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Nature of Suit Code: 893
Nature of Suit: Environmental Matters
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 8, 2011 Decided December 16, 2011 

No. 10-5169 

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HOME BUILDERS, 

APPELLANT

v. 

UNITED STATES ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:07-cv-00972) 

Robert R. Gasaway argued the cause for appellant. With 

him on the briefs were Jeffrey Bossert Clark, William H. 

Burgess, and Aaron L. Nielson. 

M. Reed Hopper, James S. Burling, Damien M. Schiff, 

and Elizabeth Gaudio were on the brief for amici curiae 

Pacific Legal Foundation, et al. in support of appellant. 

Aaron P. Avila, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for appellees. With him on the brief were 

Jessica O'Donnell and Ellen J. Durkee, Attorneys. Lisa E. 

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Jones, Attorney, and R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. 

Attorney, entered appearances. 

Jon P. Devine Jr. was on the brief for amici curiae

Natural Resources Defense Council, et al. in support of 

appellees. 

Before: HENDERSON, Circuit Judge, and WILLIAMS and 

RANDOLPH, Senior Circuit Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS. 

Circuit Judge HENDERSON concurs in the judgment. 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge: Invoking its authority 

under § 404(e) of the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), 33 U.S.C. 

§ 1344(e), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a generic 

nationwide permit (“NWP 46”) allowing persons to secure 

approval for qualifying discharges into “waters of the United 

States” without going through the more laborious process of 

securing an individual permit. The National Association of 

Home Builders (“NAHB”) appeals from the district court’s 

dismissal of its challenge to the Corps’s authority to issue the 

permit. Although the district court held that the NAHB had 

standing to pursue its claim, it ultimately granted summary 

judgment for the Corps on the merits, finding that the terms of 

the permit survived the NAHB’s legal challenges. Because 

we find that the NAHB lacked standing to bring its suit, we 

vacate and remand with instructions to dismiss the case. 

* * * 

The CWA forbids the discharge of pollutants into the 

“waters of the United States,” 33 U.S.C. § 1362(7), except 

when done pursuant to a valid permit, see id. §§ 1311(a), 

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1344. The CWA divides the authority to issue such permits 

between the Corps and the EPA; the Corps has been granted 

the power to issue permits only for discharges of “dredged or 

fill material.” Id. § 1344(a). 

Permits issued by the Corps fall into two categories: 

individual and general. Individual permits are granted on a 

case-by-case basis and involve a costly review process, often 

requiring extensive documentation regarding the specific site, 

public notice and comment, and sometimes a public hearing. 

See 33 C.F.R. pt. 325. In contrast, general permits cover 

entire “categor[ies] of activities” and often allow parties to 

proceed with much less red tape than is involved in obtaining 

individual permits, and in some instances even without 

notification to the Corps. See 33 U.S.C. § 1344(e); 33 C.F.R. 

§ 325.2(e); id. pt. 330. General permits can last up to five 

years, at which point they must be reissued or left to expire, 

33 U.S.C. § 1344(e)(2); they can be limited to a specific state 

or region, or may apply nationwide, hence “nationwide 

permits” or “NWPs.” Id. § 1344(e); 33 C.F.R. pt. 330.

In March 2007, the Corps reissued all its then-outstanding 

NWPs and issued six new ones, including NWP 46, which 

authorized the discharge of dredged or fill material into 

certain “non-tidal ditches.” Reissuance of Nationwide 

Permits, 72 Fed. Reg. 11,092, 11,190 (Mar. 12, 2007). Like 

many general permits, NWP 46 requires permittees to provide 

the Corps with written pre-construction notification, which, 

while costly, is less so than the individual permitting process. 

Id. (requiring those seeking authorization under NWP 46 to 

submit pre-construction notification per the terms of “general 

condition 27”); id. at 11,194-95 (general condition 27).

In order to fall within NWP 46’s scope, a ditch must 

(1) be “[c]onstructed in uplands”; (2) “receive water from an 

area determined to be a water of the United States prior to the 

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construction of the ditch”; (3) “divert water to an area 

determined to be a water of the United States prior to the 

construction of the ditch”; and (4) itself be “determined to be 

[a] water[] of the United States.” Id. at 11,190. We will 

return to the fourth of these criteria shortly. Additionally, 

NWP 46’s expedited process is off limits to those whose 

discharge would cause the “loss” of more than one acre of 

waters of the United States. Id. 

 The NAHB filed suit claiming that, by issuing NWP 46, 

the Corps had unlawfully asserted jurisdiction over upland 

ditches, which it contends are categorically excluded from 

being “waters of the United States” and thus are categorically 

not subject to CWA regulation. Corrected Complaint ¶¶ 25-

27, 29. The Corps moved for summary judgment. The 

district court found that the NAHB had standing to pose these 

(and related) legal challenges, finding that NWP 46 had 

caused the NAHB’s members injury by leaving them “unsure 

of whether ditches they construct fall under” the Corps’s 

jurisdiction, and that that uncertainty would force many to 

waste time and money by unnecessarily seeking authorization. 

Nat’l Ass’n of Home Builders v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng’rs, 

699 F. Supp. 2d 209, 214 (D.D.C. 2010). Ultimately, 

however, the district court granted the Corps’s motion on the 

merits, and the NAHB now appeals. We review de novo. 

Vatel v. Alliance of Auto. Mfrs., 627 F.3d 1245, 1246 (D.C. 

Cir. 2011). 

* * * 

 A membership organization such as the NAHB can assert 

standing on behalf of its members only if “at least one” of 

these members would have standing on their own. Sierra 

Club v. EPA, 292 F.3d 895, 898 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (citing Hunt 

v. Wash. State Apple Advertising Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 342-

43 (1977)). Although it is undisputed that the NAHB 

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qualifies to advance the claims of its members, we find that it 

has failed to show that any member had standing. 

 Article III standing requires that a plaintiff allege an 

actual or imminent injury that is both fairly traceable to the 

challenged action and likely redressable by the court 

proceeding. See Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 

560-61 (1992). Here, the injury ostensibly suffered by the 

NAHB’s members is the “affirmative and antecedent 

determination [by the Corps] in favor of jurisdiction over 

upland ditches” and the resulting coercive effect this has on 

their behavior. Appellant’s Reply Br. 5. The NAHB claims 

that NWP 46 puts its members between the Scylla of 

complying (perhaps unnecessarily) with the Corps’s 

permitting scheme and the Charybdis of risking criminal or 

civil penalties under the CWA. Those wishing to fill ditches 

have no way of knowing in advance whether their ditch is a 

“water of the United States” and thus whether they need to 

seek a permit under NWP 46. The uncertainty, and the 

subsequent alterations to behavior that it causes, the NAHB 

says, constitute legal injury. 

 Assuming the adequacy of this injury, it is not fairly 

traceable to NWP 46. The risk of sanctions attendant on 

filling upland ditches without Corps approval predates, and is 

in no way aggravated by, the issuance of NWP 46. Seven 

years before issuing NWP 46, for example, the Corps made 

clear that upland ditches would under some circumstances be 

considered to be waters of the United States. “Drainage 

ditches constructed in uplands that connect two waters of the 

United States may be considered waters of the United States if 

those ditches constitute a surface water connection between 

those two waters of the United States.” Final Notice of 

Issuance and Modification of Nationwide Permits, 65 Fed. 

Reg. 12,818, 12,823-24 (Mar. 9, 2000). And the Corps acted 

on this belief, asserting jurisdiction under the CWA to 

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regulate some non-tidal ditches years before it promulgated 

NWP 46. See, e.g., United States v. Deaton, 332 F.3d 698, 

702 (4th Cir. 2003) (upholding Corps’s assertion of 

jurisdiction over a “roadside ditch”). Indeed, the NAHB’s 

Vice President for Legal Affairs acknowledged that the Corps 

had consistently suggested that at least some upland ditches 

were subject to CWA jurisdiction, asserting in an affidavit 

that, “[i]n [his] experience,” the Corps “routinely consider[ed] 

non-tidal upland ditches to be ‘waters of the United States’ 

and accordingly require[ed] NAHB members to obtain CWA 

permit coverage for discharges into such ditches.” Decl. of 

Duane J. Desiderio ¶ 11 (“Desiderio Decl.”), Joint Appendix 

(“J.A.”) 83. He pointed out that the organization had had a 

“long history of devoting its associational resources” to 

combating the Corps’s claim. Id. ¶ 27, J.A. 90. Thus, by the 

time NWP 46 issued, the Corps had routinely signaled that, 

although upland ditches were not generally within its 

jurisdiction, some ditches certainly could be. See Final Rule 

for Regulatory Programs of the Corps of Engineers, 51 Fed. 

Reg. 41,206, 41,217 (Nov. 13, 1986) (noting that upland 

ditches were “generally” not jurisdictional but explicitly 

reserving the right to decide the status of an individual ditch 

on a case-by-case basis). In its brief the NAHB implicitly 

recognizes as much, occasionally suggesting that the Corps 

viewed ditches as “wholly” or “entirely” beyond its 

jurisdiction, while each time, doubtless in the interest of 

credibility and candor, asserting the parallel, but weaker claim 

that the Corps viewed ditches as only “generally” outside its 

mandate. See Appellant’s Br. 60 (Corps viewed ditches as 

“wholly or generally” outside its jurisdiction); id. 64 (Corps 

viewed ditches as “entirely” or “generally” outside its 

jurisdiction). 

The fourth criterion for NWP 46’s accelerated 

authorization process limits eligibility to upland ditches that 

are determined to be “waters of the United States.” This 

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logically rests on a premise that at least one such ditch is a 

water of the United States, and under some circumstances 

such an assertion of jurisdiction might afford standing to 

potentially affected parties. The NAHB poses just such a 

hypothetical, in which the Corps issues a new general permit 

“purporting to allow homeowners to turn on their water taps.” 

See Appellant’s Reply Br. 5. In that case, the permit would 

represent an unprecedented assertion of jurisdiction over a 

previously unregulated body of water and would, for the first 

time, put parties on notice that their indoor plumbing might be 

a “water of the United States,” and that its use required Corps 

authorization. In contrast, NWP 46 has not in the slightest 

increased the threat of Corps claims of jurisdiction, and 

compels no additional action (or inaction) by NAHB members 

to limit their exposure to penalties for proceeding without 

Corps authorization. Nor, to put it in terms of redressability, 

would our vacatur of NWP 46 in any way diminish the threat 

they face. Indeed, all such an order could accomplish would 

be to eliminate NAHB members’ ability to use NWP 46’s 

relatively quick procedure to get protection from CWA 

penalties. 

The NAHB mistakenly invokes our 2005 decision, NAHB 

v. Army Corps of Eng’rs, 417 F.3d 1272 (D.C. Cir. 2005), 

where we found that the NAHB had standing to challenge 

several NWPs. But in that case the Corps had altered the 

terms of existing NWPs, reducing eligibility by tightening 

limits on the maximum acreage that might be affected by a 

proposed action. Id. at 1276, 1277, 1280, 1288. Here the 

NAHB can claim no such injury. As we have seen, NWP 46’s 

only alteration of the baseline circumstances was in favor of 

its members, enabling them to get authorization for projects 

arguably subject to Corps jurisdiction under simpler 

procedures than those otherwise applicable. 

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We hasten to add that the historical baseline is not the 

only possible measure of injury. Suppose in its very first 

NWP (by hypothesis affording an authorization process 

simpler than that of the pre-existing regime of individual 

permits) the Corps had (as it does here) limited eligibility to 

projects causing no more than one acre’s “loss” of waters of 

the United States. The NAHB would then have standing to 

claim on behalf of its members that the requirement was 

irrational because projects causing, say, two acres’ loss, had 

no greater impact on the values protected by the CWA. If 

persuaded on the merits, we could afford relief by ordering the 

Corps to relax the one-acre ceiling. And, of course, if the 

NAHB claimed defects in the process by which the Corps had 

arrived at the one-acre maximum, it would likely have 

standing, see Lujan, 504 U.S. at 572 n.7, and we could remedy 

the claim by remanding to the Corps for further consideration 

under proper procedures. 

But the NAHB makes no such claims. The only injury it 

asserts—the behavioral caution deriving from the Corps’s 

assertion of jurisdiction over upland ditches and the resulting 

threat of enforcement—has no relation to any of the 

procedural failures it alleges. The NAHB does not ask us to 

redraw the boundaries of NWP 46, but rather seeks a 

judgment forcing revocation of NWP 46 altogether. But as 

the NWP did nothing to worsen (from the NAHB’s 

perspective) the Corps’s persistent view that some upland 

ditches may be jurisdictional, this remedy would be of no use 

to the NAHB or its members. 

The NAHB also seeks a declaratory judgment, perhaps 

one that would simply declare upland ditches to be off limits 

altogether. To the extent that such a declaration would assist 

the NAHB, that is simply because the injury that the NAHB 

and its members really suffer from is the cloud cast by the 

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antecedent jurisdictional threat; for relief against that threat, 

NWP 46 is simply irrelevant. 

* * * 

The NAHB also makes a claim to standing in its own 

right, submitting an affidavit at the district court pointing to 

the “associational resources” it spent commenting on and 

responding to NWP 46. Desiderio Decl. ¶¶ 25-41, J.A. 89-95. 

But “[t]he mere fact that an organization redirects some of its 

resources to litigation and legal counseling in response to 

actions or inactions of another party is insufficient” for 

standing. Nat’l Taxpayers Union, Inc. v. United States, 68 

F.3d 1428, 1434 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (quoting, in parenthetical, 

Ass’n for Retarded Citizens v. Dallas Cnty. Mental Health & 

Mental Retardation Ctr. Bd. of Trustees, 19 F.3d 241, 244 

(5th Cir. 1994)). Moreover, the passage of NWP 46 has done 

nothing to hinder the NAHB’s ability to fulfill its regular 

mission of informing and counseling its members of 

developments in government regulation. See id. 

* * * 

For the foregoing reasons, we vacate the judgment of the 

district court and remand the case with instructions to dismiss 

for want of jurisdiction. 

 So ordered. 

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