Quiet Communities, Inc. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA QUIET COMMUNITIES, INC., et al., Plaintiffs, Case No. 23-cv-1649 (JMC) v. UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY, et al., Defendants. MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER In the 1970s, Congress passed two laws—together, the Noise Control Act—that tasked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with regulating noise. For nearly a decade, the EPA implemented the Act. But in 1981, President Reagan submitted a budget proposal to Congress through which he sought to wind down the EPA’s noise control work. Congress debated that proposal and considered repealing the Noise Control Act. Ultimately, Congress did not repeal the law but did pass a budget consistent with the President’s proposed funding cuts. Based on this congressional activity in the early 1980s, the EPA has almost entirely stopped implementing the Act. After more than forty years of inactivity, Quiet Communities, Inc., and Jeanne Kempthorne filed this lawsuit, alleging that the Agency has failed to fulfill its duties under the Act or unreasonably delayed in doing so. The Court lacks jurisdiction over several of their claims, and one fails on the merits. But four of the claims succeed: The EPA’s decades-long delay in carrying 1 out the duties at issue in counts one, two, three, and eight is not reasonable. The Court therefore GRANTS in part and DENIES in part each of the cross-motions for summary judgment. 1 I. BACKGROUND “In 1972, Congress enacted the Noise Control Act in response to the growing threat posed nationwide by uncontrolled noise in the environment.” Recreational Vehicle Indus. Ass’n v. EPA, 653 F.2d 562, 564 (D.C. Cir. 1981). “In so doing, Congress declared that ‘it is the policy of the United States to promote an environment for all Americans free from noise that jeopardizes their health or welfare.’” Id. (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 4901(b)). The Act serves that purpose by, among other things, requiring the EPA to publish reports related to noise, authorizing the Agency to regulate products that produce noise, and designating the EPA as a hub responsible for coordinating noise control efforts. See 42 U.S.C. §§ 4903, 4904, 4905, 4907, 4914. Congress bolstered the Act when it passed the Quiet Communities Act of 1978, which amended the Noise Control Act to further empower the EPA to “promote the development of effective State and local noise control programs.” Quiet Communities Act of 1978, Pub. L. No. 95-609, 92 Stat. 3079. For a time, a dedicated office within the EPA—the Office of Noise Abatement and Control—carried out the Agency’s duties under the Act. See ECF 19-7 ¶ 9. 2 But in 1982, the EPA 1 Unless otherwise indicated, the formatting of citations has been modified throughout this opinion, for example, by omitting internal quotation marks, emphases, citations, and alterations and by altering capitalization. All pincites to documents filed on the docket in this case are to the automatically generated ECF Page ID number that appears at the top of each page. 2 The EPA objects that Quiet Communities and Kempthorne “rely on extra-record material contained in affidavits” in support of some of their factual contentions, including the one in this cited paragraph. ECF 19 at 18 n.2; ECF 19-7 at 2. But in agency inaction cases like this one, the Court’s review is not limited to “the administrative record.” W. Watersheds Project v. Pool, 942 F. Supp. 2d 93, 100–01 (D.D.C. 2013). In any event, of the four factual assertions the EPA says are drawn from affidavits, all are established either by statute or the EPA’s answer, so the Court need not rely on the affidavits for these points. See ECF 19-7 ¶¶ 1–2, 9–10. The Court does rely on the affidavits to determine whether Quiet Communities and Kempthorne have standing to press their claims. That, however, is permissible, and the EPA does not argue otherwise. See WildEarth Guardians v. Zinke, 368 F. Supp. 3d 41, 61 (D.D.C. 2019); ECF 19 at 18–19 n.2 (objecting only to reliance on affidavits “for purposes of determining liability”). 2 closed that office and another division in the agency that implemented the Act. See id. ¶ 10. That change followed closely on the heels of congressional action related to the Act. In 1981, the newly inaugurated Reagan administration submitted a budget proposal to Congress that “recommended $2.2 million for fiscal year 1982 to be used for an orderly phaseout of” the EPA’s noise program, “and no funds for fiscal year 1983 and beyond.” U.S. Gov’t Accountability Off., GAO-08-751, Transportation Noise: Federal Control Abatement Responsibilities May Need to Be Revised 15 (1989). 3 Congress debated the President’s proposal and ultimately approved his budget request. Id. at 16. Congress did not, however, repeal the Noise Control Act or its Quiet Communities Act amendments. See id.; see also ECF 19-7 ¶ 2. As the EPA puts it on its website, “EPA phased out the [Office of Noise Abatement and Control’s] funding in 1982,” but “the Noise Control Act of 1972 and the Quiet Communities Act of 1978 were never rescinded by Congress and remain in effect today.” EPA History: Noise and the Noise Control Act, EPA (Nov. 6, 2025), https://www.epa.gov/history/epa-history-noise-and-noise-control-act. After 1982, the EPA largely stopped carrying out any activities under the Noise Control Act. The agency almost entirely stopped issuing reports and regulations, assisting state and local governments, and coordinating federal efforts related to noise control. See ECF 19-7 ¶ 11. In 2009, the Agency did propose a regulation that would have amended a standard it issued in 1979 related to the labeling of hearing protection devices—ear plugs and the like—but it never completed the rulemaking. See Product Noise Labeling Hearing Protection Devices, 74 Fed. Reg. 39150 (Aug. 5, 2009); ECF 19-7 ¶¶ 22–24. 3 The EPA filed this report as an exhibit to its motion, see ECF 19-6, and the plaintiffs do not contest its accuracy. To the contrary, Quiet Communities and Kempthorne rely on it in their briefing, as well. See ECF 21 at 12. Regardless, the Court can “take judicial notice of the GAO Report.” Williams v. Lew, 819 F.3d 466, 473 (D.C. Cir. 2016). 3  Aggrieved by the EPA’s failure to implement the Noise Control Act, Quiet Communities— a non-profit membership organization “dedicated to helping communities reduce health and environmental harm from noise pollution”—and Jeanne Kempthorne—a Quiet Communities member who lives in Massachusetts—filed this lawsuit. ECF 18-9 ¶¶ 4–5; ECF 18-10 ¶¶ 1–2. Quiet Communities and Kempthorne allege that the EPA has failed to take a slew of “actions mandated” by the Noise Control Act. ECF 1 ¶ 1. In a nine-count complaint, they assert claims both under the Noise Control Act’s citizen suit provision, which authorizes suits “where there is alleged a failure . . . to perform any act or duty” under the Act “which is not discretionary,” and under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) provision that allows district courts to “compel agency action unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed.” 42 U.S.C. § 4911(a)(2)(A); 5 U.S.C. § 706(1). Through its first eight counts, the complaint alleges that the EPA has failed to perform eight different duties imposed by the Noise Control Act. See ECF 1 ¶¶ 124–85. The ninth count makes clear that Quiet Communities and Kempthorne are challenging the EPA’s failure to take those actions not only under the citizen suit provision, but also under the APA. See id. ¶¶ 186–92. The parties filed cross motions for summary judgment. See ECF 18; ECF 19. II. LEGAL STANDARD To prevail on a motion for summary judgment, the movant must “show[] that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). “In APA cases such as this one, involving cross-motions for summary judgment, the district judge sits as an appellate tribunal. The entire case on review is a question of law.” Gilbert v. Wilson, 292 F. Supp. 3d 426, 433 (D.D.C. 2018). III. ANALYSIS The Court begins, as it must, with its jurisdiction. As the EPA argues, Quiet Communities and Kempthorne lack standing to press two of their claims—counts four and five. The EPA is also 4 right that this Court lacks jurisdiction over count six. That claim can be brought only in the D.C. Circuit. The Court has jurisdiction over counts one, two, three, seven, and eight. Count seven fails on the merits because the agency action it seeks to compel is not discrete. The EPA mounts a single defense to the other claims, arguing that although it has not carried out the duties at issue in those claims for more than forty years, its delay is reasonable given Congress’s appropriations decisions in the early 1980s. That argument rests on too thin a reed. Congress never repealed the Noise Control Act; although it did enact appropriations laws that decreased the overall funding for the EPA after President Reagan proposed winding down the Agency’s noise activities, none of the laws Congress passed said anything about the EPA’s noise control work, let alone restricted its ability to do that work; and the EPA readily admits that it could use its lump-sum appropriations to implement the Noise Control Act. Given all of that, the EPA’s choice to ignore altogether the statutory mandates imposed by the Noise Control Act is not reasonable. The Court therefore enters judgment for Quiet Communities and Kempthorne as to liability on claims one, two, three, and eight, leaving the question of remedy for further proceedings. See ECF 16 at 3 (parties jointly requesting bifurcated summary judgment proceedings). A. The plaintiffs lack standing to press counts four and five. “For there to be a case or controversy under Article III” of the Constitution, “the plaintiff must have a personal stake in the case—in other words, standing.” TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413, 423 (2021). To demonstrate the requisite personal stake, “a plaintiff must show (i) that he suffered an injury in fact that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; (ii) that the injury was likely caused by the defendant; and (iii) that the injury would likely be redressed by judicial relief.” Id. This showing must be made “for each claim that [a plaintiff] press[es].” Id. at 431. And it must be made “with the manner and degree of evidence required at the successive stages of the litigation.” Id. at 431. Here, that means that at least one of the two plaintiffs must 5 have created a genuine dispute of material fact as to their standing on each claim. See Pub. Citizen, Inc. v. Trump, 435 F. Supp. 3d 144, 152 (D.D.C. 2019) (explaining how summary judgment standard applies to standing); Town of Chester v. Laroe Ests., Inc., 581 U.S. 433, 439 (2017) (where multiple plaintiffs seek same form of relief, “[a]t least one plaintiff must have standing”). The EPA argues that neither Quiet Communities nor Kempthorne has sufficiently demonstrated their standing to press counts four or five of their complaint. See ECF 19 at 21, 31. 4 Of course, that the Agency has not challenged the plaintiffs’ standing to bring their other claims does not take that issue off the table: Federal courts have “an independent obligation to assure that standing exists.” Summers v. Earth Island Inst., 555 U.S. 488, 499 (2009). Nevertheless, the Court is satisfied that Quiet Communities and Kempthorne have adequately demonstrated their standing to press each of the counts that the EPA does not address. In each of those counts, Quiet Communities and Kempthorne allege that they have “been deprived of information that, on [their] interpretation, a statute requires the government or a third party to disclose” to them and that they “suffer[], by being denied access to that information, the type of harm Congress sought to prevent by requiring disclosure.” Friends of Animals v. Jewell, 828 F.3d 989, 992 (D.C. Cir. 2016). In count one, that 42 U.S.C. § 4904(c) requires the EPA to “revise or supplement” a particular report. ECF 1 ¶¶ 126–28. Same in counts two and three for different reports. Id. ¶¶ 133–35, 140–43. In count six, that the Agency has failed to require the disclosure of information via labelling requirements, as it should have done under 42 U.S.C. § 4907. See ECF 1 ¶¶ 164–66. For count seven, that the EPA has failed to implement 42 U.S.C. § 4913, which requires, among other things, 4 In its motion for summary judgment, the Agency also argued that the plaintiffs lack standing to press one aspect of count eight—any claim under section 4(c)(1) of the Act that the EPA allegedly failed to coordinate the programs of Federal agencies relating to noise research and control. See ECF 19 at 32. But the plaintiffs clarified in their reply that they were not making that claim in count eight, see ECF 21 at 26, so the EPA dropped this standing argument in its reply, see ECF 27 at 15 n.4. 6 the “disseminat[ion] of information and educational materials.” ECF 1 ¶ 173. And for count eight, that the Agency has failed to publish “a report on the status and progress of Federal activities relating to noise research and control,” as required by 42 U.S.C. § 4903(c)(3). ECF 1 ¶ 181. These informational injuries are traceable to the EPA’s alleged failure to act in each of these counts of the complaint, and requiring the Agency to disseminate the relevant information would redress the injuries. See Friends of Animals, 828 F.3d at 992. That suffices to establish both Quiet Communities’ and Kempthorne’s standing for the claims other than those in counts four and five. But as the EPA rightly appreciates, counts four and five are different. Neither of those claims relate to sections of the Noise Control Act that “mandate the disclosure of any information.” Friends of Animals, 828 F.3d at 990. Instead, they focus on sections of the statute that, as the plaintiffs see it, require the EPA to “publish proposed regulations” of certain products that qualify as “major source[s] of noise”—count four—and to establish a program for certifying “low-noise-emission products” that will then be entitled to a preference in government procurement—count five. 42 U.S.C. §§ 4905(a), 4914; ECF 1 ¶¶ 146– 63. The EPA is right that neither Quiet Communities nor Kempthorne have adequately demonstrated their standing to press those two claims. 1. Count four: failure to regulate products identified as major sources of noise. In 1975, the EPA identified “truck transport refrigeration units as a major source of noise” under 42 U.S.C. § 4904(b). ECF 19-7 ¶ 16; see Identification of Products as Major Sources of Noise, 40 Fed. Reg. 23105 (May 28, 1975). Two years later, the Agency identified three more major sources of noise: “power lawn mowers, pavement breakers, and rock drills.” ECF 19-7 ¶ 17; see Identification of Products as Major Sources of Noise, 42 Fed. Reg. 2525 (Jan. 12, 1977); Identification of Products as Major Sources of Noise: Pavement Breakers and Rock Drills, 42 Fed. 7 Reg. 6722 (Feb. 3, 1977). In count four, Quiet Communities and Kempthorne allege that once those four major sources of noise were identified, the EPA was required to issue “proposed regulations” for each of them within 18 months of their respective designations. ECF 1 ¶¶ 148– 51; see 42 U.S.C. § 4905(a)(1), (2)(A). The EPA admits that it never proposed regulations for any of these products. See ECF 19-7 ¶ 19. For that reason, in count four plaintiffs seek an order requiring the EPA to “promptly prepare and publish proposed regulations . . . for truck transport refrigeration units, power lawn mowers, pavement breakers, and rock drills.” ECF 1 ¶ 156. Quiet Communities invokes both associational and organizational standing in arguing the Court has jurisdiction over this claim. See ECF 21 at 20–24. Neither theory succeeds. In reaching that conclusion, the Court also explains why Kempthorne—who is a Quiet Communities member, ECF 18-10 ¶ 2—does not have standing to press this claim, either. Quiet Communities has not established that it has associational standing because it has not shown that any one of its members—Kempthorne included—has standing to pursue count four “in her or his own right.” Elec. Priv. Info. Ctr. v. U.S. Dep’t of Com., 928 F.3d 95, 101 (D.C. Cir. 2019). Quiet Communities invokes its members “physical, recreational, financial, and informational harm from unregulated noise.” ECF 21 at 20. Setting aside the informational bit for now—the Court returns to it shortly—these are no doubt cognizable injuries in fact. Financial injury is a quintessential injury in fact. See Carpenters Indus. Council v. Zinke, 854 F.3d 1, 5 (D.C. Cir. 2017). And what Quiet Communities calls “physical” and “recreational” harm relates to the many ways that its members say noise causes them physical and psychological distress and interferes with their use and enjoyment of their homes. ECF 21 at 21–22. That kind of injury assuredly bears a “close relationship to a harm traditionally recognized as providing a basis for a lawsuit in American courts”—to name just one category of suit, those involving nuisance claims— 8 and is therefore “concrete for purposes of Article III.” TransUnion, 594 U.S. at 424; see Van Patten v. Vertical Fitness Grp., LLC, 847 F.3d 1037, 1043 (9th Cir. 2017) (“Actions to remedy . . . nuisance have long been heard by American courts.”). The problem, however, is that none of Quiet Communities’ members injuries are “fairly traceable to the” inaction “challenged” in count four: the EPA’s failure to propose regulations for truck transport refrigeration units, power lawn mowers, pavement breakers, and rock drills. Louie v. Dickson, 964 F.3d 50, 54 (D.C. Cir. 2020). None of Quiet Communities’ members say a word in their declarations about truck transport refrigeration units, pavement breakers, or rock drills. Quiet Communities seems to acknowledge as much, responding to the EPA’s argument on this front only by insisting that its members have connected their injuries to the Agency’s failure to regulate lawn mowers. See ECF 21 at 22. But although several members do link their harms to noise from lawncare, they complain almost entirely about “gas-powered leaf blowers.” See, e.g., ECF 18-12 ¶¶ 9–17, 22–25; ECF 18- 14 ¶¶ 15, 26, 36, 38, 44; ECF 18-15 ¶¶ 9, 15, 20, 22. Attempting to show that Kempthorne and other Quiet Communities members nevertheless do suffer harms related to noise from lawn mowers, the plaintiffs cited paragraphs from four declarations. See ECF 21 at 22. One of those is from Kempthorne’s declaration, where she explains that in her former home she heard “landscaping crews . . . mowing and blowing for extended periods of time.” ECF 18-10 ¶ 6 (cited at ECF 21 at 22). But Kempthorne no longer lives in that house, and at her new house she complains of noise from “garbage trucks,” “leaf blowers, and, most frequently, motorcycles, trucks, and other motor vehicles.” Id. ¶¶ 13–14. In other words, she does not attribute the current and ongoing noise issues in her home to lawn mowers. See Jones v. U.S. Secret Serv., 143 F.4th 489, 495 (D.C. Cir. 2025) (“Past exposure to illegal conduct, without more, is insufficient to 9 establish standing for prospective relief.”). The plaintiffs’ other record citations are even less helpful. None of the cited paragraphs mention lawn mowers, and all three declarations make clear that these members are being harmed by leaf blowers, not lawn mowers. See ECF 18-10 ¶¶ 9–17, 22–25; ECF 18-14 ¶¶ 15, 26, 36, 38, 44; ECF 18-15 ¶¶ 9, 15, 20, 22; ECF 21 at 22 (citing these declarations). The EPA’s regulation (or lack thereof) of truck transport refrigeration units, power lawn mowers, pavement breakers, and rock drills, is far “too attenuated” from the activities that Quiet Communities’ members say are causing their injuries—the use of other noisy products that would not themselves be subject to the regulations that the plaintiffs say must be proposed. FDA v. All. for Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. 367, 383 (2024). Nor, despite Quiet Communities’ claim otherwise, is it a “commonsense economic realit[y],” Diamond Alt. Energy, LLC v. EPA, 606 U.S. 100, 116 (2025), that the regulation of lawn mowers would have “positive spillover” effects on the loudness of leaf blowers because the two are “part of the same core set of commercial landscaping operations,” ECF 21 at 23. The commonsense intuition is that leaf blower manufacturers will maximize their profits, and Quiet Communities has not explained why imposing noise requirements on lawn mowers would either make it cheaper for leaf blower makers to build quieter leaf blowers or would increase the demand for quieter leaf blowers. All told, then, the plaintiffs have failed to establish a causal link between the noise related harms—physical, recreational, and financial—that Quiet Communities’ members (Kempthorne included) suffer and the EPA’s failure to regulate these four products. Quiet Communities attempts to gloss over this problem by arguing that regulating those products “would reduce the cumulative noise profile in the communities where” its members live. ECF 21 at 21. But it “fail[ed] to bridge the evidentiary gap” between a more general claimed noise 10 profile and the specific noise-related injuries that are harming the members whose testimony is in the record. Wildearth Guardians v. Salazar, 880 F. Supp. 2d 77, 85 (D.D.C. 2012). And unlike its members’ particularized injuries related to the noise problems they experience in their homes, Quiet Communities cannot point to increased noise generally—the “cumulative noise profile,” ECF 21 at 21—as a cognizable injury. That is the sort of “undifferentiated” injury “common to all members of the public” that does not qualify as “particularized.” Comm. on Judiciary of U.S. House of Representatives v. McGahn, 968 F.3d 755, 767 (D.C. Cir. 2020). As for the supposed “informational” harms that Quiet Communities says its members are suffering from the violation alleged in count four, ECF 21 at 20, it is not the sort of informational harm that props up the plaintiffs’ other claims. Unlike those claims, in count four the plaintiffs do not allege that the relevant statutory provision requires the EPA to disclose information; instead, they allege that the EPA must “propose[] regulations.” ECF 1 ¶ 147. Because the statute at issue in count four does not “mandate the release of information,” this claim does not involve that kind of informational injury. Friends of Animals, 828 F.3d at 994. Instead, Quiet Communities is invoking a more ephemeral kind of informational injury: that the EPA’s failure to regulate these four products “contributes to the misconception that noise is a nuisance and not a harmful pollutant.” ECF 21 at 20. That leads Quiet Communities’ members to spend additional time and money “convincing others that noise is harmful,” and, because of the “collective ignorance of businesses, product manufacturers, [and] local and state governments,” there is more noise near Quiet Communities’ members’ homes. Id. at 21. That theory of informational injury is far too speculative and attenuated to prop up count four. It requires stacking inference on inference, with speculation to boot, to conclude that the EPA proposing regulations for these four specific products would alleviate any claimed “collective ignorance” about the seriousness of noise pollution. 11  As for organizational standing, Quiet Communities fares no better. To establish organizational standing, Quiet Communities must show that the EPA’s failure to propose regulations of these four products “injure[s] the organization’s interest” and that the “organization use[s] its resources to counteract that harm.” PETA v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 797 F.3d 1087, 1094 (D.C. Cir. 2015). Quiet Communities cannot make the first of those showings, so the Court need not consider the second prong of the test. Quiet Communities points to two kinds of organizational harm—that the EPA’s failure to issue these regulations “contributes to the misconception that noise is a nuisance and not a harmful pollutant,” thereby rendering the organization’s advocacy efforts more difficult and costly, and that the organization “expends resources working with the lawncare industry and various communities to reduce the noise profile of products used in that industry.” ECF 21 at 20–22. Neither is a cognizable injury in fact. The first claimed injury is insufficiently “concrete” because the only “service impaired” on that theory is Quiet Communities’ “pure issue-advocacy.” PETA, 797 F.3d at 1093–94. “At most,” the first claimed injury is that the EPA “is not properly collecting and disseminating information about” these four would-be regulated products, “which [Quiet Communities] say[s] in turn makes it more difficult for them to inform the public about” the serious problems associated with noise. All. for Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. at 395; see, e.g., ECF 18-9 ¶¶ 21–23 (organization’s President testifying that if “EPA regulated major sources of noise,” organization could spend less time “developing and disseminating basic information”). But, as already explained in addressing the claimed informational injury above, Quiet Communities does not suggest that the statute at issue in count four “requires [the EPA] to disseminate . . . information,” so this theory does not suffice to establish an organizational injury for that count. All. for Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. at 395–96. 12  The second theory fails too. Quiet Communities’ President has indeed explained that the organization “works with individuals and communities to address” and “raise awareness of noise from a variety of sources including . . . lawn and garden equipment.” ECF 18-9 ¶ 16. That effort apparently includes working with a variety of “entities—like school districts, universities, botanic gardens, golf clubs, commercial entities, and libraries—to transition their campuses away from gas-powered lawn equipment, including lawn mowers . . . , to quieter electric alternatives.” Id. ¶ 64. Even still, Quiet Communities’ “use of resources” for this “advocacy” around lawn equipment “is not sufficient to give rise to an Article III injury.” Food & Water Watch, Inc. v. Vilsack, 808 F.3d 905, 919 (D.C. Cir. 2015). Even if the EPA’s failure to regulate lawn mowers forces Quiet Communities to “increase the amount of resources that it spends encouraging” businesses and governments to use quieter lawn mowers, that still amounts to “nothing more than an abstract injury to its interests that is insufficient to support standing.” Id. at 920–21. Because Quiet Communities has not established organizational or associational standing, and Kempthorne has not established her own standing either, this Court lacks jurisdiction over count four. 2. Count five: failure to implement the “low-noise-emission product” program. In count five, plaintiffs seek to compel the EPA to comply with a section of the Noise Control Act that addresses the “[d]evelopment of low-noise-emission products.” 42 U.S.C. § 4914; see ECF 1 ¶¶ 157–63. The section outlines several steps the Agency should take, including “determin[ing] which products qualify as low-noise-emission products in accordance with the provisions of th[e] section” and “certify[ing] . . . product[s] for which a certification application has been filed” as “low-noise-emission product[s]” that are “suitable for use as a substitute for a type of product at that time in use by agencies of the Federal Government.” 42 U.S.C. § 4914(b)(1), (2). Products that have been so certified are to “be acquired by purchase or lease by the Federal Government . . . in lieu of other products” if their “procurement cost[]” is “no more than 125 13 percentum of the retail price of the least expensive type of product for which they are certified substitutes.” Id. § 4914(c)(1). In their reply, the plaintiffs seem to have clarified the scope of this claim, writing that “[t]hrough” count five, they “ask the Court to compel the [EPA] to carry out the specific command of [42 U.S.C. § 4914(h)] to ‘promulgate procedures required to implement’” the rest of section 4914. ECF 21 at 43 (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 4914(h)). The plaintiffs rely exclusively on organizational standing to support this claim. See id. at 24 (arguing there is “more than enough” evidence “to show organizational standing for [the] harms alleged” in count five). Quiet Communities has not established organizational standing to press this claim. The organization’s theory of injury is a little difficult to follow here. It claims first that the EPA’s failure to implement a different section of the Act—the one at issue in count four that allegedly requires the promulgation of regulations for those four products—“has had compounding adverse effects on the implementation of the [low-noise-emission products] program.” ECF 21 at 24. Best the Court can tell, the “compounding” effect the plaintiffs are referencing stems from the fact that a “low-noise-emission product” is defined as one that “emits noise in amounts significantly below” the regulations that are supposed to be promulgated under that other section. 42 U.S.C. § 4914(a)(3). And it is true that the EPA pointed out in its motion for summary judgment that “no product . . . could qualify as a ‘low-noise-emission product’” because there are no such regulations. ECF 19 at 31. But even assuming Quiet Communities is right that the Agency’s violation of the regulation section of the statute also leads to a violation of the low-noise-emission products section, that observation does nothing to explain what injury the organization is suffering. Quiet Communities’ second point is slightly more helpful to the Court, but still fails to establish organizational standing. The organization says that it has marshalled evidence showing that the “EPA’s obstruction of [low-noise-emission product] certification harms the organization’s 14 interests for which the organization has expended resources to counteract that harm.” ECF 21 at 24. In support of that conclusory assertion, the plaintiffs cite a handful of paragraphs from Quiet Communities’ President’s declaration. See id. In those paragraphs, the President explains how a lack of information makes it difficult for “decisionmakers” to decide “how and whether to control noise.” ECF 18-9 ¶¶ 39–41. She provides one example where the organization provided consulting services for the District of Columbia “about the relative noise from gas-powered and electric leaf blowers.” Id. ¶¶ 42–51, 56–62. She also explains her view that, had the EPA “establish[ed] a low- noise-emission products program,” manufacturers would have been “incentivized to reduce their products’ noise emissions,” thereby changing the “portfolio of products developed in the lawn and garden and other industries.” Id. ¶¶ 70–74. Once more, the lack of information is insufficient to support Quiet Communities’ standing to press a claim seeking to compel the EPA to “promulgate procedures,” ECF 21 at 43, not comply with a disclosure statute, see All. for Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. at 395–96. And although there is some “commonsense economic” intuition behind Quiet Communities’ claim that certifying low- noise-emission products would incentivize production of quieter products, Diamond Alt. Energy, 606 U.S. at 116, Quiet Communities has still failed to trace a cognizable organizational injury to the EPA’s failure to implement the program. Assume that, had the EPA put in place the process for certifying products, producers would have recognized an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage in contracting with the federal government if they could offer certified products, so would have made quieter, qualifying products and sought certification. See 42 U.S.C. § 4914(h). Assume too that, having already made those products, the manufacturers would have sought to sell them to more people and made them generally available. Still, Quiet Communities has not explained how having those products on the market would have done anything other than 15 “[de]crease[d] the amount of resources that it spends encouraging” businesses and governments to use quieter products. Food & Water Watch, 808 F.3d at 920. Quiet Communities’ “use of resources” for this “advocacy” is too “abstract” to “impart standing.” Id. at 919. Because Quiet Communities has not established that it has organizational standing to bring count five, and because that is the only theory of standing advanced by the plaintiffs, the Court lacks jurisdiction over this claim, as well. B. The D.C. Circuit has exclusive jurisdiction over count six. The EPA also argues that this Court lacks jurisdiction over count six of the complaint. See ECF 19 at 33. Via that claim, Quiet Communities and Kempthorne seek to compel the Agency to comply with 42 U.S.C. § 4907. See ECF 1 ¶¶ 164–71. That section says that the EPA “shall by regulation designate any product . . . which emits noise capable of adversely affecting the public health or welfare” or “which is sold wholly or in part on the basis of its effectiveness in reducing noise” and then impose labeling requirements—informing “prospective user[s] of the level of noise the product emits, or its effectiveness in reducing noise”—on those designated products. 42 U.S.C. § 4907(a)–(b). The EPA correctly points out that another section of the Noise Control Act grants the D.C. Circuit exclusive jurisdiction over any “petition for review” of “any labeling regulation under section 4907.” Id. § 4915(a); see ECF 19 at 34. Because that provision assigns the Circuit “exclusive jurisdiction to review” the EPA’s actions under section 4907, the Agency argues that the Circuit also has “exclusive jurisdiction over claims”—like count six of the complaint—“seeking to compel” action under that section. ECF 19 at 33 (citing Telecomms. Rsch. & Action Ctr. v. FCC (TRAC), 750 F.2d 70 (D.C. Cir. 1984)). The EPA has this right. “[W]here a statute commits final agency action to review by the Court of Appeals, . . . that court ha[s] jurisdiction to hear suits seeking relief that would affect its future statutory power of review.” TRAC, 750 F.2d at 74. So, where a plaintiff claims that an 16 agency has unreasonably delayed in issuing a regulation that, had it been issued, could only have been reviewed by the D.C. Circuit, that court has jurisdiction over the claim. See id. at 75. And that court’s jurisdiction over the unreasonable delay claim “is exclusive.” Id. at 77. Applying those rules, the D.C. Circuit has “held that a claim of unreasonable delay [is] reviewable directly and exclusively in [that] [c]ourt” where the “final . . . order” that the agency is alleged to have unreasonably delayed in issuing “could be reviewed in th[at] [c]ourt.” Moms Against Mercury v. FDA, 483 F.3d 824, 827 (D.C. Cir. 2007). That describes count six in this case to a T. Quiet Communities and Kempthorne claim that the EPA’s “more than forty year[]” delay in “designat[ing] and adopt[ing] or revis[ing] labeling regulations” under section 4907 is unlawful, and they seek an order “requiring EPA to . . . designate and adopt labeling regulations for any product that emits noise capable of adversely affecting the public health or welfare.” ECF 1 ¶¶ 167–68, 170. Were the EPA to issue those “labeling regulation[s],” a “petition for review” of them could “be filed only in the” D.C. Circuit. 42 U.S.C. § 4915(a). Because “the discrete agency action sought” in count six “is itself reviewable exclusively” by the Circuit, this “unreasonable delay claim is also reviewable exclusively by” the Circuit. Silberstein v. SEC, 153 F. Supp. 3d 233, 237 (D.D.C. 2016). Quiet Communities and Kempthorne make a handful of attempts to avoid that conclusion, but none succeed. They argue that the Noise Control Act’s citizen suit provision “expressly gives the district court jurisdiction over claims alleging agency inaction.” ECF 21 at 27 (citing 42 U.S.C. § 4911(a)). That is true, but as Quiet Communities and Kempthorne elsewhere all but concede, count six fails if brought via the citizen suit provision because the labeling regulation provision in section 4907 does not impose any “date-certain deadlines” on the EPA. ECF 18-1 at 32; see also infra 21 (explaining why all counts other than count four are being reviewed as APA claims, rather 17 than as claims under the citizen suit provision). The Court therefore treats count six as a claim for unreasonable delay under the APA, and the APA “does not confer an independent grant of jurisdiction.” TRAC, 750 F.2d at 76. Nor can Quiet Communities and Kempthorne avoid the exclusive jurisdiction of the Circuit by arguing that “[t]here is no pending matter before EPA.” ECF 21 at 27. That argument fails most obviously because it rests on a faulty factual premise: Quiet Communities does have a petition pending at the EPA asking the Agency to “implement, enforce, and update its non-discretionary duties” under the Noise Control Act, including its alleged duties under section 4907. ECF 27-1 at 2. The argument is also legally unsound. It is true that the agency action the plaintiffs in TRAC were alleging was unreasonably delayed was the agency’s response to petitions pending before the agency. See 750 F.2d at 72. But nothing in the court’s reasoning hinged on the pending petitions; instead, it was a concern that the district court litigation “might affect the Circuit Court’s future jurisdiction” over an “agency action” that was “subject to [its] exclusive review.” Id. at 78–79. That concern is present in this case, too. Imagine this lawsuit ends in a determination that the EPA is not obligated to issue labeling regulations under section 4907. In that world, the EPA might never issue labeling regulations under this section, thereby preventing the D.C. Circuit from reviewing regulations that would otherwise have been “subject to [its] exclusive review.” Id. Quiet Communities and Kempthorne next attempt to liken this case to Sierra Club v. Jackson, 813 F. Supp. 2d 149 (D.D.C. 2011), in which another court in this District held that the D.C. Circuit did not have exclusive jurisdiction. S