Opinion ID: 362872
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the paper industry regulations

Text: 6 The regulations at issue in this case are the result of a rulemaking process developed by the Agency over the past six years for promulgating industry-wide effluent limitations under sections 301(b) and 304(b) of the Act. See notes 1 and 2 Supra. See generally, La Pierre, Technology-Forcing and Federal Environmental Protection Statutes, 62 Iowa L.Rev. 771, 810-13 (1977). The procedures for these regulations began in early 1973 when EPA divided the American pulp and paper industry into two segments for purposes of establishing 1977 and 1983 effluent limitations. In Phase I of its rulemaking effort for the industry, it proposed, received several tiers of comments on, and promulgated 1977 and 1983 limitations for the unbleached segment of the industry, which produces unbleached pulp and paper. 39 Fed.Reg. 18742 (1974). This Court reviewed and upheld those regulations in full in 1976, and they are not in issue here. See American Paper Inst., supra. 7 Promulgation of Phase II regulations for the apparently larger, bleached segment of the paper industry did not proceed with the same dispatch as in Phase I. 3 Accordingly, along with many of EPA's responsibilities under the Act, its rulemaking for Phase II of the paper industry became the subject of law suits and settlement agreements between environmental action groups and the Agency, resulting in the establishment of court-enforced time-tables for the promulgation of each industry's limitations. See Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) v. Train, 6 E.R.C. 1033 (D.D.C.1973), Rev'd in part & remanded, 166 U.S.App.D.C. 312, 510 F.2d 692 (1975), Timetable extended on remand, see NRDC v. Costle, 183 U.S.App.D.C. 11, 17, 561 F.2d 904, 910 n.32 (1977). These efforts apparently put EPA under a judicially enforceable obligation to issue the 1977 limitations by January 30, 1976 which it chose to accomplish by promulgating those limitations separately and more quickly than their 1983 counterparts. Consequently, it is only the 1977-related regulations that are before us. 8 The actual promulgation procedures used in devising the challenged regulations were not unlike those used in Phase I and delineated in American Paper Inst., supra, 543 F.2d at 334-36. EPA commenced the 1977 part of the Phase II rulemaking process by commissioning two consulting firms in July 1973 to prepare a draft study suggesting possible industrial subcategories, as well as BPCTCA and achievable effluent reduction levels for each. About a year later, in August 1974, EPA made the draft study public and some 22 organizations, including many of the petitioners now before us, made it the target of comment and criticism. 4 Another year passed as the Agency responded to this new wave of solicited information by revising the draft report and by appending it, described as a draft Development Document, to an advance notice of proposed regulations. That notice was issued in the fall of 1975, and comments were again solicited. 40 Fed.Reg. 41300 (1975). It was followed a few months later by the issuance of a third contractor's study of the economic impact of the proposed regulations (Economic Analysis). 9 Comments on this complete package of proposals and supporting analyses were processed and reflected in Interim Final regulations published on February 19, 1976 and accompanied by revised drafts of the Development Document and Economic Analysis. The Agency's obligation to comply with the January 30, 1976 deadline accounted for this quasi-final format as well as for the relatively quick turn-around time between this and the preceding public notices. See NRDC v. Train, supra, 510 F.2d at 711. This procedure also allowed petitioners in these consolidated cases to set the judicial review mechanism in motion even as they were provided and utilized one final opportunity to urge the Agency on its own to revise the limitations before their final issuance. 10 The Agency's efforts during these intermediate stages attracted thousands of pages of public comment. The industry, moreover, was offered the opportunity to introduce further testimony at a formal hearing, but it declined. The Final Limitations issued on January 6, 1977, with final Development Document and Economic Analysis attached. These regulations, like each of the Agency's intermediate proposals during the rulemaking process, reflected significant changes generally favorable to industry in response to comments received. 11 The present litigation commenced in early 1976 with a petition for review filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit by petitioners in No. 76-1675. Subsequently, other review petitions were also filed in the Ninth Circuit but were transferred by that court to the Third Circuit under 28 U.S.C. § 2112(a). EPA then convinced the Third Circuit to transfer all of the cases to this Circuit in light of its experience with the related issues raised in the Phase I litigation, American Paper Inst., supra. This court consolidated the petitions and established briefing and oral argument schedules providing for a single presentation of the issues raised in common by all of the petitioners, as well as for supplemental presentations by individual petitioners, or groups thereof, on specialized issues. 12 Although for ease of discourse we will generally refer collectively to the challengers before us as petitioners, it is important to note that the limitations have somewhat different impacts on, and accordingly have elicited some separate challenges from, different segments of the industry. In order to understand the challenges as they reflect both the common concerns of all members, and the separate concerns of individual subcategories, of the American paper industry, we turn next to a brief discussion of the manufacturing and pollution control processes typical of the industry.
13 To make paper from trees is an old art; to do it without water pollution is a new science. In papermaking, logs or wooden chips must be ground up or cooked in one of several processes until only cellulose pulp is left. The pulp is bleached and made into various types and grades of paper. The cooking solutions and wash water that are left contain a variety of chemicals produced during cooking and other processes, including acids and large quantities of dissolved cellulose-breakdown products. Indeed, in some pulping processes, more of the wood is discarded in the waste water than is used to make paper. Appendix (App.) 2116. EPA has selected three parameters for measuring the pollutant content of the industry's effluent, all of which have been used extensively in this and other industries' measurements: total suspended solids (TSS), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and pH. 5 TSS reflects the total amount of solids in solution, while BOD reflects the amount of biodegradable material in solution, and pH measures the acidity of the solution. 6 14 EPA has divided this segment of the industry into 16 subcategories, and further subdivided it into 66 subdivisions, for the purposes of its rulemaking effort. As noted, some of petitioners' challenges concern all of the regulations for the whole industry, while other challenges are directed to regulations for particular industry subcategories. Actually, of the 16 subcategories in the whole industry, only three the three that use some form of the sulfite process have evoked particularized challenges. 7 The reaction of sulfite mill operators stems from the limitations' greater economic impact on them. 8 That impact in turn results from the fact that the sulfite process creates one of the highest pollution loads of any industrial process, and certainly the highest within the pulping industry. 9 In fact, the Act's legislative history focused in particular on injury to shellfish in rivers and bays caused by sulfite wastes. A Legislative History of the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 718-21 (1973) (hereinafter referred to as Legislative History ). Because the sulfite process is central in this case, we describe it in greater detail. 15 In the sulfite process, wooden chips are cooked in hot solutions of sulphurous acid and other chemicals. The cooking dissolves the binding agent in the wood (lignin) and also a good deal of the cellulose. The end product is cellulose pulp and an acid solution called spent sulfite liquor (SSL). There are two types of sulfite processes. In the papergrade sulfite process, which produces cellulose pulp for paper, the cellulose does not need to be very pure, and moderate steps suffice for cooking and separating pulp from SSL. In the dissolving sulfite process, aimed at making the raw cellulose base for materials such as cellophane and rayon, the cellulose must be pure, so the cooking and separation of the SSL are more complete and extra bleaching of the pulp is performed. 16 The sulfite process results in SSL and other potential pollution solutions containing acids, dissolved cellulose break-down products, and many types of organic compounds. These solutions receive various kinds of waste treatment. SSL is evaporated and burned in SSL recovery, eliminating the water pollution potential and producing usable heat and sometimes reusable chemicals. 10 The non-SSL waste solutions are pumped into sedimentation tanks where some of the suspended solids settle out of solution. The solutions are then pumped into other tanks and lagoons for secondary or biological treatment, in which bacteria are grown in the solutions to feed on and break down the waste. Eventually, the water is drained from the bacteria-laden solutions by a variety of methods. After draining, the caked solid or sludge that is left is incinerated or used for landfill.