A D.C. Circuit panel said EPA reasonably explained why steel mills needed more time to meet hazardous-emissions standards and dismissed procedural challenges to an interim rule that was later replaced by a final rule.
What happened
The D.C. Circuit on Friday largely upheld the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's decision to give steel mills more time to comply with hazardous-air-pollution standards, rejecting environmental groups' arguments that the agency unlawfully stretched Clean Air Act deadlines beyond what the statute allows.
The opinion, written by Circuit Judge Neomi Rao for a panel that also included Judges Florence Pan and Bradley Garcia, said EPA's revised deadlines were "consistent with the Clean Air Act and reasonably explained" because they rested on specific compliance problems rather than a bare desire for more reconsideration time.
The dispute grew out of EPA's 2024 rule for integrated iron and steel manufacturing facilities, which added standards for previously unregulated emissions sources including bleeder valve openings, bell leaks, slag processing and beaching. After reconsideration petitions from environmental groups and steel companies, EPA issued an interim final rule and later a final rule extending several compliance deadlines to April 3, 2027, while also adjusting the fenceline monitoring deadline.
The environmental petitioners argued EPA ran afoul of the Clean Air Act's three-month cap on stays pending reconsideration. The panel disagreed, distinguishing a delay imposed merely to buy reconsideration time from EPA's authority to set compliance dates when the agency makes substantive findings about what is practicable for regulated facilities.
On the merits, the court accepted EPA's explanations that original assumptions about unplanned bleeder valve openings, slag opacity limits and beaching controls had been undercut by later technical information. The panel said EPA identified technical problems showing that compliance by the original deadlines would not be practicable and did not need to use any magic words to satisfy the statute's expeditious-compliance requirement.
The court declined to decide the substantive reasonableness of the fenceline monitoring deadline because, on the record before it, the 2024 rule and the final rule effectively required compliance within one year after EPA eventually issues a testing method. It also dismissed the procedural attack on the interim rule as moot because EPA later promulgated the final rule after notice and comment.
The ruling leaves EPA's extended steel mill compliance deadlines in place while other challenges to the 2024 standards remain separate. The panel dismissed the fenceline-monitoring and interim-rule procedural challenges and otherwise denied the petitions for review.