American Mining Congress v. EPA

824 F.2d 1177 (1987)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

The RCRA is a comprehensive environmental statute under which the EPA is granted authority to regulate solid and hazardous wastes. One part of the statute deals with nonhazardous solid waste management and the other with hazardous. Under the latter, the EPA was directed to create regulations establishing a comprehensive management system; only for the regulation of hazardous waste. Hazardous waste was a defined subset of solid waste, and therefore the scope of EPA's jurisdiction was limited to those materials that constitute solid waste. Solid waste was defined under 42 U.S.C. Section 6903(27). This dispute arose over that part of the definition's phrase 'and other discarded material.' EPA's definition of solid waste changed over time. Interim regulations were promulgated in 1980 that expressly excluded an intermediate manufacturing or mining product, which results from one of the steps in a manufacturing or mining process and is typically process through the next step of the process within a short time. In 1983, the EPA proposed narrowing the 1980 interim rule to address hazardous materials that were being recycled but this position left unclear whether the agency believed its jurisdiction extended to materials recycled in an industry's ongoing production processes or only to materials disposed of and recycled as part of a waste management program. Eventually when the final regulation was issued these closed loop exceptions (the material was reused as an ingredient or an as effective substitute for a commercial product or is returned as a raw material substitute to its original manufacturing process) were excluded from being defined as solid wastes but the material must not first be reclaimed to apply under this exception, and that meant that it could not be reprocessed to recover a usable product or regenerated. P's opposed this definition and contend that the RCRA is limited to controlling materials that are discarded or intended for discard and that EPA's reuse and recycle rules as applied to in-process secondary materials regulates materials that have not been discarded, and therefore this exceeds EPA's jurisdiction. Specifically, petroleum refineries recapture escaping hydrocarbons and return them to part of the refining process and mining facilities reprocess ore and recapture for reuse metal and mineral bearing dusts released during processing. These recaptured materials are considered solid wastes under the EPA rule. Ps challenge the scope of D's final rule. Ps contend that D's authority under RCRA is limited to controlling materials that are discarded or intended for discard. Ps argue that the reuse and recycle rules regulate materials that have not been discarded, and therefore exceed D's jurisdiction.