Daikin Applied Americas Inc. v. EPA, No. 20-1479 (D.C. Cir. 2022)
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To determine whether to list a given site, the EPA primarily uses the Hazard Ranking System (“HRS”), a set of comprehensive scoring points for evaluating the potential damage from hazardous waste releases. After performing an HRS analysis of a site of groundwater contamination southwest of Minneapolis, Minnesota, the EPA determined that the HRS site score exceeded the required threshold for NPL listing.
Petitioners Daikin Applied Americas Inc. and Super Radiator Coils LP, former owners of a metal fabricating facility that is a possible source of the contaminants, challenged the listing as arbitrary and capricious and unsupported by substantial evidence. Petitioners contended that the EPA arbitrarily ignored other possible sources of contamination in determining the site and that the EPA both ignored evidence disproving, and failed to provide adequate evidence of, aquifer interconnectivity.
Petitioners argued that the EPA did not adequately establish observed releases. In particular, they contend that the EPA’s chemical analysis was flawed. The DC Circuit rejected the Petitioners’ claims and denied the petition for review. The Court held that the EPA was not required to attribute the contamination to a specific source and adequately supported aquifer interconnectivity. The court wrote that Petitioners misread the chart listing the wells and the hazardous substances exceeding the release threshold. Second, the EPA did not arbitrarily select well data. Further, the EPA correctly noted that “at this stage of the listing, groundwater modeling, 3D or otherwise, to predict migration pathways [is] not required as part of an HRS evaluation."
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