Pine Creek Valley Watershed Assoc. v. U.S. Envtl. Prot. Agency
| Decision Date | 28 September 2015 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 14-1478 |
| Citation | 137 F.Supp.3d 767 |
| Parties | The Pine Creek Valley Watershed Assoc., Raymond Proffitt Foundation, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and the Delaware Riverkeeper c/o John Wilmer, Esq., Plaintiffs, v. The United States Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy, Administrator, and Shawn Gavin, Region III Administrator, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Pennsylvania |
John W. Wilmer, Media, PA, Nicholas B. Patton, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Bristol, PA, for Plaintiffs.
Austin David Saylor, Amanda Shafer Berman, Laura Jane Brown, U.S. Dept of Justice, Washington, DC, for Defendants.
The court initially disposed of this action, an administrative law case primarily presenting a question of statutory construction and agency deference, on March 17, 2015, by dismissing the plaintiffs' two-claim complaint in response to a motion to dismiss filed by the defendants. The plaintiffs (divided into two groups in this postjudgment phase) subsequently filed motions for reconsideration raising jurisdictional, procedural, and substantive issues with this prior ruling. The most serious, and interesting, issue raised by the plaintiffs revolves around the court's previous interpretation of the phrase "revised or new water quality standard" within the meaning of the Clean Water Act ("CWA"), 33 U.S.C. § 1313(c)(2)(A). As explained below, and due to the wording of the CWA citizen-suit provision, the interpretation of this phrase ended up playing a crucial role in the jurisdictional dismissal of the plaintiffs' primary claim.
That phrase took on jurisdictional significance in the following way. The citizen-suit provision confers subject-matter jurisdiction on the court to compel the EPA to act only when the EPA fails to perform a mandatory duty. The CWA, in turn, can be read to impose a non-discretionary duty on the EPA to review any revised or new water quality standard. Because the plaintiffs were asking the court to compel the EPA to, at a minimum, review Act 41, a Pennsylvania statute dealing with on-lot sewage systems, for compliance with the CWA, the dispositive inquiry became whether Act 41 is a revised or new water quality standard within the meaning of the CWA.
The court ultimately decided (or, more accurately, decided to let the EPA decide) this question in the negative. Two fundamental premises guided the court in coming to this conclusion. First, the court presumed that something could not be a revised or new water quality standard without meeting the threshold definition, whatever that might be, for what a water quality standard is. Second, the court situated the interpretive exercise of giving meaning to the term "water quality standard" within the familiar Chevron framework. Deference to the EPA, then, took on a central role in trying to figure out what it means to be a revised water quality standard.
The plaintiffs' instant motions for reconsideration require the court to reexamine these premises. Given the textual and structural complexity attending both the CWA and the implementing regulations, there is indeed another perspective from which to view this case. The bulk of this memorandum opinion, then, is devoted to a discussion of that angle. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, however, this alternative analysis, standing alone, does not warrant a disturbance of the court's prior disposition. The other grounds for reconsideration advanced by the plaintiffs, while less powerful than the interpretive issue, do not warrant any disturbance either. The court, therefore, denies the instant motions for reconsideration.
The court previously documented the procedural history leading to the entry of the underlying judgment in the March 17, 2015 memorandum opinion. Mem. Op. at 2-4, Doc. No. 43. As there is no need to recount that history here, the court focuses solely on the immediate events culminating in this memorandum opinion. They can be briefly summarized.
After the court issued both the March 17, 2015 order dismissing the plaintiffs' complaint and an accompanying memorandum opinion, all of the named plaintiffs collectively filed a motion for reconsideration on March 25, 2015. See Pls.' Mot. for Recons. of the Ct.'s Mem. Op. of Mar. 17, 2015, Doc. No. 45. On that same day, the plaintiffs, the Pine Creek Valley Watershed Assoc. and Raymond Proffitt Foundation ("Pine Creek Plaintiffs"), filed a corrected motion for reconsideration. See Corrected Pls.' Pine Creek Valley Watershed Assoc. and Raymond Proffitt Found.'s Mot. for Recons. of the Ct.'s Mem. Op. of Mar. 17, 2015, Doc. No. 46.1 The other group of plaintiffs, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and the Delaware Riverkeeper ("DRN Plaintiffs"), followed up with a motion for reconsideration of their own on April 13, 2015. See Pls. Del. Riverkeeper Network and the Del. Riverkeeper's Mot. for Recons. of the Ct.'s Mem. Op. of Mar. 17, 2015, Doc. No. 50.
Shortly thereafter, both the defendants and the intervenors filed separate responses to the motions. See Defs.' Resp. to Pls.' Mots. for Recons. of the Ct.'s Mar. 17, 2015 Mem. Op. ( ), Doc. No. 51; Intervenors The Nat. Assoc. of Homebuilders' and Pa. Builders Assoc.'s Resp. to Pls.' Mots. for Recons. of the Ct.'s Mem. Op. of Mar. 17, 2015, Doc. No. 52. Each group of plaintiffs filed a reply brief in support of their respective motions on May 8, 2015. See Reply Mem. of Law in Supp. of Pls.' Pine Creek Valley Watershed Assoc. and Raymond Proffitt Found.'s Mot. for Recons. of the Ct.'s Mem. Op. of Mar. 17, 2015 ( ), Doc. No. 53; Reply Mem. of Law in Supp. of Pls. Del. Riverkeeper Network and the Del. Riverkeeper's Mot. for Recons. of the Ct.'s Mem. Op. of Mar. 17, 2015, Doc. No. 54. The court held oral argument on the motions on May 27, 2015.
As the operative motions for reconsideration are grounded in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), the court recites the applicable standard of review. See Corrected Mem. of Law in Supp. of Pls.' Pine Creek Valley Watershed Assoc. and Raymond Proffitt Found.'s Mot. for Recons. of the Ct.'s Mem. Op. of Mar. 17, 2015 ( ) at 2; Mem. of Law in Supp. of Pls. Del. Riverkeeper Network and the Del. Riverkeeper's Mot. for Recons. of the Ct.'s Mem. Op. of Mar. 17, 2015 ( ) at 2, Doc. No. 50.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e) provides that "[a] motion to alter or amend a judgment must be filed no later than 28 days after the entry of the judgment." Fed. R. Civ. P. 59(e). "The purpose of a motion for reconsideration...is to correct manifest errors of law or fact or to present newly discovered evidence." U.S. ex rel. Schumann v. Astrazeneca Pharm. L.P. , 769 F.3d 837, 848 (3d Cir.2014) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). "A proper Rule 59(e) motion therefore must rely on one of three grounds: (1) an intervening change in controlling law; (2) the availability of new evidence; or (3) the need to correct clear error of law or prevent manifest injustice." Lazaridis v. Wehmer , 591 F.3d 666, 669 (3d Cir.2010) (citation omitted).
Both sets of plaintiffs contend that the court committed various clear errors of law in granting the defendants' motion to dismiss. Only one of these contentions, namely the court's prior interpretation of the CWA, necessitates sustained discussion. The court first turns to that issue.
In the March 17, 2015 memorandum opinion, the court began by recognizing that the dispositive issue of "whether Act 41 constitutes a revised or new water quality standard" turns on principles of "statutory construction and agency deference." Mem. Op. at 7, 10. The court, therefore, turned to the Chevron framework as the primary lens through which to view this interpretive issue. See id. at 7. In applying the first step of the Chevron analysis, the court initially confronted the question whether Congress has "directly spoken," through the text and structure of the CWA, to the precise issue of whether Act 41 constitutes a revised or new water quality standard. See id. at 10-11. After concluding that Congress has not so spoken, the court engaged the second step of the Chevron analysis, which required the court to consult the implementing regulations promulgated by the EPA. See id. at 12-15. Finding the regulations supplying "clarifying answers regarding the nature of a water quality standard" to be reasonable, the court ultimately held that those regulations unambiguously preclude the conclusion that Act 41 constitutes a revised or new water quality standard. Id. at 12; see id. at 2, 15–19. As previously noted, this rendered the CWA claim jurisdictionally defective. See id. at 8–10.
Implicit in the above analysis, and made explicit at times in the March 17, 2015 memorandum opinion, is the idea that the definition of a water quality standard is subsumed within the definition of a "revised or new water quality standard," as this term appears in the CWA. 33 U.S.C. § 1313(c)(2)(A). In the prior memorandum opinion, the court grappled with that implication at the level of interpreting the CWA. That is, because the CWA imposes a mandatory duty on the EPA to review a "revised or new water quality standard" (sometimes simply phrased as a "revised or new standard"), and not something like "revisions to water quality standards," the court presumed that the terms "revised" and "new" simply modify the term "water quality standard," and, as a result, that any definition of the term "revised or new water quality standard" must, at a bare minimum, build upon the base definition of "water quality standard." Id. This premise explains why the court was concerned with EPA regulations supplying "clarifying answers regarding the nature of a water quality standard " and not regulations bringing about a more specific definition of the unitary term "revised...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Swanger v. Warrior Run Sch. Dist.
... ... custody of the Tioga County Human Services Agency and the Laurel Youth Services Diagnostic Unit for ... ...
-
Natural Res. Def. Council v. McCarthy
...standard, but it does not define what a revised or new water quality standard is." Pine Creek Valley Watershed Assoc. v. United States Envtl. Prot. Agency , 137 F.Supp.3d 767, 773 (E.D. Pa. 2015) (citing 40 C.F.R. § 131.3 ). Nor does the regulation answer the question posed by the SWRCB's o......