## Facts

- The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 required existing point sources to achieve technology-based effluent limits using “best practicable control technology currently available” (BPT) by July 1, 1977.
- EPA missed statutory deadlines to promulgate certain industry effluent guidelines and to complete the permitting program on time.
- EPA issued Bethlehem Steel an NPDES permit for a facility that incorporated the statutory July 1, 1977 BPT compliance date and did not include any permit-based extension or later enforceable completion date in a compliance schedule.
- Bethlehem Steel presented engineering-based claims that construction and installation necessary for compliance could not be completed until about July 1979, and asserted that full compliance by July 1, 1977 was physically impossible.
- EPA maintained it lacked statutory authority to extend or modify the July 1, 1977 deadline through a permit or compliance schedule, though it suggested informally it might exercise enforcement discretion if Bethlehem proceeded diligently.
- Bethlehem sought direct judicial review in the Third Circuit, challenging EPA’s permit terms and statutory interpretation.

## Issues

1. Whether EPA had authority under the 1972 Act to extend or relax the July 1, 1977 BPT compliance deadline through NPDES permit conditions or compliance schedules when timely compliance was physically impossible.
2. Whether Congress intended the July 1, 1977 deadline in § 301(b)(1) to operate as a rigid mandate rather than a flexible target.
3. Whether EPA could substitute informal enforcement forbearance for a binding, legally effective adjustment of permit deadlines.

## Decision

- The Third Circuit denied the petition for review and upheld EPA’s position.
- The court held the July 1, 1977 deadline was a fixed statutory mandate that EPA could not extend through NPDES permits or administrative action.
- The court concluded EPA lacked authority to grant Bethlehem Steel a permit-based extension beyond July 1, 1977, even if compliance by that date was physically impossible.
- The court rejected using equitable “impossibility” concepts to override the statutory scheme, treating the hardship judgment as one Congress made in setting a fixed deadline.
- The court indicated that enforcement discretion could not supply legal authority to rewrite the statutory deadline in permit terms, even if discretionary choices might affect whether and when enforcement occurred.

## Legal Principles

- When Congress sets a specific calendar deadline using mandatory language (“shall be achieved”), agencies may not create extensions or exceptions absent statutory authorization.
- The absence of extension authority for a statutory deadline, especially where Congress considered and removed extension mechanisms, supports a reading that the deadline is inflexible.
- EPA may not use NPDES permit conditions or compliance schedules to alter a statutory compliance date where the statute provides no variance or extension mechanism tied to that date.
- Informal assurances regarding enforcement forbearance do not substitute for, and cannot confer, legal authority to revise statutory compliance obligations embodied in permits.

## Conclusion

The court treated the Clean Water Act’s July 1, 1977 BPT compliance date as an inflexible statutory command and held EPA lacked authority to extend that deadline through NPDES permitting, even where a discharger showed timely compliance was physically impossible.


Bethlehem Steel Corp. v. Train, 544 F.2d 657 (3d Cir. 1976)