Court Opinion

ID: 9742259
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:09:25.535012+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:30.212474
License: Public Domain

ROBERT H. SCHUMACHER, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I agree with the majority that 40 C.F.R. § 122.4(f) (2005) does not bar the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (PCA) from issuing a permit in the period between the initial listing of a water body as impaired under section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the implementation of a Total Maximum Daily Load. I also agree that the PCA was not barred as a matter of law from issuing a permit due to the impact of the proposed plant on dissolved oxygen levels in the North Fork of the Crow River.
But I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the PCA erred by interpreting 40 C.F.R. § 122.4(i) as authorizing it to issue the permit. I believe that when reviewed with the deference properly accorded agency actions on review by this court, the PCA’s interpretation of the regulation and its decision to grant the permit were reasonable and consistent with the purposes and principles of the CWA. I would therefore affirm the PCA’s decision.
The majority rejects the PCA’s interpretation of section 122.4(f), which provides that no permit will issue if a new dischar-ger will “cause or contribute to the violation of water quality standards.” The PCA interpreted this provision as authorizing an additional annual phosphorus discharge of 2,200 pounds to the Lake Pepin watershed where agency findings showed *777that this discharge will be offset by an annual reduction in phosphorus discharge in excess of 50,000 pounds to the same watershed from a new Litchfield wastewa-ter plant.
The majority first declines to give deference to the PCA’s interpretation of the regulation on the grounds that a state agency’s construction of federal law presents a legal question, which this court reviews de novo. Although it is axiomatic that this court is free to exercise its independent judgment when reviewing questions of law, I believe that reviewing the PCA’s interpretation de novo disregards the “fundamental concept that decisions of administrative agencies enjoy a presumption of correctness, and deference should be shown by courts to the agencies’ expertise and their special knowledge in the field of their technical training, education, and experience.” Reserve Mining Co. v. Herbst, 256 N.W.2d 808, 824 (Minn.1977). The agency decision-maker is presumed to have the expertise necessary to decide technical matters within the scope of the agency’s authority, In re Special Instruction & Servs. for Pautz, 295 N.W.2d 635, 637 (Minn.1980), and judicial deference, rooted in the separation of powers doctrine, is extended to an agency decision-maker in the interpretation of statutes that the agency is charged with administering and enforcing. Krumm v. R.A. Nadeau Co., 276 N.W.2d 641, 644 (Minn.1979); In re Max Schwartzman & Sons, Inc., 670 N.W.2d 746, 754 (Minn.App.2003).
The PCA is charged by state and federal law with administering the CWA and its attendant regulations. 40 C.F.R. § 123.25(a)(1); Minn.Stat. § 115.03, subd. 1(a), (e) (2004). And I cannot agree with the majority’s implication that an agency’s interpretation of a federal regulation it administers is entitled to less deference than its interpretation of a state regulation it administers. Therefore, in recognition of the “need for exercising judicial restraint and for restricting judicial functions to a narrow area of responsibility, lest [we] substitute [our] judgment for that of the agency,” Reserve Mining Co., 256 N.W.2d at 824, I would review the PCA’s interpretation 'of the regulation under a reasonableness standard. See In re Univ. of Minn., 566 N.W.2d 98, 103 (Minn.App.1997) (stating that “when an agency reasonably interprets a statute, it is the role of the legislature or the supreme court, and not the role of this court, to overrule that interpretation”).
The majority also declines to defer to the PCA’s interpretation of the regulation because it is based upon an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) interpretation submitted in a brief to federal district court. Because the “cause or contribute” language at issue here is reasonably susceptible to different interpretations — as evidenced by the meritorious opposing constructions advanced by both parties— the EPA’s interpretation would typically be entitled to “considerable deference.” St. Otto’s Home v. Minnesota Dept. of Human Servs., 437 N.W.2d 35, 40 (Minn.1989). The majority states that “[w]here an agency’s representations in the course of litigation are not based on its previous decisions or administrative practice, and thereby lack a sound basis, the representations cannot be used to determine the meaning of a regulation, because they may constitute a rationalization after the fact,” relying upon Bowen v. Georgetown Univ. Hosp., 488 U.S. 204, 212, 109 S.Ct. 468, 473-74, 102 L.Ed.2d 493 (1988), and Nat’l Wildlife Fed’n v. Browner, 127 F.3d 1126, 1129-30 (D.C.Cir.1997).
But Bowen does not categorically reject agency litigating positions as interpretive guides; it only states that courts should not defer to those positions where they *778“are wholly unsupported by regulations, rulings, or administrative practice ... [or] where the agency itself has articulated no position on the question.” 488 U.S. at 212, 109 S.Ct. at 473-74. In Browner, the court in fact rejected as “unpersuasive” the “contention that the court should not defer to EPA’s interpretation of [a] regulation because it is no more than a convenient litigating position,” observing that the “mere fact that an agency offers its interpretation in the course of litigation does not automatically preclude deference to the agency.” 127 F.3d at 1129 (quotation omitted). The court stated that although “agency litigating positions are not entitled to deference when they are merely appellate counsel’s post hoc rationalizations for agency action, advanced for the first time in the reviewing court ... deference to an interpretation offered in the course of litigation is still proper as long as it reflects ‘the agency’s fair and considered judgment on the matter.’ ” Id. (quoting Auer v. Robbins, 519 U.S. 452, 462, 117 S.Ct. 905, 912, 137 L.Ed.2d 79 (1997)).
The EPA brief upon which the PCA relies here describes the offset system as an agency “practice,” and, as the majority observes, the EPA itself proposed a rule requiring offsets when it last considered revisions to section 122.4(i) in 2000. Because the record demonstrates that the EPA’s litigation position reflected an administrative practice, and was not a post hoc rationalization advanced for the first time on appeal, I do not believe that Bowen and Browner preclude the PCA’s reliance upon the EPA’s brief in interpreting section 122.4(i).
Finally, the majority discounts the PCA’s interpretation of the regulation because in 2000, the EPA considered and rejected a proposed “system of offsets akin to the rationale offered by the PCA.” For two reasons, I do not believe the EPA’s earlier action compels the conclusion that the PCA may not interpret the regulation as permitting offsets here. First, the 2000 proposal would have required new dischar-gers nationwide to offset new-pollutant loading by “securing reductions in the loading of the same pollutant from an existing source(s) located on the same water-body.” Revisions to the Water Quality Planning Regulation & NPDES Program, 65 Fed.Reg. 43586, 43639 (E.P.A. July 13, 2000). The EPA rejected the proposal as practically “unworkable” both because of the likely impossibility of always finding a source in a given waterbody “from which an offset might be obtained” and because a national-scale, “one size fits all” approach to regulation would “undercut State primacy in determining what actions are necessary to attain water quality standards.” Id. at 43639-40.
These problems are not present here. The offset source has already been identified and permitted, and the PCA is acting in the state’s interest to improve water quality, not in compliance with a federal mandate. I do not believe the EPA’s earlier rejection of the offsets requirement is dispositive as to the PCA’s interpretation of the regulation. Second, I do not believe that the EPA’s choice not to mandate an offset system bars the PCA from considering the effect of the Litchfield offset in determining whether to grant the permit at issue.
The majority contends that a “plain reading of the phrase ‘cause or contribute to the violation of water quality standards’ indicates that, so long as some level of discharge may be causally attributed to the impairment of Section 303(d) waters, a permit shall not be issued.” Because I feel this approach will effectively preclude issuance of a permit prior to completion of a TMDL, I believe it frustrates the purposes of the CWA and prevents the PCA *779from exercising its authority to take necessary action to ameliorate water quality in the meantime. See Arkansas v. Oklahoma, 503 U.S. 91, 107, 112 S.Ct. 1046, 1057, 117 L.Ed.2d 239 (1992) (rejecting, as supported by “nothing in the Act,” interpreting CWA “to prohibit any discharge of effluent that would reach waters already in violation of existing water quality standards”). I would give deference to the PCA’s interpretation of the regulation and affirm its decision to issue the permit.