Court Opinion

ID: 9762093
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:10:08.114019+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:29.941343
License: Public Domain

SPECTOR, Justice,
dissenting.
The dissenting opinion delivered April 21, 1993, is withdrawn, and the following is substituted in its place.
If the facility involved in this case were located in a city, the residents of the city could rely upon the Texas Air Control Board to safeguard the purity of their air. For the citizens of Erath County, however, there is no relief — only the continuing, overpowering odors emitted by a manifestly unnatural operation. This double standard is not only unfair; it is also contrary to the Texas Legislature’s determined efforts to ensure clean air for all Texans, whether urban or rural. I dissent.
I.
Until three years ago, the area south of Lingleville, Texas was evidently pleasant country; in the words of David Whitenton, who built a retirement home there with his wife, it was a “nice community ... nice place to live.” The dairy farms in the area were *206all “family-run operations,” ranging in size from 120 to 650 cows.
In September of 1990, however, the atmosphere south of Lingleville took a dramatic turn for the worse. It was then that F/R Cattle Company began a calf-raising operation described by its owner as the first and only one of its kind in the State of Texas. In small, enclosed hutches, F/R Cattle placed some 6,000 calves, three to a hutch, for uninterrupted confinement of fifty-five to sixty days.
By all accounts, the odor emanating from F/R Cattle’s facility is offensive. One fifty-year resident of Erath County likened the smell to “an open sewer pit.” His son, a farm manager who has lived in the county for more than twenty years, described the odor as a “sour, rancid smell, very strong.” A woman who has lived in the county for twenty-eight years, and who was raised on a dairy, stated that the odor near the facility is so intense that “you want to hold your nose.” Another rancher stated that “it’s just the most rancid smell you can imagine.” Other testimony described the odor as “putrid,” “awful,” “a stench,” “foul, very foul,” and “rotten smelling.”
For those in close proximity to the facility, the odor was totally unbearable. David Whi-tenton and his wife tried to shield themselves by sealing the house and closing the damper over the fireplace; but the odor would still make its way inside. So foul was the stench that the Whitentons were finally forced to move away.
Seeking to restore the quality of their air, the citizens of Erath County turned to the Texas Air Control Board for help. During F/R Cattle’s first year of operation, the Board received fifty-four complaints against the company — more than the total it had received for all livestock operations throughout Erath County for the past four years combined. The Board then initiated this action under the Texas Clean Air Act, Tex. Health & Safety Code ch. 382.
II.
The Texas Clean Air Act was created “to safeguard the state’s air resources from pollution” in a manner “consistent with the protection of public health, general welfare, and physical property, including the esthetic enjoyment of air resources by the public.” Tex. Health & Safety Code § 382.002(a). The Act's passage reflects the fact that “air pollution has come to be recognized as a problem to be eliminated rather than a curse to be endured.” G. Todd Norvell and Alexander W. Bell, Air Pollution Control in Texas, 47 Tex.L.Rev. 1086 (1969).
At the time it was proposed, the Texas Clean Air Act faced a “hornet’s nest” of opposition from various industrial groups, including petroleum refiners, chemical manufacturers, and feed lot operators. Id. at 1091. These groups recognized, however, that some degree of air pollution control was inevitable; so they cooperated with legislators in drafting a bill. Id. at 1092. The result was a compromise that gave broad jurisdiction to the newly-created Air Control Board — on which industry was to have substantial representation — but which placed clear restraints on the Board’s enforcement powers. Id.; see Clean Air Act of Texas, 59th Leg., R.S., ch. 687, 1965 Tex.Gen.Laws 1583. Subsequent legislatures followed the same approach; for example, when Texas cotton ginners pressed for an amendment exempting them from coverage, the legislature opted instead to retain the Board’s jurisdiction over cotton gins while placing sharp limits on the remedies the Board could order. Norvell and Bell, supra, at 1095; see Clean Air Act of Texas, 1967, 60th Leg., R.S., ch. 727, § 6(C), 1967 Tex.Gen.Laws 1941, 1948.1
The present version of the Clean Air Act retains the same basic features of the original version: it confers broad jurisdiction on the Texas Air Control Board, while restricting its enforcement powers.2 The Act *207charges the Board with jurisdiction over all non-natural processes that produce certain pollutants, including odors;3 but in proceeding against polluters, the Board must comply with extensive, detailed statutory restrictions. See id, §§ 382.011-.039 (powers and duties of board), 382.051-.063 (permits), 382.-081-.096 (penalties and enforcement).
Several of these statutory restrictions concern the Board’s consideration of location. The 60th Legislature, which enacted a revised version of the Clean Air Act, intended that rural areas be controlled less strictly than urban areas. See Norvell and Bell, supra, at 1096. ' Rather than limiting the Board’s jurisdiction, however, the legislature adopted provisions directing the Air Control Board to take location into account in making its rules. See Clean Air Act of Texas, 1967, § 6(B), 1967 Tex.Gen.Laws at 1947-48. In their current form, those provisions provide in part:
In adopting a rule, the board shall recognize that the quantity or characteristic of air contaminants or the duration of their presence in the atmosphere may cause a need for air control in one area of the state but not in other areas. In this connection, the board shall consider:
(1) the factors found by it to be proper and just, including existing physical conditions, topography, population, and prevailing wind direction and velocity; and
(2) the fact that a rule and the degrees of conformance with the rule that may be proper for an essentially residential area of the state may not be proper for a highly developed industrial area or a relatively unpopulated area.
Tex. Health & Safety Code § 382.017(e); see also §§ 382.024(1), -(3) (requiring the Board to consider location-related factors in issuing orders and making determinations). These provisions reflect the legislature’s considered resolution of a difficult problem: the problem of making some degree of protection available to all Texans, while recognizing that what is acceptable in one area may not be acceptable in another.
The legislature certainly could have resolved this problem by exempting certain areas, such as heavily-polluted regions, from the Board’s jurisdiction. Alternatively, it could have defined “air contaminant” to exclude pollutants that have become commonplace in a particular area; or it could have exempted certain agricultural operations from the permitting requirements for air contaminant emissions.4 The legislature chose, however, to adhere to the approach it has always taken in revising the Clean Air Act: it afforded broad jurisdiction to the Air Control Board, together with clear instructions to the Board to consider location-related factors when carrying out its responsibilities.
The legislature’s definition of “air contaminant” contains no reference to location; but the majority, rejecting a literal reading of that definition as “unwarranted,” engrafts a location factor onto the legislature’s definition by announcing that “location is a factor to be considered in determining whether a pollutant was ‘produced by processes other than natural.’ ” 866 S.W.2d at 204. To support this rewriting of the statute, the majority relies upon two lower-court decisions, both of which upheld the Air Control Board’s jur*208isdiction over particular contaminants. Southwest Livestock and Trucking Co. v. Texas Air Control Bd., 579 S.W.2d 549 (Tex.Civ.App.—Tyler 1979, writ ref’d n.r.e.); Europak, Inc. v. County of Hunt, 507 S.W.2d 884 (Tex.Civ.App.—Dallas 1974, no writ).
Given the favorable outcomes of those cases, the Board never sought review in this Court of the rule the majority adopts today. Moreover, neither opinion has previously been construed to restrict the Air Control Board’s jurisdiction; in fact, like the court of appeals in the present case, the only prior court relying on Southwest Livestock and Europak understood them as holding that “odors produced by the confinement of a large number of animals in a small space are not produced naturally.” Smith v. Padgett, 596 S.W.2d 530, 533 (Tex.Civ.App.—Beaumont 1979, writ refd n.r.e.).
The majority’s ruling ignores the history of the Texas Air Control Act, and unjustifiably usurps the authority of the Texas Air Control Board. As the legislature recognized, courts lack the expertise necessary to formulate and apply standards for regulating air pollutants. The Act thus gives the Board — not the courts — the responsibility to consider location-related factors in enforcing this state’s pollution laws. Under the Act, if a person affected by an action of the Board seeks judicial review, the only issue to be determined in court is “whether the [Board’s] action is invalid, arbitrary, or unreasonable.” Tex. Health & Safety Code § 382.032(e). Under the majority’s decision, however, the Board’s authority in a given location will be determined at the outset in court, where a factfinder must decide whether the process in question is “normal and usual for the particular area involved.”
When the Board’s jurisdiction is challenged, a court must certainly determine whether the particular pollutant is “produced by processes other than natural.” Whether a particular process is “natural,” however, has nothing to do with its location. See, e.g., Webstee’s New WORLD DICTIONARY 947 (2d college ed. 1986) (defining “natural”). The only role that location plays under the Clean Air Act is in the determination of remedies— a function that the legislature deliberately assigned to the Board, subject only to limited review in court. Tex. Health & Safety Code § 382.032(e).
The facts of this case demonstrate the hazards of shifting broad responsibility for fact-finding from the agency to the courts. The trial court found that F/R Cattle’s facility was “normal, usual and natural in the area and locality where it is situated,” and that the process creating odors at the facility was “affected or controlled by human devices only to an extent normal and usual in the vicinity.” As discussed above, all of the evidence at trial — including statements from F/R Cattle’s owner — indicated that the operation at issue is abnormal and unusual in the vicinity.
The majority concludes, without explanation, that “[t]here is some evidence that F/R’s use is consistent with similar operations in the area.” 866 S.W.2d at 205.5 The only evidence the majority cites, however, is that the twenty-one dairies within three miles of F/R Cattle have an average of 500 cows, as compared with 5,900 calves at F/R Cattle’s facility. By some standard, this might be evidence that F/R Cattle’s use is normal and usual for the area; but what is the standard, and how are future courts to apply it?
III.
The majority’s decision will not be of any help to the small farmers and ranchers of this state. By regulation, the Air Control Board automatically exempts from the Clean Air Act feedlots designed to feed less than 1,000 animals.
The majority’s decision will, however, affect average rural Texans like the farmers, ranchers, and retired citizens of Erath County, who must continue to bear the odors *209emanating from the F/R Cattle Company facility. A number of these individuals have filed amicus curiae briefs before this court, stating, among other things, that they have been unable to remain outside;6 their property values have plummeted;7 and they have been stripped of their right to clean air.8
The rural citizens of Texas are entitled to bring their complaints regarding air quality to the Texas Air Control Board, and to have those complaints investigated and appropriate action taken. The majority has today approved a nonsensical approach to environmental protection: as the air quality deteriorates, so does the Board’s jurisdiction. Because the Air Control Board has jurisdiction under the Texas Clean Air Act, I would affirm the judgment of the court of appeals.
DOGGETT and GAMMAGE, JJ., join in this dissenting opinion.

. Section 6(C) provided in part that "[t]he board may not require in its rules and regulations that such plants meet a standard which requires an emission of less than eight percent of the process weight of the materials entering the process."

. As of September 1, 1993, the Texas Air Control Board has been abolished and replaced by the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. Act of July 30, 1991, 72nd Leg., 1st C.S., ch. 3, § 1.086, 1991 Tex.Gen.Laws 4, 42. The *207Commission has all of the powers, duties, rights, and obligations formerly held by the Board. Id., § 1.086(b)(2).

. The Act directs the Board to "accomplish the purposes of this chapter through the control of air contaminants by all practical and economically feasible methods.” Tex. Health & Safety Code § 382.011(b) (emphasis added). "Air contaminant” is defined to include numerous pollutants, including odors, "produced by processes other than natural.” Id., § 382.003(2).

. This latter option, in fact, has recently received serious consideration. Senate Bill 684, rejected by the Texas Legislature earlier this year, would have exempted certain agricultural operations— including livestock and poultry operations — from the permitting requirements of the Clean Air Act, except in certain circumstances.
The approach taken by the majority is comparable to the approach of Senate Bill 684: whenever livestock or poultry operations are concentrated in a particular area, those operations will effectively be exempted from the requirements of the Clean Air Act on the ground that they are "normal and usual” for the area. Today’s opinion thus accomplishes, in large measure, the same outcome the legislature rejected only months ago.

. This standard — asking whether the process is "consistent with" other operations in the area— is different from the standard the majority claims to adopt, which focuses on whether the process is "normal and usual” for the area. See Southwest Livestock, 579 S.W.2d at 552; Europak, 507 S.W.2d at 891. In view of the remainder of the majority's opinion, however, I assume that the majority actually means to adopt the Europak standard.

. Amicus Curiae brief filed by S. John Welsh, Ronnie McConnell, Bill Keller, Weldon McConnell, and Bill Kelly, who describe themselves as rural residents of "an unincorporated retirement community who ... have suffered [from] the putrid and rancid odors,” at 1.

. Id.

. Amicus Curiae brief filed by Cross Timbers Concerned Citizens (a non-profit group of approximately 200 members concerned with the quality of life in Erath and surrounding counties), at 2.