ELR Citation: ELR 20216
No(s). 04-1157 (4th Cir. Oct 25, 2006)

The court upheld U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that require the owners of mobile-home parks and other manufactured housing complexes who submeter water to their tenants to comply with Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) regulations. Submetering allows property owners to meter and bill their tenants for water the owner purchases and then distributes for their tenants’ use. In the regulations at issue, EPA granted apartment houses an exemption from the Agency's long-held view that submetering was equivalent to the practice of selling water and subject to the SDWA. Manufactured homes, however, were not included and, thus, remained subject to federal drinking water regulations. The court held that EPA’s regulation, enacted to ensure clean drinking water, was supported by a rational basis and neither arbitrary nor capricious. EPA deemed water distribution systems to be safe from pollution in apartment houses, but it could not say the same for distribution systems in manufactured home communities.