Law and the Environment : Environmental Lawyer & Attorney : Foley Hoag Law Firm : Boston, Washington D.C.

When EPA issued its preliminary plan in May for review of its regulations, I said that the proof would be in the pudding. Well, EPA has now issued its final plan. My review? The pudding tastes ok, but it doesn’t taste as good and it’s not as filling as it could be.

My major complaint with the preliminary plan was its failure to target the single biggest area for reform – those areas where EPA still relies on command and control regulation. Obviously, statutes dictate EPA’s approach in many cases, but not all. There is much more friendly generic language on this score in the final plan. For example, EPA now states that:

To supplement traditional compliance approaches, EPA plans to routinely structure federal regulations and permits as effectively as possible to achieve compliance, through adequate monitoring requirements, public disclosure, information and reporting mechanisms, and other structural flexibilities, including self-certification, and third-party verification.

Unfortunately, specific example of proposed changes to rely on self-certification and third-party verification are few and far between in either EPA’s “early action” or “longer term” lists of potential reforms. Why couldn’t EPA have included one simple bullet? Why couldn’t EPA simply have directed each program to review its statutory authority to shift from technology-based or other command and control approaches to performance standards and market based approaches?

It is telling that only 1 of 35 specific proposals relates to Superfund, which remains purely a command and control program – and even that item concerns only National Priorities List rules, not how cleanups are selected and overseen. I don’t see any provisions in CERCLA that would prevent EPA from revising the NCP to identify risk-based standards for different media and allow PRPs to meet those standards in whatever cost-efficient manner they can identify.

True regulatory reform is clearly not going to happen overnight. EPA’s current plan probably qualifies as a step in the right direction, but it’s not much more than a baby step.

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Late last week, Greenwire reported that EPA is delaying its proposed construction general permit, or CGP, for stormwater. The delay is certainly a victory for the real estate industry, which has been fighting hard to delay the rule and, in particular, its numeric turbidity limit. The industry had complained about the data on which the standard was based, calculation errors by EPA, and what it views as a 10-fold underestimate of the compliance costs.

EPA denies that the delay was a political decision by the White House or OMB and stated that it needs to gather more information about existing stormwater treatment technologies before issuing the rule. 

We’ll see whether EPA gets any credit from the business community for the delay. They certainly won’t get any from environmental groups. It’s important to remember that the rule is actually the result of litigation brought by the NRDC, so EPA cannot continue to delay indefinitely or it will just find itself back in court. As is often the case, EPA is going to have a difficult time avoiding being caught between a rock and a hard place at some point on this rule.

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Some of the world's most well-known apparel companies have come under criticism from Greenpeace for not sufficiently monitoring and limiting industrial wastewater discharges by suppliers.  In a new report called "Dirty Laundry", Greenpeace highlights the wastewater discharges from two major manufacturers in China that supply products to a range of major brands -- including Adidas, Bauer Hockey, Calvin Klein, Converse, Lacoste, Nike, Phillips-Van Heusen and Puma.  

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Yesterday, the SJC issued its eagerly awaited decision in Ten Persons of the Commonwealth v. Fellsway Development. I think that the SJC probably got it right. It says something about MEPA jurisprudence, however, that the decision is good for neither citizen plaintiffs nor for developers. I’d suggest that the legislature go back to the drawing board, but it won’t happen and, if it did, I wouldn’t trust the legislature to get it right.

Fellsway Development involves an proposed development within the Middlesex Fells Reservation. After running into certain obstacles, the developers reconfigured their project to avoid the need for any permits and thus any MEPA review. To do so, they eliminated any roadway changes that would have required approval from the Department of Conservation and Recreation. DCR initially concluded that it still had to perform some roadway changes itself in order to mitigate adverse traffic impacts. EEA, in turn, concluded that such changes by DCR would constitute financial assistance to the project, which would bring it back into the MEPA universe.

Fellsway Development had a creative solution to that determination. It entered into an MOU with DCR pursuant to which DCR would do the work, so the project would not require a permit, but Fellsway Development would pay for the work, so that it would not be receiving any financial assistance. EEA blessed the deal with an advisory opinion concluding that MEPA review would not be required.

The unhappy citizen protectors of the Reservation were not so pleased. They sued, arguing that the advisory opinion was wrong, and that the MOU constituted both a form of permit and that it constituted improper “segregation” of the project, because, whatever Fellsway Development said, the roadway improvements were really a necessary part of the project.

Following its decision in Cummings v. Secretary of Environmental Affairs, the SJC concluded that the EEA Secretary is not subject to suit under Chapter 214, § 7A, because he cannot cause “damage to the environment” by making a flawed ruling under MEPA. This decision is almost certainly right under Cummings, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not nuts. In traditional administrative law terms, this case – and all MEPA cases – are about whether the Secretary’s decision was arbitrary and capricious. How is it that our case law has thus determined that the Secretary is not a proper party to the case?

The SJC also handed one victory to developers, by making clear that Chapter 231A, the declaratory judgment statute, does not provide standing to citizen plaintiffs. The court reiterated that:

We discern nothing in MEPA’s language, purpose, or administrative scheme, however, to suggest a legislative intent to confer standing on residents who bring suit alleging a generalized harm to nearby property.

Unfortunately, this was largely a pyrrhic victory for the developers, because the SJC concluded that the citizens had stated a claim under Chapter 214 7A, adequately alleging that DCR and Fellsway Development had violated MEPA by improperly segmenting the project. In a backhanded compliment, the SJC stated that “we do not suggest that the Secretary’s opinion [that no MEPA review was required] is unpersuasive.” Instead, the Court just fell back on the generous pleading requirements of Rule 12. While giving a nod to recent decisions imposing more rigorous pleading requirements – “We look beyond the conclusory allegations of the complaint” – the SJC nonetheless concluded that “plaintiffs have pleaded facts sufficient to support a claim that the DCR and the developers delayed specific roadway alterations, which might otherwise require a permit, in order to ‘phase or segment a Project to evade, defer or curtail MEPA review.’”

What’s the bottom line? 

1.                   The Secretary still will not be a party to cases asserting his/her MEPA decisions were wrong.

2.                   Developers remain at risk of having projects delayed because courts bend over backwards to give those challenging MEPA or permitting decisions their day in court.

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As the deadline passed last week for submitting comments on EPA’s Utility MACT rule, it’s worth taking a big picture look at how the commenters line up. Big utility groups, such as the Edison Electric Institute and the American Public Power Association are looking for EPA to delay the rules. The basic argument is that it is going to take a long time to comply. EEI states that so many facilities will require extensions that the number of requests will create a backlog that will itself essentially create compliance problems.

However, it is not just environmental and public health groups that filed comments in support of the MACT rule. Exelon, which has a large nuclear fleet, submitted comments in support of the rule. In fact, Exelon referred to the “overblown critique” of the Utility MACT proposal, stating that the “lack of a national standard for toxic emissions continues to be a barrier to investment in new, cleaner generation capacity.” Industry supporters are not limited to Exelon. The Clean Energy Group, which includes PG&E, Calpine, and other generators with large gas fleets, also focused on the “business certainty the electric sector needs to move forward with capital investment decisions.” 

In looking at these comments, it is worth keeping in mind that the Utility MACT rule is only one of nine rules under development by EPA that would impose costs on coal-fired power plants. This confluence of rules is has been referred to as the “train wreck” for coal-fired power plants. While the Utility MACT rule may impose the greatest costs – and achieve the greatest benefits, according to EPA – many are concerned about the cumulative impact on coal-fired capacity. Earlier this week, the Congressional Research Service attempted to debunk the train wreck perspective:

The primary impacts of many of the rules will largely be on coal-fired plants more than 40 years old that have not, until now, installed state-of-the-art pollution controls. Many of these plants are inefficient and are being replaced by more efficient combined cycle natural gas plants, a development likely to be encouraged if the price of competing fuel – natural gas – continues to be low, almost regardless of EPA rules.

In any case, what’s the argument against promulgation of these rules on the same time frame? Isn’t that a good thing? There may be coal-fired plants which could sustain the capital investment required to comply with Utility MACT, but not the added cost of cooling water intake improvements to comply with new Clean Water Act requirements or the added cost of new disposal requirements if coal ash is regulated as a hazardous waste. Isn’t it better to know about all of these rules up front, so that facilities can plan for the total cost of all the rules? Wouldn’t a facility have legitimate cause to complain if the rules were instead issued seriatim, so that the facilities did not know about the full range of regulatory compliance costs when they make the decision whether to invest to comply with the first rule or instead to shut down?

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The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule yesterday that would exempt carbon dioxide injected into underground carbon capture & storage (CCS) wells from regulation as hazardous waste, so long as the CO₂ is held in wells designated for that purpose under the Safe Drinking Water Act.  In its press release announcing the program, EPA noted that the purpose of the regulation -- as well as its prior rulemakings under the Clean Air Act to require emissions reporting by CCS facilities, and the Safe Drinking Water Act to require appropriate siting, construction and monitoring of CCS wells -- was to reduce barriers to the use of CCS and promote the technology, which has yet to be proven at a commercial scale.  If the EPA is behind it, what more could CCS need? 

The interagency task force charged with evaluating barriers to CCS concluded in a report released last year that the chief obstacle for CCS was regulatory uncertainty, since most of our environmental laws do not contemplate such a technology.  The task force recommended that EPA implement regulatory changes such as this hazardous waste clarification. 

But the biggest barrier remains -- without comprehensive climate legislation and a price on carbon, there is no stable framework to encourage investment.  And this barrier is taking its toll.  This uncertainty is why AEP recently shelved plans to build a $668 million CCS retrofit on its Mountaineer coal-fired electric plant in West Virginia.

Although the outlook for CCS projects within the U.S. is thus uncertain, the United Nations' support of the technology could prompt some CCS projects in developing nations.  E&E reports today that a decision to allow CCS projects to be eligible for credits under the Clean Development Mechanism may soon be forthcoming, if technical issues such as monitoring and verifying reductions, and environmental safety and insurance coverage can be resolved.  

Other international organizations are also jumping on the CCS bandwagon.  A recent report by the International Energy Agency's Greenhouse Gas R&D Program touts the potential benefits of combining CCS with biomass facilities, particularly in Asia and Latin America.  The IEA theorizes that because the plant life used to make biomass fuels absorbs CO₂ from the atmosphere, subsequent storage of the CO₂ released from highly efficient biomass processes could actually reduce global atmospheric concentrations of carbon.  It's like how celery has negative calories.

The report asserts that we technically have the potential to annually remove from the atmosphere up to 10 gigatons of CO₂ -- or about 1/3 of annual global emissions -- through the use of biomass integrated gasification combined cycle plants and CCS.  A more economically-feasible implementation of these nascent technologies would still lead to reductions of 3.5 metric gigatons of CO₂ annually.  Notably, even this "feasible" scenario assumes that CO₂ will be priced at 50 euros ($71) per ton, worldwide.  Even in dreams of what could be, the development of CCS still has to face the obstacle of the price on carbon.

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It’s easy enough to complain about EPA; I’ve even been known to do it on occasion. However, in Massachusetts, we have a different problem. We let local municipalities regulate all sorts of matters in which they have no expertise.  We even delegate to municipalities the implementation of our state Wetlands Protection Act. That’s how we end up with cases such as Lippman v. Conservation Commission of Hopkinton. Lippman didn’t make any new law, but it does illustrate what havoc local boards can wreak. 

The Lippmans wanted to build a single family house on land subject to the WPA. They filed the requisite notice of intent. The Conservation Commission held several hearings. On June 16, 2008, there was a motion to close the hearing and issue an order of conditions. It failed. On June 30, there was motion to deny the order. That too failed. The chair announced that the commission was deadlocked and would not decide. On July 14, the Lippmans received a formal letter announcing the deadlock and notifying them of their appeal rights. On July 28, the commission decided to deny the order, but failed to issue any decision. 

On July 30, 2008, the Lippmans requested a superseding order of conditions from DEP, which is the appropriate course when the local commission fails to act. On September 11, the commission “purported” – the court’s word – to issue a formal denial. Notwithstanding this purported denial, DEP issued a superseding order on September 22, 2008.

Faced with the commission’s denial and DEP’s superseding order, the Lippmans’ sought a declaratory judgment that the commission action was void and the superseding order controlled. Although the Lipmman lost in Superior Court, the Appeals Court reversed:

Where a conservation commission does not issue its decision within the required twenty-one day period and the applicant appeals to the DEP, it is the DEP’s superseding order that controls; any late-issued decision of the commission is without effect.

Why does this fairly trivial case matter? For one thing, it’s worth remembering that the Lippmans sought authority to build one single-family house more than three years ago. The commission failed to act more than three years ago. Only now has a court decided in their favor. Indeed, an appeal was filed concerning the superseding order. That appeal was stayed pending the court decision, but now will have to be heard before the Lippmans can actually build.

My firm anecdotal view is that this case is emblematic of the types of results one gets from local boards. However much one may complain about EPA, its decisions are more comprehensible, more predictable, and more transparent than one often gets from local boards. 

Three or four years to get approval to build one single-family house? Cases such as this are recruitment ads for the Tea Party.

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According to EPA, buildings account for 36 percent of total energy consumption and 65 percent of electricity consumption in the United States. In the absence of comprehensive legislation that would put a price on carbon, which would give building owners direct incentives to implement cost-effective efficiency measures, a number of jurisdictions have started looking into and in some cases implementing requirements that at least commercial buildings be subject to energy efficiency ratings.

Last week, the Institute for Market Transformation (now isn’t that a name to put fear into the hearts of Tea Party members) released a report on the state of building rating programs in the United States. It makes interesting reading. First, while California, Washington, and Massachusetts have either enacted rating legislation are considering some kind of program, most of the action on building ratings isn’t even at the state level, it’s at the local level. This differs from EPA mileage or Energy Star ratings.

Second, most of these programs are triggered by some kind of transaction involving the building, such as sales, leases, and financings. Using a transaction trigger is understandable in that it avoids the avalanche of complaints that would likely follow any program that applied broadly to all buildings over a certain size. However, at a time when the real estate industry just led us into the worst downturn since the great depression, and prices are still low in many markets, I can certainly imagine some in the real estate industry being concerned about imposition of additional requirements that might discourage real estate transactions.

A related point is that, in markets where much of the building stock is old, many in the real estate industry are concerned that such ratings will be like putting a scarlet letter – perhaps an I for “inefficient” – on older buildings.

The IMT report describes rating and disclosure as a:

market-based policy tool to help overcome informational barriers to energy efficiency. Systematically assessing or “rating” building energy performance puts important information in the hands of owners and operators, helping them identify opportunities to improve energy efficiency. Disclosing ratings empowers tenants, investors and banks to identify and compare the energy performance of buildings, unlocking the market’s ability to drive demand and competition for energy-efficient space. The premise mirrors transparency rules in other market sectors, such as nutritional labels on food and fuel economy ratings on vehicles, which are recognized around the world as consumer protections and keystones of free and fair enterprise.

Real mom and apple pie stuff. Who could be agin’ it. Sarcasm aside, I’m not even against it (or agin’ it). The question though, is which market failure building ratings are trying to address. If the purpose of the rating program is simply to address the information failure described above, then it should unambiguously be a good thing. Indeed, if that is the case, all other things being equal, such programs should actual lead to increases in prices, as previously unrealized but available cost-effective efficiencies are implemented.

However, if the purpose is to impose on building owners the cost of the externality created by building energy consumption, one would expect building prices to decrease compared to those in jurisdictions that do not force building owners to internalize that externality, and I would suggest that a local patchwork of such regulations would not be a good thing.

I don’t even know if would be feasible to do an econometric study examining the impact of such programs on building prices. They are a lot of variables for which an economist would have to control. It will be interesting to follow this issue over the next few years. I’m keeping an open mind at this point. I don’t doubt that there are market failures resulting from imperfect information. If the programs are truly focused on remedying those failures, they might be a long-term boon – and reduce GHG emissions a bit on the side.

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Environmental liability has always been a dish best served in as many slices as possible.  Hence, CERCLA jurisprudence in its first two decades was characterized by a judicial willingness to entertain ever more creative theories to extend environmental liability to new classes of parties, such as a developer who unknowingly moved contaminated soil (Tanglewood East) to a toll manufacturer who merely directed the production of a useful product with knowledge that there would be hazardous waste by-products (Aceto).  More recently, however, courts have shown far less appetite for expanding the traditional boundaries of environmental liability beyond owners, operators, arrangers and transporters.  Typical of this new trend is Hinds Investment, L.P. v. McLaughlin, decided yesterday.  In two short decisions, the Ninth Circuit held that the manufacturer of a dry cleaning machine could not be held liable under either CERCLA or RCRA merely for selling a machine that by design would generate waste PCE.

Similar to the rationale in Aceto, the plaintiff in Hinds Investments claimed that the manufacturer of  the dry cleaning equipment used at its shopping centers could be liable on the theory that those dry cleaning machines had been designed with the knowledge that they would generate waste PCE.  According to that plaintiff, the manufacturer of the machine was an “arranger” within the meaning of CERCLA and “contributed” to the past handling and disposal of a hazardous waste within the meaning of RCRA’s citizen suit provision.  On a motion to dismiss, the trial court rejected these claims.  The Ninth Circuit affirmed in its published decision, finding that the machine manufacturer did not have an active enough role in contributing to the use or disposal of the waste PCE to support a RCRA claim.  In an unpublished decision, the court ruled that no CERCLA claim would lie given that the machine manufacturer had not sold its equipment for the purpose of disposing waste PCE.  In the end, Hinds Investment illustrates just how dramatically the judicial climate has changed after Burlington Northern and Best Foods with courts being far less receptive today to the notion of expanding environmental liability to new classes of PRPs.

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