EPA filed a status report on October 15 in the slow-moving mercury and air toxics (MATS) litigation, which is now Murray Energy Corp. v. EPA, No. 16-1127 (D.C. Cir., filed April 26, 2016). The case is a challenge to EPA standards for coal-fired power plants that have been on the books since April 16, 2012, despite a U.S. Supreme Court remand in Michigan v. EPA, 135 S. Ct. 2699 (2015), followed by a D.C. Circuit decision not to vacate, White Stallion Energy Center v. EPA, 2015 WL 11051103 (D.C. Cir. 2015), cert. denied, 136 S. Ct. 2463 (2016), and the pending 2016 challenge to an EPA supplemental finding. EPA’s October 15 status report says that the agency has sent OMB a draft final rule regarding its proposal—published in February 2019—to withdraw its finding that a MATS rule is “appropriate and necessary” while leaving the applicable emission standards in place. 84 Fed. Reg. 2670 (Feb. 7, 2019). These proceedings retain a relevance apart from their utility in illustrating the occasionally bizarre nature of the world in which we live and litigate.

EPA’s proposal would, among other things, implement a new approach to analyzing the benefits of a regulation. Specifically—when calculating benefits for purposes of determining whether regulation of hazardous air pollutants is appropriate—EPA would eschew consideration of “co-benefits” flowing from accompanying reductions in emissions of other pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and fine particulate matter. Thus, “if the HAP [Hazardous Air Pollutant]-related benefits are not at least moderately commensurate with the cost of HAP controls, then no amount of co-benefits can offset this imbalance for purposes of a determination that it is appropriate to regulate under CAA section 112(n)(1)(A).” 84 Fed. Reg. at 2676. The idea is that non-HAP benefits should not receive “equal consideration” because criteria pollutants “are already addressed” by another regulatory program. Id. at 2677.

The analysis is reminiscent of EPA’s infamous Select Steel opinion, which dismissed an environmental-justice complaint. EPA File No. 5R-98-R5. In that 1998 opinion, the agency found that because the NAAQS for ozone “has been set at a level that is presumptively sufficient to protect public health and allows for an adequate margin of safety … there is no affected population which suffers ‘adverse’ impacts within the meaning of Title VI resulting from the incremental VOC emissions [that do not cause NAAQS violations].” There could be no disproportionate impact on a minority community that met NAAQS because there was no “adverse” impact at all!

The conclusion that achievement of NAAQS eliminates risk ignores a reality that Congress perceived when it amended the Clean Air Act in 1977. Congress recognized the need to protect people from harmful exposures “notwithstanding attainment and maintenance of all national ambient air quality standards.” 42 U.S.C. § 7470(1). The legislative history acknowledges, “The idea that the national primary standards are adequate to protect the health of the public has been belied.” H.R. Rep. No. 95-294 at 112 (May 12, 1977) (accompanying H.R. 6161). Senator Muskie—the father of the Clean Air Act—explained, “[T]here is no such thing as a threshold for health effects,” S. Deb. on S. 252, 123 Cong. Rec. 18,460 (June 10, 1977). “Even at the national primary standard level, which is the health standard, there are health effects that are not protected against.” Id.

“Appropriate” is an “all-encompassing term that naturally and traditionally includes consideration of all the relevant factors.” 135 S. Ct. at 2707 (quotation marks and citation omitted). Just as it was not “appropriate” for EPA to ignore costs when deciding to promulgate MATS, id., it would be inappropriate to ignore the benefit of lives saved because of ancillary reductions of criteria pollutants.