ELR Citation: ELR 20088
No(s). 02-3628 (6th Cir. May 15, 2006)

The court denies a petition to review a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule that amended existing effluent limitations guidelines for the coal mining industry. The rule created the coal remining and western alkaline mining subcategories. Petitioners argued that the coal remining regulations conflict with the specific language adopted by Congress in the Rahall Amendment, Clean Water Act (CWA) §301(p), governing pollution abatement at mining sites abandoned before 1977 that companies want to reopen for mining. But nothing in the plain text of the Rahall Amendment prohibits EPA from promulgating the final rule. Petitioners also argued that the creation of the western alkaline mining subcategory violated the CWA by eliminating numeric pollution limits and that EPA acted arbitrarily and capriciously in preferring best management practices to numeric effluent limits for sediment reduction. Yet, petitioners' contention that this subcategory conflicts with the CWA is without merit, and EPA did not act arbitrarily or capriciously in promulgating the final rule.

[A prior decision in this litigation is digested at 34 ELR 20114.]