Nutmeg State Crematorium, LLC v. Dept. of Energy & Enviromental Protection

Citations

• 210 Conn. App. 384

Syllabus

The plaintiffs appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court dismissing their administrative appeal from the decision of the Commis- sioner of Energy and Environmental Protection denying their applica- tions for two new source air permits. The plaintiffs sought the required permits from the defendant Department of Energy and Environmental Protection in order to install and operate two cremation machines at the site of their proposed crematorium. After a hearing, a department hearing officer issued a decision recommending that the plaintiffs' permit applications be denied on the basis that the plaintiffs' cremation system exceeded the maximum allowable stack concentration (MASC) for emis- sions of mercury pursuant to the applicable regulation (§ 22a-174-29). The commissioner adopted the hearing officer's decision and issued a final decision affirming the denial of the permit applications. Held: 1. The plaintiffs could not prevail on their claim that § 22a-174-29 (b) (2) should be interpreted to require mercury to be measured at the property line, at which point the mercury would be in its particulate form and calculating the MASC would be unnecessary, as it was clearly contrary to what a plain reading of the regulation provided; this court, like the commissioner and the trial court, interpreted § 22a-174-29 (b) (2) to require the calculation of the MASC for emissions of mercury in its vapor form at the discharge point from the crematorium stacks. 2. The plaintiffs could not prevail on their claim that the trial court erred by interpreting improperly the term ambient air: the trial court properly interpreted § 22a-174-29 (b) (2), and, in light of this court's review of the record and the considerable discretion afforded to the commissioner on questions of facts, the trial court properly applied that regulation to the facts of the present case when it concluded that the commissioner's decision to deny the plaintiffs' applications was not unreasonable, arb