Appalachian Power Company, Duquesne Light Company and Ohio Power Company v. Environmental Protection Agency

579 F.2d 846, 8 Envtl. L. Rep. (Envtl. Law Inst.) 20681, 1978 U.S. App. LEXIS 10732
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
DecidedJune 13, 1978
Docket72-1733
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 579 F.2d 846 (Appalachian Power Company, Duquesne Light Company and Ohio Power Company v. Environmental Protection Agency) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Appalachian Power Company, Duquesne Light Company and Ohio Power Company v. Environmental Protection Agency, 579 F.2d 846, 8 Envtl. L. Rep. (Envtl. Law Inst.) 20681, 1978 U.S. App. LEXIS 10732 (4th Cir. 1978).

Opinions

DONALD RUSSELL, Circuit Judge:

Following our decision in Appalachian Power Co. v. Environmental Pro. Agcy. (4th Cir. 1973) 477 F.2d 495, in which the factual background of this proceeding is set forth, the parties agreed upon a remand order providing for reconsideration by the respondent Environmental Protection Agency [849]*849(EPA) of its earlier approval of the West Virginia State Implementation Plan, prepared and submitted by the State in compliance with the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1857 et seq. In that order the petitioners, electric utilities, agreed to specify, in a submission to the EPA, “those provisions of the West Virginia Plan for Implementation of the Ambient Air Quality Standards (the West Virginia Plan), as approved by Order of EPA dated May 31, 1972 to which Petitioners have any objection at the present time” along with “a statement of facts upon which Petitioners base their objection to each such provision.” The EPA in turn agreed, in connection with such objections, to “complete its review of the entire record, as supplemented by the Petitioners’ written (and oral) submissions” and to “propose [publish] its findings [with respect thereto] in the Federal Register accompanying any action that it takes * * * [with] a technical support document.” The petitioners were given 30 days after publication of the proposed findings to comment thereon. The EPA’s final findings were to be published in the Federal Register within 45 days thereafter and were to be prefaced by an introductory statement of “all pertinent comments received by EPA during the 30-day comment period.” Within 15 days after final EPA action, the petitioners were to “advise the Court as to whether they intend[ed] to pursue their petition for review.” There was also a reservation of decision on the right of the petitioners, in the event of the final approval of the state plan, to contest enforcement proceedings “on the grounds of high cost benefit, technological infeasibility and resource unavailability.” In summary, the purport of this stipulation was that, without prejudice to petitioners’ original Petition for Review and without threat in the meantime of an enforcement action, the petitioners were to specify with particularity their objections to the approval of the state plan by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, and the EPA was to review the petitioners’ particularized objections to the state plan and, on the basis of its evaluation of those objections, either to affirm or to withdraw its earlier approval of the state plan.

The petitioners submitted their particularized objections to the state plan as required under the agreed remand. These objections were directed at Regulations II and X of the state plan and related basically to the emission limits for particulates and sulphur dioxide. They were grounded largely on the claims either that the requirements were “unduly restrictive”1 or that they were economically or technologically impractical.2 In submitting such objections, the petitioners assumed, as did this Court in its earlier opinion, that these were issues which the EPA, in its determination to approve or disapprove the state plan, was itself required to review and evaluate. After the filing of the objections with their supporting factual data, conferences were had between the petitioners and the EPA, and proposed findings by the EPA followed.

The proposed findings of the Administrator on the petitioners’ objections were published on March 4, 1976 and notice of the availability of the supporting technical data was noticed on May 13, 1976, triggering the sixty-day public comment period which was to follow. These findings related both to the economic and technological feasibility and to the alleged over-stringency of the state plan. However, on June 25,1976, and after the proposed findings had been published, Union Electric Co. v. EPA, 421 U.S. 246, 96 S.Ct. 2518, 49 L.Ed.2d 474, was decided. Contrary to our holding in 477 F.2d 495, the Court in that case held that the EPA, in determining whether to ap[850]*850prove or disapprove a proposed state plan, was not to consider objections based on economic or technological feasibility, or claims that the plan was more stringent than necessary to attain and maintain national ambient standards, since these were issues committed exclusively to state review and evaluation. On September 28, 1976, EPA published its final decision, along with its responses to the comments raised by the petitioners. Because of the Union Electric decision, it concluded that any further consideration of the objections relating to over-stringency or technological and economic feasibility were foreclosed,3 and it proceeded in this final decision to reaffirm the approval of the state plan. In early December of 1976 the EPA, on this state of the record on remand, moved to dismiss the Petition for Review and the petitioners countered with their motion to remand. These motions — one by the EPA to dismiss and the other by the petitioners to remand — present the issues now before the Court.

Union Electric clearly barred any objections to approval of the state plan by the EPA on grounds either of greater stringency in the requirements than demanded by the national primary ambient standards or of want of economic or technological feasibility. The EPA accordingly argues that, since the Remand Order, as agreed to by the parties and as approved by this court, limited the petitioners in their objections to the approval of the state plan to the matters specified in their objections as filed pursuant to that remand order, and since such objection related to the two areas found by Union Electric not to be available as grounds for disapproval by the EPA of a state plan, no valid objections by the petitioners to the approval of the state plan remained for disposition by this Court and dismissal of the Petition was in order. This argument would, however, disregard the fact that, first, before approving a state plan, the EPA must determine that the state plan was adopted at the state level “after reasonable notice and public hearings,” as provided for in § 1857c-5(a), 42 U.S.C.4 and, second, that the petitioners did assail in their original Petition for Review the constitutional adequacy of compliance by the State Agency with that requirement. We do not agree that the petitioners, either by the agreed Remand Order or by the objections filed by them pursuant to that Remand Order, abandoned this ground of complaint. It, however, does represent the only basis on which the petitioners can resist the EPA’s Motion to Dismiss, since their other objections are indisputably foreclosed by Union Electric.

It cannot be maintained — nor do we understand the petitioners to contend — that there was not “reasonable notice and public hearings” prior to the promulgation by the State of the two regulations (II and X) of the state plan, about which the petitioners complain. There were, in fact, three public state hearings relevant to petitioners’ claims, held after public notice. The first of these hearings was classified as a preliminary hearing, directed to a consideration particularly of Regulation II of the proposed state plan. It was held on November 18, 1971. The second preliminary hearing covered particularly Regulation X of the state plan and was held on December 15, 1971. The petitioners participated in both of these hearings.

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Bluebook (online)
579 F.2d 846, 8 Envtl. L. Rep. (Envtl. Law Inst.) 20681, 1978 U.S. App. LEXIS 10732, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/appalachian-power-company-duquesne-light-company-and-ohio-power-company-v-ca4-1978.