Easy Cases Make Good Law: The Third Circuit Affirms EPA's Chesapeake Bay TMDL

On Monday, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed EPA's TMDL for the Chesapeake Bay. This should not be news. Although Judge Ambro comprehensively disposed of the appellants' arguments in a thoughtful opinion, I think that the opinion probably could have been six pages rather than sixty.

The crux of the challengers' arguments was that a TMDL must consist of a single number specifying the amount of a pollutant that a water body can accommodate without adverse impact. The Court agreed with EPA that such is not the case. The main points include:

• The TMDL review is governed by Chevron and this is particularly so "where an agency is charged with administering a complex statutory scheme requiring technical or scientific sophistication" – as was certainly the case here.