Court Opinion

ID: 9426514
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:10.049473+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:01.390628
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Powell,
with whom The Chief Justice joins, concurring.
I join the opinion of the Court because the statutory scheme and the legislative history, thoroughly described in the Court’s opinion, demonstrate irrefutably that Congress did not intend to permit the Administrator of *270the Environmental Protection Agency to reject a proposed state implementation plan on the grounds of economic or technological infeasibility. Congress adopted this position despite its apparent awareness that in some cases existing sources that cannot meet the standard of the law must be closed down.1
The desire to impose strong incentives on industry to encourage the rapid development and adoption of pollution control devices is understandable. But it is difficult to believe that Congress would adhere to its absolute position if faced with the potentially devastating consequences to the public that this case vividly demonstrates.
Petitioner is an electric utility supplying power demands in the St. Louis metropolitan area, a large part of Missouri, and parts of Illinois and Iowa. It alleges that it cannot continue to operate if forced to comply with the sulfur dioxide restrictions contained in the *271Missouri implementation plan approved by the Administrator. Specifically, petitioner alleges that since the Administrator’s approval of the plan, low-sulfur coal has become too scarce and expensive to obtain; rehable and satisfactory sulfur dioxide removal equipment that would enable it to comply with the plan’s requirements simply has not been devised; the installation of the unsatisfactory equipment that is available would cost over $500 million, a sum impossible to obtain by bonds that are contingent on approval by regulatory bodies and public acceptance; and, even if the financing could be obtained, the carrying, operating, and maintenance costs of over $120 million a year would be prohibitive.2 Petitioner further alleges that recent evidence has disclosed that sulfur dioxide in the ambient air is not the hazard to public health that it was once thought to be, and that compliance with the sulfur regulation in the Missouri plan is not necessary to the attainment of national primary and secondary ambient air standards in the St. Louis area.
At the risk of civil and criminal penalties enforceable by both the State and Federal Governments, as well as possible citizens’ suits, 42 U. S. C. §§ 1857c-8, 1857h-2, petitioner is being required either to embark upon the task of installing allegedly unreliable and prohibitively expensive equipment or to shut down. Yet the present Act permits neither the Administrator, in approving the state plan, nor the courts, in reviewing that approval under § 307 of the Act, 42 U. S. C. § 1857h-5, even to consider petitioner’s allegations of infeasibility.
Environmental concerns, long neglected, merit high priority, and Congress properly has made protection of *272the public health its paramount consideration. See S. Rep. No. 91-1196, pp. 2-3 (1970). But the shutdown of an urban area’s electrical service could have an even more serious impact on the health of the public than that created by a decline in ambient air quality. The result apparently required by this legislation in its present form could sacrifice the well-being of a large metropolitan area through the imposition of inflexible demands that may be technologically impossible to meet and indeed may no longer even be necessary to the attainment of the goal of clean air.
I believe that Congress, if fully aware of this Draconian possibility, would strike a different balance.

 The record is clear beyond question that at least the sponsors and floor leaders of the Clean Air Act intended that industries unable to comply with approved state implementation plans, whether because of economic or technological infeasibility, would be “closed down.” This is explicit in the Senate Report. S. Rep. No. 91-1196, p. 3 (1970). It is repeated quite candidly in the statements of various members of the Senate and is described in detail in the EPA’s brief in this case. Brief for Respondent EPA 20-32. Indeed, remarkable as it may seem, it is clear from the legislative history that even total technological infeasibility is “irrelevant.” See id,., at 16, 18-23.
What this means in this ease, if the allegations of Union Electric Co. prove to be correct, is that — in the interest of public health — the utility will be ordered to discontinue electric service to the public. As one cannot believe this would be allowed, I suppose that the State or Federal Government would find some basis for continuing to operate the company’s facilities to serve the public despite noncompliance. But no such contingency program or authority therefor is found in the statute, and we must decide the case on the record before us.

 The burden of these extraordinary capital and operating costs, even if the technological infeasibility problems could be solved, would fall necessarily on the consumers of.electric power.