Cite as: 503 U. S. 91 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
cerning the application of downstream water quality standards at all incompatible with that balance. Congress, in crafting the Act, protected certain sovereign interests of the States; for example, § 510 allows States to adopt more demanding pollution-control standards than those established under the Act. Arkansas emphasizes that § 510 preserves such state authority only as it is applied to the waters of the regulating State. Even assuming Arkansas' construction of § 510 is correct, cf. id., at 493, that section only concerns state authority and does not constrain the EPA's authority to promulgate reasonable regulations requiring point sources in one State to comply with water quality standards in downstream States.
For these reasons, we find the EPA's requirement that the Fayetteville discharge comply with Oklahoma's water quality standards to be a reasonable exercise of the Agency's substantial statutory discretion. Cf. Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 842- 845 (1984).
V
The Court of Appeals construed the Clean Water Act to prohibit any discharge of effluent that would reach waters already in violation of existing water quality standards.12
We find nothing in the Act to support this reading.
12 "[W]e hold that the Clean Water Act prohibits granting an NPDES permit under the circumstances of this case (i. e., where applicable water quality standards have already been violated) and reverse EPA's decision to permit Fayetteville to discharge any part of its effluent to the Illinois River Basin." 908 F. 2d 595, 616 (CA10 1990).
"Congress cannot reasonably be presumed to have intended to exclude from the CWA's 'all-encompassing program,' 451 U. S., at 318, a permitting decision arising in circumstances such as those of this case. It is even more unfathomable that Congress fashioned a 'comprehensive . . . policy for the elimination of water pollution,' id., which sanctions continued pollution once minimum water quality standards have been transgressed. More likely, Congress simply never contemplated that EPA or a state would consider it permissible to authorize further pollution under such
107
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007