply to its units because a decision to deny all allowances to its 1992 units would constitute an unfairly severe penalty, because the Notice was not clear, and because IMPA's interpretation, that the Notice did not apply to units not yet in operation, was reasonable. 59 Assuming that the loss of all allowances would be a drastic penalty, and that the scope of the July 1991 Notice was not clear, we still cannot conclude that IMPA's interpretation of the July 1991 Notice was reasonable in light of the contents and context of that Notice. The text of the Notice specified that the EPA would complete the final version of the allowance database by December 31, 1991. See, e.g., 56 Fed.Reg. at 33,279. The Notice, however, also implied that it contained the last directions the EPA would issue prior to the publication of this final database. See id. A party interpreting the July 1991 Notice at the time of the Notice thus could either conclude that the Notice applied to 1992 units, or that the EPA had decided to offer no guidance at all as to how these units should seek allocations prior to the imminent publication of the finalized database. 60 The latter reading was not reasonable. No sensible party could have thought that the EPA would specify 36 types of information necessary for an existing unit to add to or correct the data to be used for calculating its allowance without saying one word about what a 1992 unit had to submit. Yet, that is what IMPA claims. Accordingly, we conclude that, given these facts, IMPA was unreasonable to think the July Notice did not apply to 1992 units. 61 Having concluded that IMPA could not have reasonably thought that the July 1991 Notice did not apply to 1992 units, we must deny IMPA's claim. IMPA clearly did not meet the standards of the July Notice. IMPA did not submit available information on the unit--such as the plant name or certain technical or design data--by September 3, 1991. Nor did IMPA demonstrate that this or other data was unavailable as of September 3, 1991, which, under the July 1991 Notice, would have allowed IMPA to submit the data until December 1991. Nor did IMPA even submit any data to the EPA by December 1991. In short, IMPA did not comply with any aspect or reasonable interpretation of the July 1991 Notice. As that Notice must have applied to IMPA's 1992 units, we cannot overrule the agency's decision not to award these units any allowances.