Permit Fees Related to Volume of Pollutants Discharged

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection adopted a fee schedule for a permit system to regulate discharges of pollutants into surface waters, under which volume‐based formulas yielded the individual fees for permittees within each category. When a group of electric utilities challenged the permit fees. a trial court upheld the thermal fees. In an appeal, the utilities stated argued that the law mandated that the state institute a fee program that would cover the costs of processing the permits and that only the demonstrated costs could be recovered from individual permit holders. The court said it was not necessary for the department to determine the costs attributable to each individual license and stated that there was ample support for a fee‐based regulatory system that related costs of graduated differences in amounts discharged.