458
Syllabus
§ 109(b)(1) is the engine that drives nearly all of Title I of the CAA, the textual commitment of costs must be clear; Congress does not alter a regulatory scheme's fundamental details in vague terms or ancillary provisions, see MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 512 U. S. 218, 231. Respondents' arguments founder upon this principle. It is implausible that § 109(b)(1)'s modest words "adequate margin" and "requisite" give the EPA the power to determine whether implementation costs should moderate national air quality standards. Cf. ibid. And the cost factor is both so indirectly related to public health and so full of potential for canceling the conclusions drawn from direct health effects that it would have been expressly mentioned in §§ 108 and 109 had Congress meant it to be considered. Other CAA provisions, which do require cost data, have no bearing upon whether costs are to be taken into account in setting the NAAQS. Because the text of § 109(b)(1) in its context is clear, the canon of construing texts to avoid serious constitutional problems is not applicable. See, e. g., Miller v. French, 530 U. S. 327, 341. Pp. 464-471.
2. Section 109(b)(1) does not delegate legislative power to the EPA. When conferring decisionmaking authority upon agencies, Congress must lay down an intelligible principle to which the person or body authorized to act is directed to conform. J. W. Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, 276 U. S. 394, 409. An agency cannot cure an unlawful delegation of legislative power by adopting in its discretion a limiting construction of the statute. The limits that § 109(b)(1) imposes on the EPA's discretion are strikingly similar to the ones approved in, e. g., Touby v. United States, 500 U. S. 160, and the scope of discretion that § 109(b)(1) allows is well within the outer limits of the Court's non-delegation precedents, see, e. g., Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U. S. 388. Statutes need not provide a determinate criterion for saying how much of a regulated harm is too much to avoid delegating legislative power. Pp. 472-476.
3. The Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to consider the implementation issue under § 307 of the CAA. The implementation policy constitutes final agency action under § 307 because it marked the consummation of the EPA's decisionmaking process, see Bennett v. Spear, 520 U. S. 154. The decision is also ripe for review. The question is purely one of statutory interpretation that would not benefit from further factual development, see Ohio Forestry Assn., Inc. v. Sierra Club, 523 U. S. 726, 733; review will not interfere with further administrative development; and the hardship on respondent States in developing state implementation plans satisfies the CAA's special judicial-review provision permitting preenforcement review, see id., at 737.
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