Court Opinion

ID: 9479562
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:21:40.132385+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:07.002052
License: Public Domain

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and concurring in the result:
I concur in all of the majority’s per cu-riam opinion but its purported resolution of the Chevron “Step II” question concerning the reasonableness of BDAT treatment standards as a construction or application *372of RCRA. While CMA’s “Step I” challenge to EPA’s construction of RCRA section 3004(m) — i.e., whether the statute “clearly forecloses” the approach charted by the agency, Maj. op. 361-62 — was available for final judicial review, I do not believe it proper for the court to have reached the Step II question as to whether the selection of BDAT treatment levels was “a reasonable policy choice for the agency to make.” Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Res. Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837, 845, 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2783, 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984). In the absence of a valid agency explanation as to how it has attempted to accommodate the competing interests Congress has committed to its care via RCRA, it is in my view inappropriate (perhaps analytically impossible) even to address, much less resolve, CMA’s challenge to the reasonableness of EPA’s treatment regime under the statute. Because the court today remands for further EPA explanation of its adoption of BDAT standards, the majority’s Chevron Step II discussion should be considered dicta.
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that Congress did not have a “specific intention” that technology-based treatment standards not be employed in implementation of section 3004(m), see Chevron, 467 U.S. at 845, 104 S.Ct. at 2783, and to that extent I further agree that the questions of statutory interpretation presented by CMA’s petition are appropriately resolved under Step II of Chevron. My reading of the critical statutory language requiring EPA to set treatment standards so that “threats to human health and the environment are minimized” suggests a threshold ambiguity as to whether Congress intended the agency, insofar as it was technologically possible, to eliminate any statistically discernible risk to human health and the environment, or whether Congress intended there to be some sort of balancing. The dictionary definition of the word “minimize,” see Maj. op. at 361, provides no ready answer to this question; a command that the agency “reduce” a threat “to the smallest possible degree” leaves open the factors that the agency can account for in determining what is, in fact, possible (or feasible?) under the circumstances.
We are also in agreement over the significance that EPA must attach to actual or reasonably perceived “threats to human health and the environment” in the course of fleshing out section 3004(m)’s meaning. As the majority notes, EPA is not
free ... to require generators to treat their waste beyond the point at which there is no ‘threat’ to human health or the environment. That Congress’s concern in adopting § 3004(m) was with health and the environment would necessarily make it unreasonable for EPA to promulgate treatment standards wholly without regard to whether there might be a threat to man or nature.
Maj. op. at 362. EPA is instead obliged to explain how its selection of BDAT treatment standards — which, as CMA notes, will require generators to treat certain wastes to levels of purity beyond those EPA requires for drinking water — is guided by RCRA’s concern with health and environmental threats. But the majority persuasively demonstrates that EPA’s explanation in the Final Rule falls woefully shy of this mark as a matter of administrative law, leaving the court without any hint whatsoever as to EPA’s theory of the compatibility of the Final Rule with RCRA’s purposes. Under these circumstances, resolution of the statutory questions confronting the court, at least those belonging to Step II of Chevron, is an improper exercise of judicial creativity.
In order to conclude — as the majority does — that the accommodation of competing RCRA policies reflected in the agency’s treatment regulation is “one that Congress would have sanctioned,” United States v. Shimer, 367 U.S. 374, 383, 81 S.Ct. 1554, 1560, 6 L.Ed.2d 908 (1961) (quoted in Chevron, 467 U.S. at 845, 104 S.Ct. at 2783), the court necessarily must determine that the approach is “rational and consistent with the statute.” NLRB v. United Food & Comm’l Workers U., 484 U.S. 112, 108 S.Ct. 413, 421, 98 L.Ed.2d 429 (1987). This requires a determination that the agency has fashioned its approach in reliance on *373considerations made relevant by Congress under the substantive statute, which in turn requires an examination of the agency’s stated reasons for adopting the challenged course. See, e.g., AFL-CIO v. Brock, 835 F.2d 912, 917 (D.C.Cir.1987) (equating Chevron’s second step with arbitrary and capricious review of agency policies); NRDC v. EPA, 824 F.2d 1146, 1163 (D.C.Cir.1987) (striking down agency statutory interpretation based on unreasonable “application of [relevant statutory] factors”); see also Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843, 104 S.Ct. at 2782 (requiring affirmance of administrative statutory construction if interpretation is a “reasonable policy choice for the agency to make”). The critical inquiry, as such, in the court’s Chevron Step II inquiry is “whether the agency has advanced what the Chevron Court called ‘a reasonable explanation for its conclusion that the regulations serve the ... objectives in question.’ ” Continental Air Lines v. Dep’t of Transp., 843 F.2d 1444, 1452 (D.C.Cir.1988) (quoting Chevron, 467 U.S. at 863, 104 S.Ct. at 2791) (emphasis added).
EPA’s explanation in the instant case, however, is utterly devoid of any rationale whatsoever for the agency’s statutory construction or its policy choice. As the court observes, EPA’s intentions in promulgating treatment standards are “so shrouded in mist that for this court to say that we could discern its outlines would be as illogical as the agency’s explanation in the Final Rule itself.” Maj. op. at 366. I would go further: I think it doubtful that EPA attempted at all to explain its presumptive view that the employment of BDAT treatment standards across the board would reasonably serve congressional intent. For after observing in the Final Rule that the plain language and legislative history of RCRA do not squarely preclude a technology-based approach, EPA failed to indicate what statutory policies tipped the balance in favor of that approach as opposed to the initial health-screening levels announced in the Proposed Rule. Before the court can determine that “the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute,” Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843, 104 S.Ct. at 2782, the agency must explain how it has translated RCRA into its treatment standards regulation.
The majority’s Chevron Step II analysis itself convincingly illustrates how important a role the agency’s explanation of its policy accommodation plays in post-Chevron federal judicial review of agency statutory interpretation. Nowhere in its discussion does the majority address the agency’s view of the way in which the BDAT regime serves RCRA’s purposes; because the agency offered no such view, this should not be surprising. This part of the majority’s opinion is instead devoted exclusively to the petitioner’s objection that, with respect to certain solvents and dioxins, BDAT treatment levels will result in treatment to “below established levels of hazard.” See Maj. op. at 362. The majority responds to CMA’s argument by pointing out that none of the “established levels” to which CMA refers was developed under a statutory standard requiring minimization of “threats to human health and the environment.” But EPA did not say that. We have before us no indication, as the majority later observes, that EPA was driven away from “established” health-screening levels on the basis of the asserted incom-parability of the statutory standards under which those levels were determined. Nor, as the majority later notes as well, see Maj. op. at 365-66, is there any indication that EPA was impelled toward technology-based levels because of the “long-term uncertainties associated with land disposal” Congress identified in RCRA. 42 U.S.C. § 6924(d)(1)(A). The majority’s treatment of CMA’s — as opposed to EPA’s — analysis at best suggests that CMA’s approach is not compelled by the legislative text, a proposition relevant only to Chevron’s first step.
Indeed, the majority’s discussion of the reasonableness of EPA’s interpretation of the statute necessarily proceeds without reference to an agency interpretation because no such construction exists.1 One is *374left to wonder how the majority can give deference to a statutory construction (or an explanation as to how an agency iniative is consistent with the statute) that nowhere appears in the Final Rule. The majority’s Chevron Step II analysis, in my opinion, is nothing more than an advisory opinion to the effect that were the court presented with a Final Rule that echoed the majority’s discussion of an appropriate balance to strike among RCRA’s purposes, the court would sustain the agency’s view of the statute. As a consequence, the majority ends up deferring not to an agency statutory construction, but rather simply to a result. Assuming this judicial approach ever were permissible, surely after Chevron it no longer is.
Given the complexity of the subject matter and the fundamental ambiguity in Congress’ direction, a complete agency explication of its view of the statute would be especially helpful in this case. For instance, the question of how (and why) Congress would have intended EPA to require generators to treat the wastewaters they intend to pour into the ground to levels more pure than Congress requires for drinking water drawn out of the ground would surely benefit from the views of those to whom Congress entrusted regulatory responsibility. More fundamentally, it is incumbent upon EPA to identify the incremental “threats to human health and the environment” that it hopes to address by opting uniformly for more stringent technology-based standards in lieu of health-based standards of whatever origin. Cf. Small Refined Lead Phase-Down Task Force v. EPA, 705 F.2d 506, 523 (D.C.Cir.1983) (“adverse health effects,” in and of themselves, do not permit EPA “to justify any ... standard at all, without explaining why it chose the level it did”); United Steelworkers of America v. Marshall, 647 F.2d 1189, 1207 (D.C.Cir.1980) (agency must “explain the logic and the policies underlying any legislative choice”), cert. denied, 453 U.S. 913, 101 S.Ct. 3148, 69 L.Ed.2d 997 (1981); Lead Indus. Ass’n v. EPA, 647 F.2d 1130, 1162 (D.C.Cir.) (choice between two policy approaches must be explained), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1042, 101 S.Ct. 621, 66 L.Ed.2d 503 (1980); Industrial U. Dep’t, AFL-CIO v. Hodgson, 499 F.2d 467, 476 (D.C.Cir.1974) (“when [an administrator] is obliged to make policy judgments ..., he should so state and go on to identify the considerations he found persuasive”). Only then can the court legitimately defer to the agency’s construction of RCRA, for proper judicial deference to an agency interpretation requires an understanding of the agency’s objectives that can only be gleaned from the agency’s presentation of its rule. With all respect, the majority’s analysis, however appealing, see Maj. op. at 362-64, cannot substitute for this obligatory agency explanation.
I do not mean to ignore the conceptual distinction between review of an agency’s statutory construction and of an agency’s actions under the arbitrary and capricious standard. We have in the past said “[i]t would be inappropriate ... to import wholesale [arbitrary and capricious review principles] and apply [them] in [the] conceptually distinct arena” of statutory construction. Continental Air Lines, Inc. v. Dep’t of Transp., 843 F.2d 1444, 1452 (D.C.Cir.1988). But at the same time we have often recognized that Chevron’s second step and review of an agency’s action under the arbitrary and capricious standard, although starting from different legal premises, often converge and sometimes overlap. See, e.g., General Am. Transp. Corp. v. ICC, 872 F.2d 1048, 1053 (D.C.Cir.1989); AFL-CIO v. Brock, 835 F.2d at 917; Natural Res. Defense Council v. EPA, 824 F.2d at 1163; Rettig v. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., 744 F.2d 133, 152 (D.C.Cir.1984). One thing, in any event, is quite clear: *375these “distinct” judicial review functions proceed from a common foundation — the agency’s expressed view. Thus, if the agency has offered an inadequate explanation as to how its chosen policy is consistent with Congress’ mandate, the court’s Chevron Step II analysis is necessarily hypothetical.
It would appear that EPA faced with formidable political forces opposing its Proposed Rule, simply acquiesced in the approach desired by those forces, but was unwilling to offer as its own a statutory/policy rationale to justify its acquiescence. In the Final Rule, EPA in effect stated that it recognized, and subordinated itself to, the senators and congressmen who protested against EPA’s Proposed Rule without in any way affirming the legal (or policy) superiority of the legislators’ position. My colleagues acknowledge EPA’s behavior is intolerable as a matter of administrative law, see Meredith Corp. v. FCC, 809 F.2d 863, 872-73 (D.C.Cir.1987) (holding that FCC was obliged to address constitutional challenge to fairness doctrine notwithstanding “non-legislative expressions of congressional concern” that the question be reserved for Congress); Sierra Club v. Costle, 657 F.2d 298, 404-10 (D.C.Cir.1981) (holding that EPA’s ex parte exchanges with congressional leaders and White House officials did not render informal rule procedurally infirm since EPA set forth its own independent rationale for the rule selected), but nevertheless “rescue” EPA from its predicament by supplying the statutory/poliey analysis which, if it had been adopted by EPA, would have obviated the need for a remand. Under the circumstances, I do not know why the court’s remand is other than an empty gesture, one which conforms to principles of judicial review of agency policymaking only in form.

. The majority asserts, Maj. op. at 363 that the EPA, and not the court, provided the basis for *374the interpretation found reasonable here. But the “catalog of uncertainties” the majority refers to are all found in the discussion accompanying the Proposed Rule, in the Initial Rule document, and in briefs to this court — not in the Final Rule and accompanying explanation. Of course, only the agency's explanation of its ultimate choice, not its prior musings nor, ordinarily, its post hoc explanations in court, see FLRA v. United States Dep’t of the Treasury, 884 F.2d 1446 (D.C.Cir.1989); Women Involved in Farm Economics v. United States Dep’t of Agriculture, 876 F.2d 994, 998-1000 (D.C.Cir.1989), are proper subjects of judicial review.