Dominion Energy Brayton Point, LLC v. Johnson
United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
443 F.3d 12 (2006)
The EPA (defendant) had long issued Clean Water Act permits to Dominion Energy (plaintiff) for its power plant's cooling system, historically following a First Circuit precedent, Seacoast, that interpreted the Act's public-hearing requirement to mandate formal evidentiary hearings before permit decisions. After Dominion sought a thermal-variance renewal, the EPA proposed denying the variance and issued a new rule eliminating formal evidentiary hearings from the permitting process in favor of informal procedures. Dominion's request for a formal hearing was denied by the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board, and the district court dismissed Dominion's suit seeking to compel a formal hearing under Seacoast.
Whether, under Chevron deference, courts must defer to a federal agency's reasonable interpretation of a statutory public-hearing requirement in the absence of a clear expression of congressional intent, even when that interpretation departs from earlier case law construing the same provision.