A Victory for Economic and Environmental Rationality: Supreme
Court Allows Cost-Benefit Analysis in Setting Important Clean
Water Act Standards On 2 April 2009, the US Supreme Court ruled
in Entergy Corporation et al. v. Riverkeeper, Inc. that the US
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may use cost-benefit
analysis in setting standards and issuing permits under Section
316(b) of the Clean Water Act, overturning a 2007 decision by
the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. This section of the
Clean Water Act directs EPA to require large power plants and
other relevant facilities to install the Best Technology
Available (BTA) for minimizing adverse environmental impacts
associated with cooling water intake structures. These
facilities often process millions of gallons of water per day,
which leads to fish losses when fish and other aquatic organisms
are trapped against intake screens ("impingement") or pulled
into the cooling system (“entrainment”). This NERA paper
explains the methods that environmental ec