we understand the difficulties of travel so that you hear more of the matter before you involves one issue who has standing to assert a violation of the national environmental protection act commonly if we were to reverse the denial of the motion to amend or are you going to defend your initial complaint as having satisfied either constitutional preventions standing i pondered that question judge  the original complaint was the fish and the amended complaint which is before the court more than adequately laid out what we considered to be the a facts were the issues complaint i'm sorry i was talking about i was talking about both of them what i said judge barry was to the extent that there's an argument that we weren't sufficient it or original complaint the amended complaint contains more than enough allegations of the environmental impacts and the environmental questions that were raised but i think pretty much speculative as the district court found they were generalized and i mean if you had these impacts and you knew about them why were they not a varied in the initial complaint if they if they were real and are particularized injury to your clients that you will we did not want them i spent a year with the right to know request dealing with general counsel to get the materials we had we have a we had another auction in the commonwealth  the follow its own procedures we did not know that they were going to condemn our property and build a detention basin or to detention basins or our property and don't their water from the road on our property until way after we filed the complaint that they did not give us the play ends similarly they did not give us the that the studies the traffic studies that  there consultant had prepared when we got the when we got the reports they showed that there was going to be a back up of fifteen hundred feet of traffic but traffic doesn't quite do it you had residents of the rainbow could it tonight can i answer the question as i understand the national environmental protection act there is a duty on the part of the government actor to investigate certain designated areas of impact and what we're complaining about is baby didn't investigate these areas of impact in the in the categorical exclusion that was that was filed and as part of the record there's a whole series of questions that i think answers your point ok but the problem mr caplan with the organ that you're proposing right that the that you are putting out there is article trying to get statutory standing to represent the interests of the patrons that potential future patrons who may come to your developed  think that's our position that we're in a representation will capacity the township baby in a represents representational capacity we're not well property owner roads eighty five acres of property not yes here you're under the a p a right ok you're under the a p a and you're attempting to say that penn dot on behalf of the feds did something wrong the question i think you have to answer is how do you get here to ask that i use i understand and i think i'm going to say the same thing again we only piece of property adjacent to the project though they are our property is going to be condemned they're designed they won't tell us i think they've been designed when they finally gave us a joint but that's why i'm going just barrie they were under an obligation to investigate the effect of that storm water basin they were under an obligation under need to investigate the effect of of clearing fifteen hundred feet of traffic stop  see environmental harm hello how are you going to be how is the environment going to be harmed in a way that you have you will be injured well i don't know whether the storm water management facilities will be properly designed and i performed you know i've done that my entire career of course the answer to that of course the answer to that is no the bells and whistles shouldn't go off i think i do that for my clients every day but we have an unusual situation here we have this ad that says that there has to be an environmental investigation under this act if you look at the questions i a regulation actually expand would expand what the statute is designed to do and that includes the concept of relating to plant growth or land use to mine on the supreme court has read the statute much now a piece of property on which they're going to build this road we are going to filled this road and the nash and the national environmental protection act says that when federal money is going to be used to build let me ask you a question right in front why is the township not a party the seems that the township is the affected entity and the board if a mayor of the poor represents the constituents which are essentially all of the approximately ninety five hundred individuals in the township as role property owners to that end m c a is role surrounding property owners have an important insight on their properties and up i believe we are permitted underneath the associational standing tests which the supreme court has permitted opiate in a different context a big difference and if you're representing you really representing all of the property owners supposedly you represent everyone or you think everyone has sustained an injury every property owner certainly not but there's the potential for significant harm as has made inquiries laid out the route to twenty two court order has the greatest volume of commercial development and also residential housing the remainder made in creek township is foresee populated so this is the main route that goes from allentown to redding and it's the source of all of the  well with any change as public transportation has proposed you have to consider these important issues that might yeah but you know any change would take away the categorical exclusion we have to have significant harm here and we can't just have speculation that then requires a you know what report to be prepared any time just any change that would have any impact has to be significant it does have to be significant but it's difficult to allege specific harm before the project is completed or perhaps even contemplated unevenness it's not right and even if it is right does your also have to allege proximate show proximate cause which you're complaining pendatang the highway administration saying you have a right to sue underneath and it seems to me that the cases say that's all well and good even if you're properly here representing somebody who's a resident of your township you also have to show that what you're alleging they're going to complaint were because it after discovered information as a result of right to know requests and documents which the department of transportation totally produced subsequent to the filing of the original complaint i we believe the important environmental considerations are working to improve state route to twenty two and make it safer one of the changes they're going to make is they're going to put a traffic circle in front of m c s property traffic circles reduce car accidents and they reduce injuries from car accidents by preventing t clean water act as more of that process of stormwater management plan will have to be written and approved and every city will be able to participate in that and comment on those comments now that's more m c s problem than yours because they're going to they want to proceed with the case that they're not going to be shell the harm because they haven't been designed so you know ultimately it doesn't get designed for a couple of years they'll probably be run out of court yet i suppose that's true my understanding is gore can tell you a little bit more about the exact status of the project right now is that to dismiss stage i think their allegations are sufficient to show that they might suffer some economic harm from this rhonda one of the things that surprised me a little bit is when this case was decided district court lexmark had been decided by the supreme court any water on my property and i have standing to complain about it and say you really need to invest but isn't that an economic injury i think it's air land water pipes record it said i mean if it were only that it's going to drive away patrons or it's going to cost them interests were able to maintain suit because the obligation to prepare environmental impact statement had already been triggered and once the agency has appeared environmental impact statement it has to look at certain social and economic effects now doesn't those those by themselves bother to get into the environmental impact statement because it is the adjacent land owners and townships can ask questions well i mean that doesn't make sense that they can't they can't challenge somehow that impact what we're looking at today we're looking at a pleading to decide whether there is a constitutional credential standing to pursue this case what is the permitting have to do with that in my opinion there will be several comment period public comment periods where they will have the opportunity to present comments and addition their requirements and needs permitting processes that require the post construction strong management plan which is the plan that has the basins in it to be submitted to the township for review for consistency with its strong water ordinance that's all well and good but the statute imposes on the government the obligation to prepare an environmental impact statement so that it comes forward with a statement about the impact and it has studies and it can present this and do its homework so people can intelligently comment otherwise if we don't have this kind of statement you had a shooting in the dark are you not because the government has this information was the question is whether they need to prepare in this state and seems to be the printing process is all well and good but to inform the primary process that's why we have an e i yes unless there's absolutely no significant impact on the categorical a solution but there are sections of the reasons are known cannot be a reason to require an environmental impact statement and that interest is a social economic interests and again that's in the region complain about the amended complaint doesn't that how does that not pass muster from environmental kind of environmental point of view we are now but the air traffic and strong water injuries that they've alleged are very general traffic analysis including their projects so it's not our project that's necessarily causing that degree of killing it is their project their development in addition  comments raise any environmental issues that's all traffic how it's going to affect their ability to put them up the township adopted a resolution that resolution opposes the project but it's based on i mean no access to  at what they've been writing this whole time they are sophisticated appellants they deal with development all the time and they now about air noise and strong water impacts they don't need to receive  challenged at the front and put a problem it's going to have a little bit of a benefit to the community we did have a number of meetings with the township and we also had a number of public meetings prior to