Court Opinion

ID: 9629899
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:52:12.181658+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:26.379057
License: Public Domain

NIX, Justice
(dissenting).
I believe the language of the Clean Streams Act, June 22, 1937, P.L. 1987, art. I, § 7, as amended, 35 P.S. § 691.1 et seq. (Supp.1976) is sufficiently broad to permit an aggrieved party to raise and have considered its financial status on appeal from an order of the Department of Environmental Resources. Section 691.7 of that statute provides in pertinent part,
“(a) Any person or municipality who shall be aggrieved by any action of the department under this act shall have the right to appeal such action to the board.”
There is nothing in the Act which specifically precludes consideration of a municipality’s claim of financial impossibility on appeal from the order. Rather, the Act implicitly includes such considerations at that june*52ture by mandating the Department of Environmental Resources consider in designing the order “the immediate and long range economic impact upon the Commonwealth and its citizens.” Act of 1937, as amended, supra, 35 P. S. § 691.5(a)(5). There can be no more appropriate time to question the soundness of an order than at the time of an appeal from the entry of that order. Indeed, the majority states, “the appeal from the issuance of the order serves only to determine the validity and content of the order,” ante at 615. Clearly a test of an order’s logic and content must embrace the consideration given to the financial circumstances presented.1
No purpose is served to hold otherwise. The majority’s result forces a party to risk contempt before it may demonstrate its financial inability to comply. In this instance, where Ramey Borough is concededly “economically depressed,” the majority has offered no persuasive reasons why the Borough must decline to obey a Commonwealth order before receiving their day in court. Cf. Commonwealth v. Columbia Investment Corporation, 457 Pa. 353, 373, 325 A.2d 289, 299 (1974) (Dissenting Opinion by Nix, J.)

. Sanitary Water Board v. Wilkes-Barre, 199 Pa.Super. 492, 185 A.2d 624 (1962) relied on by the majority is inapposite to the issue. Section 691.5 of the Act was added July 31, 1970, P.L. 653, No. 222, § 4.