Arkansas v. Oklahoma, 503 U.S. 91, 10 (1992)

Page:   Index   Previous  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  Next

Cite as: 503 U. S. 91 (1992)

Opinion of the Court

VI

The Court of Appeals also concluded that the EPA's issuance of the Fayetteville permit was arbitrary and capricious because the Agency misinterpreted Oklahoma's water quality standards. The primary difference 13 between the court's and the Agency's interpretation of the standards derives from the court's construction of the Act. Contrary to the EPA's interpretation of the Oklahoma standards, the Court of Appeals read those standards as containing the same categorical ban on new discharges that the court had found in the Clean Water Act itself. Although we do not believe the text of the Oklahoma standards supports the court's reading (indeed, we note that Oklahoma itself had not advanced that interpretation in its briefs in the Court of Appeals), we reject it for a more fundamental reason—namely, that the Court of Appeals exceeded the legitimate scope of judicial review of an agency adjudication. To emphasize the importance of this point, we shall first briefly assess the soundness of the EPA's interpretation and application of the Oklahoma

13 The court identified three errors in the EPA's reading of the Oklahoma standards. First, the court correctly observed that the ALJ and the Chief Judicial Officer misinterpreted § 4.10(c) of the standards as governing only the discharge of phosphorus into lakes, rather than the discharge of phosphorus into lakes and into all "perennial and intermittent streams." Id., at 617 (emphasis omitted). This error was harmless because the ALJ found that the discharge into Lake Francis would comply with § 4.10(c) and it is undisputed that that discharge produced a greater threat to the slow-moving water of the lake than to the rapid flow in the river.

The second flaw identified by the court was the ALJ's mistaken reliance on the 1985, rather than the 1982 version, of the Oklahoma standards. We agree with the Chief Judicial Officer, who also noted this error, that the portions of the two versions relevant to this case "do not differ materially." App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 90-1262, p. 150a. Therefore, this error was also harmless.

Because these two errors were harmless, we have focused in the text on the major difference between the court's and the EPA's readings of the Oklahoma standards: the "no degradation" provision.

109

Page:   Index   Previous  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007