Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-10-05284/USCOURTS-caDC-10-05284-1/pdf.json

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 September 22, 2011 Decided November 29, 2011 

Amended January 30, 2012 

No. 10–5284 

SIERRA CLUB, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

v. 

ROBERT L. VAN ANTWERP, LIEUTENANT GENERAL, U.S.

ARMY CORP OF ENGINEERS, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

SIERRA PROPERTIES I, LLC, ET AL., 

APPELLANTS

Consolidated with 10–5297, 10–5345 

Appeals from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:07–cv–01756) 

Lane N. McFadden, Attorney, U.S. Department of 

Justice, argued the cause for federal appellants. With him on 

the briefs was Lisa E. Jones, Attorney. Jessica O'Donnell, 

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

entered appearances. 

Douglas M. Halsey, T. Neal McAliley, and Angela D. 

Daker were on the briefs for appellants Sierra Properties I, 

LLC, et al. 

Eric R. Glitzenstein argued the cause for appellees Sierra 

Club, et al. With him on the briefs was Howard M. Crystal. 

Before: GARLAND and KAVANAUGH, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS. 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge: In 2007 the U.S. Army 

Corps of Engineers issued a permit authorizing the discharge 

of dredge and fill material into specified wetlands outside 

Tampa, Florida; it thereby enabled construction of a large 

mall. A number of firms are involved on the permittee’s side 

in these appeals, but we will simplify by referring to them all, 

as well as the project, as “CCTC,” standing for “Cypress 

Creek Town Center.” Three environmental groups 

(collectively referred to as the “Sierra Club”) brought suit in 

district court to challenge issuance of the permit. (The suit 

names the heads of the Department of the Interior and the U.S. 

Fish and Wildlife Service as well, but we treat the Corps as a 

stand-in for all federal defendants.) Plaintiffs invoked three 

statutes: the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”), 

the Clean Water Act (“CWA”), and the Endangered Species 

Act (“ESA”). After some complications described below, the 

district court issued a decision finding that the Corps had not 

fully complied with its obligations under NEPA and the 

CWA, but rejecting the plaintiffs’ ESA claim. It granted 

summary judgment for the Sierra Club on the first two claims 

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and for the Corps on the third. Sierra Club v. Van Antwerp, 

719 F.Supp.2d 58 (D.D.C. 2010). 

CCTC and the Corps appealed, and the Sierra Club crossappealed. We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand, 

concluding that the Corps did satisfy the demands of the three 

relevant statutes, except for failing to respond, in its treatment 

of the NEPA and ESA requirements, to a material contention 

as to the project’s impact on an endangered species, the 

eastern indigo snake. 

* * * 

Because CCTC proposed to discharge dredge and fill 

material into wetlands classified as “waters of the United 

States,” it was required to secure a permit from the Corps 

under § 404 of the CWA, 33 U.S.C. § 1311(a), 1362(7). The 

Corps originally issued the permit in 2007, allowing CCTC to 

discharge such material into about 54 acres of wetlands. In 

exchange, the Corps required various conservation measures, 

including the preservation, creation, or enhancement of 

wetlands on about 13 acres of the project site and nearly 120 

acres offsite. The Sierra Club filed suit in October 2007, but 

soon thereafter the Corps observed two unauthorized 

discharges of “sediments and turbid water” from the project 

site into nearby Cypress Creek, and accordingly suspended the 

permit. The district court granted the Corps’s request to 

remand the case to it for a reevaluation of the permit. After 

issuing a new public notice, the Corps determined that the 

discharges were the product of “human error” rather than a 

flaw with the project itself. It reinstated the permit in 

September 2009, but required additional “corrective 

measures.” The Sierra Club filed a revised complaint 

challenging the new permit. The district court granted split 

summary judgments as noted above. 

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As we review grants of summary judgment de novo, we 

are on this appeal in reality reviewing the decision of the 

Corps, not that of the district court. Natural Resources 

Defense Council v. Daley, 209 F.3d 747, 752 (D.C. Cir. 

2000). Our review is governed by the usual standards of 5 

U.S.C. § 706(2)(A) and Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n v. State 

Farm, 463 U.S. 29 (1983). 

* * * 

CWA. The governing regulations bar the Corps from 

granting a CWA fill permit when “[t]here is a practicable 

alternative to the proposed discharge that would have less 

adverse effect on the aquatic ecosystem.” 40 C.F.R. 

§ 230.12(a)(3)(i). They specify that “[a]n alternative is 

practicable if it is available and capable of being done after 

taking into consideration cost, existing technology, and 

logistics in light of overall project purposes.” 40 C.F.R. 

§ 230.10(a)(2). If (as here) a project’s purpose does not 

require proximity to water, “practicable alternatives that do 

not involve special aquatic sites [such as wetlands, see id. 

§ 230.41] are presumed to be available.” Id. § 230.10(a)(3). 

The Sierra Club contended (and contends here) that in fact 

there were practicable alternatives—other sites, or alternative 

ways of using the CCTC site—having less adverse effect. 

The Corps rejected these claims. Resolution of the 

practicability issue turns on four subissues: (1) use of the 

site’s fair market value as its cost, rather than CCTC’s (lower) 

out-of-pocket cost; (2) failure on the Corps’s part to update 

the fair market value in its second look at the permit (which 

took place after the onset of the global financial meltdown in 

2008); (3) the Corps’s use of 8% as the minimum rate of 

return necessary for an alternative to be considered 

practicable; and (4) CCTC’s intention to provide more 

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parking per 1000 square feet of retail space than is provided 

on average, locally and indeed nationally. 

For any given minimum rate of return, assumption of a 

lower cost for the site (see J.A. 613-36, 1660) will tend to 

render “practicable” less intensive uses, i.e., uses inflicting 

less ecological damage. This fact drives the Sierra Club’s 

argument for acquisition cost, which in this case happened to 

be lower than fair market value. But the Sierra Club’s 

contention that the regulation required the Corps to use the 

developer’s acquisition cost is ill-founded. 

First, as a matter of simple language, opportunity cost 

(the value the owner could realize by a current sale) is a wellrecognized form of cost. This is obviously true in economics, 

and the practicability test, though certainly neither a costbenefit test nor an efficiency test, nonetheless encompasses 

economic factors. And courts have recognized opportunity 

cost as a variant of “cost.” Thus, the Supreme Court, in 

upholding the Federal Communications Commission’s 

decision to set certain rates “on a forward-looking basis 

untied to [the providers’] investment,” cited opportunity cost 

by way of analogy. Verizon v. FCC, 535 U.S. 467, 475, 499 

n.17 (2002); see also Natural Gas Clearinghouse v. FERC, 

108 F.3d 397, 400 (D.C. Cir. 1997). Second, the regulations’ 

evaluation of alternatives requires consideration of cost on 

both sides of the comparison, and the cost of an alternative 

project site would presumably be that site’s market value. 

The comparison would be meaningful only if the Corps used 

the same metric for all options. Third, 40 C.F.R. 

§ 230.10(a)(2), in directing consideration of “cost,” can 

sensibly (perhaps most sensibly, but we need not so decide) 

mean the cost of proceeding with the project as planned; for 

this, clearly, the relevant measure of the developer’s land cost 

is what it foregoes by proceeding (rather than selling the land 

and realizing its market value). See Corps’s Combined Reply 

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and Response Br. 6-7. Fourth, whereas use of opportunity 

cost minimizes subjective, applicant-specific factors, reliance 

on the developer’s acquisition cost would create the odd 

possibility that an alternative practicable for one applicant 

would be impracticable for another. Finally (and this is really 

a variation of the fourth point), to use out-of-pocket cost 

would create an anomaly: An applicant with a low acquisition 

cost could resell the site at market value and thereby enable a 

successor developer to refute practicability claims that had 

been fatal for the seller. Accordingly, we have no difficulty 

whatever deferring to the Corps’s reasonable choice to use the 

land’s market value, rather than the developer’s acquisition 

cost. 

Peripheral to the acquisition-cost claim is the Sierra 

Club’s attack on the Corps’s failure to update the land’s 

market value when it reinstated the permit in 2009, after land 

values had fallen sharply, especially in the so-called “sand” 

states, including Florida. The Sierra Club notes that the Corps 

did update some plans and data, mostly related to the 

mitigation plan and stormwater management, and it thus 

claims an arbitrary inconsistency on the Corps’s part. But the 

Corps’s decision to update ecological but not economic data 

appears reasonable in light of the Corps’s reasons for 

reexamining the original permit. As its December 2008 

public notice explained, it suspended that permit because of 

unauthorized discharges of turbid water, and then undertook 

to decide whether to reinstate, modify, or revoke the permit, 

saying that its decision would “be based on an evaluation of 

the reassurances given to the Corps about the likelihood of 

future discharges of turbid water from the CCTC project site 

into Cypress Creek and wetlands on the site.” J.A. 1546-47. 

Though the Corps also stated that it would “evaluate any other 

facts and issues as necessary,” J.A. 1546, we see no basis in 

this for requiring it to restart its entire permitting analysis 

from zero. Given the scope of the 2009 permit re-analysis, it 

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was reasonable for the Corps to update only the plans and data 

related to ecological matters.

The Sierra Club also attacks the Corps’s acceptance of 

the applicant’s contentions that an 8% rate of return was 

necessary to secure financing and that the planned project 

configuration was the only way to achieve that return. The 

Sierra Club claims that the record does not support use of an 

8% rate; assumption of a lower required rate of return, of 

course, would tend to increase the range of practicable 

alternatives. 

The CCTC submitted several reports, including one 

prepared by Ernst & Young, that examined the rates of return 

expected from comparable projects in the Tampa area. These 

reports produced estimates ranging from 7.6% to 10.06%. 

The Ernst & Young report concluded that a 7.6% return would 

be a “reasonable rate to expect” for the project when 

completed, but the project was subject to “a number of 

development risk factors” since it had not yet been completed. 

Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) 1465. The report stressed the need 

for a “spread” between the rate of return on a project still 

under development and the rate of return on a “stabilized 

operating property.” J.A. 1465. In addition, the record 

contained data indicating that Tampa regional malls had a 

“going-in capitalization rate” of 7.7%, with that term defined 

as “the first year NOI [net operating income] (before capital 

items of tenant improvements and leasing commissions and 

debt service but after real estate taxes) divided by present 

value (or purchase price).” J.A. 835. That of course suggests 

that it would be necessary to apply some non-trivial increment 

to the 7.6% or 7.7% estimates to make them suitable for 

calculating the minimum acceptable return on an as-yet 

unbuilt mall. We think the record plainly supports the Corps’s 

use of an interest rate at the low end of the range that was in 

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evidence, and with its modest excess over the very lowest 

figures plainly justifiable. 

The last of the practicability issues relates to the project’s 

planned number of parking spaces—a serious matter because 

parking accounts for such a large share of the mall’s surface. 

The Sierra Club argues that “CCTC would have more parking 

than any existing comparable mall in the Tampa area.” Sierra 

Club Opening Br. 53. The record does not make it clear 

exactly how many parking spaces CCTC is expected to have, 

but gives a range of 5.13 to 6.59 parking spaces per 1,000 

square feet of retail space, and the Sierra Club estimates the 

overall ratio as being 5.4. J.A. 572; Sierra Club Opening Br. 

55. CCTC submitted various items of evidence on the point: 

On one hand it provided developer guidelines from Target, 

Costco, and Kohls that required 5, 5.5, and 6 spaces, 

respectively, per 1,000 square feet of retail space, and on the 

other, it also submitted letters from other Florida developers 

stating that retail tenants “typically” have “4.5 to 5” parking 

spaces per 1,000 square feet of retail space. J.A. 601, 604. 

In fact both sides agree that CCTC’s parking ratio 

exceeds that of nearby malls. But CCTC defends its aboveaverage ratio by pointing to the above-average proportion of 

restaurants in its project. While the Sierra Club does not 

contest the restaurant-parking link, it argues that there is no 

reason for so many restaurants. CCTC, in turn, seeks to 

justify the high proportion by saying that it aims to create 

more than a traditional mall. Whereas traditional malls use 

4.8% of their square footage for restaurants, “lifestyle centers” 

use 11.3%; CCTC, a self-described “town center,” is between 

these two figures at 8.08%. Agency Record (“A.R.”) 4605-

06, 4663. 

Given the nature of Sierra Club's arguments to the agency 

on this point, the Corps's acceptance of CCTC's parking ratio 

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was not arbitrary or capricious in light of the practicability 

regulations. Those require the Corps to evaluate the 

practicability of alternatives “in light of overall project 

purposes.” 40 C.F.R. § 230.10(a)(2). The regulations provide 

that “it will generally be assumed that appropriate economic 

evaluations have been completed, the proposal is 

economically viable, and is needed in the market place,” 33 

C.F.R. § 320.4(q), but they reserve to the agency an override 

power, saying that “the district engineer in appropriate cases, 

may make an independent review of the need for the project 

from the perspective of the overall public interest.” Id. There 

appears to be little judicial interpretation of the process, but it 

has yielded one constraint that seems logically necessary: 

“[A]n applicant cannot define a project in order to preclude 

the existence of any alternative sites.” Sylvester v. U.S. Army 

Corps of Engineers, 882 F.2d 407, 409 (9th Cir. 1989). There 

is nothing suggesting that CCTC's project definition falls 

below that benchmark, and the Sierra Club has not articulated 

any other, more binding constraint. 

The Sierra Club observed in a letter to the Corps that 

even if “town center” malls feature more restaurants than 

traditional malls, that fact “does not clearly demonstrate that 

reduced parking is impracticable.” We do not think this 

observation was enough to impose on the Corps the task of 

evaluating the practicability of non-“town center” alternatives. 

As it was, the Corps studied eleven alternative locations for 

the project and considered four alternative on-site 

configurations. J.A. 466-69, 1080-82. While the case does 

not require us to say the minimum burden a challenger must 

meet to trigger an additional study (and the concomitant 

examination of the project's “purpose”), the Sierra Club's 

remark was not enough. It did not even argue that this purely 

commercial project could achieve the 8% return required to 

obtain financing by shifting from a town center to a traditional 

mall. Accordingly, the Corps was not arbitrary (or in 

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violation of the CWA) in accepting CCTC's conception of the 

mall's design, including its relatively high proportion of 

restaurant space, and hence in finding that fewer parking 

spaces did not represent a practicable, less environmentally 

damaging, means to satisfy that purpose. 

NEPA. NEPA requires that federal agencies prepare 

Environmental Impact Statements (“EISs”) for “major Federal 

actions significantly affecting the quality of the human 

environment.” 42 U.S.C. § 4332(C). “If any significant 

environmental impacts might result from the proposed agency 

action then an EIS must be prepared before the [agency] 

action is taken.” Sierra Club v. Peterson, 717 F.2d 1409, 

1415 (D.C. Cir. 1983) (emphasis omitted). An agency can 

avoid preparing an EIS if it issues a proper Finding of No 

Significant Impact (“FONSI”). In reviewing a FONSI our 

task is to determine whether the agency 

(1) has accurately identified the relevant environmental 

concern, (2) has taken a hard look at the problem in 

preparing its [FONSI or Environmental Assessment], (3) 

is able to make a convincing case for its finding of no 

significant impact, and (4) has shown that even if there is 

an impact of true significance, an EIS is unnecessary 

because changes or safeguards in the project sufficiently 

reduce the impact to a minimum. 

TOMAC v. Norton, 433 F.3d 852, 861 (D.C. Cir. 2006); see 

also 40 C.F.R. § 1501.4. Although our decisions have 

frequently (but not invariably—see, e.g., Public Citizen v. 

Nat’l Highway Traffic Safety Admin., 848 F.2d 256, 267 (D.C. 

Cir. 1988)) repeated the phrase “convincing case” since its 

original appearance in Maryland-National Capital Park and 

Planning Commission v. U.S. Postal Service, 487 F.2d 1029, 

1040 (D.C. Cir. 1973), our scope of review is in fact the usual 

one. TOMAC itself made this clear, introducing the four 

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numbered criteria with the standard language of judicial 

review of administrative action: “arbitrary, capricious, or an 

abuse of discretion.” 433 F.3d at 861. 

A regulation of the Council on Environmental Quality 

further explains: “Significantly as used in NEPA requires 

considerations of both context and intensity.” 40 C.F.R. 

§ 1508.27. It then proceeds to list ten factors that “should be 

considered in evaluating intensity.” Although the district 

court focused on four of these factors and found they 

established that the project’s environmental impact would be 

“significant,” Sierra Club, 719 F. Supp. 2d at 66-67, the Sierra 

Club on appeal makes arguments only with respect to three. 

We first address the factors mentioned in subsections (b)(3) 

and (b)(10), finding the Corps’s consideration adequate. As to 

subsection (b)(9), which relates to effects on endangered or 

threatened species, the Sierra Club’s arguments here overlap 

with those it makes in the ESA context, and we defer 

discussion to our treatment of those claims. 

Subsection (b)(3) refers to “[u]nique characteristics of the 

geographic area such as proximity to . . . wetlands.” 40 

C.F.R. § 1508.27(b)(3). Of course it was the project’s impact 

on wetlands that required a permit from the Corps in the first 

place. But the Corps found that “[t]he wetlands are of 

moderate quality as they were logged and some of them were 

ditched” and that “[t]he wetlands are predominantly forested 

(cypress) and not unique or rare in the landscape.” J.A. 1106. 

The district court observed that the Corps itself had found that 

wetlands provide “‘valuable storage areas for storm and flood 

waters,’” Sierra Club, 719 F.Supp.2d at 66 (quoting J.A. 

1107), but that does not in itself compel a finding that these 

particular wetlands are “unique” within the meaning of 

subsection (b)(3). 

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Moreover, apart from the wetlands’ lack of uniqueness, 

the ultimate CCTC plan called for creation and preservation of 

substantial substitute wetlands, the sort of mitigation measures 

that we have found “sufficiently reduce the impact to a 

minimum.” Michigan Gambling Opposition v. Kempthorne, 

525 F.3d 23, 29 (D.C. Cir. 2008) (quoting TOMAC, 433 F.3d 

at 861), and that the Corps so found here. J.A. 1687. The 

Sierra Club argues that the Corps cannot rely on such 

mitigation, citing studies purporting to show that wetlands 

mitigation often fails, in large part because of the Corps’s lax 

enforcement. But even assuming that general attacks on the 

Corps’s monitoring of wetlands mitigation could ever justify 

its or our disregard of specific mitigation measures, here in 

fact the Corps verified that the measures were proceeding. 

J.A. 1494-1501, 1543, 1576, 1581-84. Moreover, its 2009 

permit added special conditions in response to early setbacks. 

J.A. 1695. 

Subsection (b)(10) directs attention to whether “the action 

threatens a violation of Federal, State, or local law or 

requirements imposed for the protection of the environment,” 

and the Sierra Club argues that the unauthorized 2008 

discharge of turbid water into Cypress Creek not merely 

threatened violations of those requirements but constituted 

such violations. The Corps found that this discharge was the 

result of “human error” and not a problem of design. J.A. 

1672. The district court ruled that “NEPA regulations make 

no exception for human error” and that an EIS should have 

been prepared because the “2008 discharge did, in fact 

violat[e] Federal, State and local environmental law.” Sierra 

Club, 719 F.Supp.2d at 67. But the subsection’s reference to 

“threats” indicates that it is forward-looking. Given that the 

Corps required additional assurances from CCTC before 

reinstating the permit, J.A. 1682, 1696, it could reasonably 

find that a past violation did not “threaten” future violations. 

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ESA (and leftover NEPA issues). The Sierra Club also 

argues that the district court erred by upholding the Corps’s 

determination that formal consultation under the ESA was not 

required. The ESA requires that federal agencies “insure that 

any action authorized, funded, or carried out by such agency . 

. . is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any 

endangered species or threatened species or result in the 

destruction or adverse modification of habitat.” 16 U.S.C. 

§ 1536(a)(2). Regulations promulgated under the ESA 

provide that “[e]ach Federal agency shall review its actions at 

the earliest possible time to determine whether any action may 

affect listed species or critical habitat. If such a determination 

is made, formal consultation [with the Fish and Wildlife 

Service] is required.” 50 C.F.R. § 402.14(a). The regulations 

create an exception to that obligation where, as a result of 

informal consultation, the “Federal agency determines with 

the written concurrence of the Director [of the Fish and 

Wildlife Service], that the proposed action is not likely to 

adversely affect any listed species or critical habitat.” Id. at § 

402.14(b). After issuing its first public notice in October 

2005, the Corps engaged in informal consultation with the 

Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”). A.R. 3093; J.A. 536, 

889. The FWS “concur[red] with the [Corps’s] determination 

that the proposed project [was] not likely to adversely affect 

the wood stork nor any other species listed under the ESA.” 

J.A. 893. Accordingly, the Corps did not undertake formal 

consultation; as a technical matter, it is the Corps’s dispensing 

with formal consultation to which the Sierra Club objects. 

The Sierra Club argues that the Corps’s determination 

was erroneous because the project may have adverse effects 

on habitat used by both the indigo snake and wood stork. In 

parallel with its ESA contention, the Sierra Club raises a 

NEPA argument, pointing to 40 C.F.R. § 1508.27(b)(9), under 

which an adverse effect on “an endangered or threatened 

species or its habitat” is an indication of “intensity” and thus 

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tends to militate in favor of finding “significance” and of 

requiring an EIS. In both ESA and NEPA contexts, we reject 

the Sierra Club’s wood stork claim but find that the Corps 

failed to adequately address indications of an adverse effect 

on the indigo snake. 

Of the two statutes, the ESA and NEPA, the ESA is 

(unsurprisingly) the more demanding on this point. Subject to 

the exception noted above, it requires the agency to engage in 

a formal consultation if it determines that the action in 

question “may affect listed species or critical habitat.” 50 

C.F.R. § 402.14(a) (emphasis added). NEPA triggers the EIS 

requirement only for “major Federal actions significantly 

affecting the quality of the human environment.” 42 U.S.C. 

§ 4332(C) (emphasis added). The four-part test for review of 

a FONSI that we quoted at the outset of the NEPA discussion 

explains that a project with a potentially significant impact 

will not require an EIS if “changes or safeguards . . . 

sufficiently reduce the impact.” TOMAC v. Norton, 433 F.3d 

at 861. We see no reason why the general principle of taking 

mitigation into account should not apply to the decision 

whether the ESA requires formal consultation. Cf. City of 

Sausalito v. O’Neill, 386 F.3d 1186, 1216-17, 1218-20 (9th 

Cir. 2004) (approving a biological assessment that relied on 

mitigation for its no-adverse effect finding).

As to the wood stork, the Corps’s conclusions rested on 

the project’s mitigation measures, which will bring about a net 

gain of wood stork foraging habitat. During informal 

consultation, the FWS determined that 16.22 acres of 

“potential wood stork habitat” existed on the site preconstruction and that with mitigation 21.35 acres would exist 

post-construction, resulting in a net gain. J.A. 1118. But the 

Sierra Club argues that the government did not “address near 

term adverse impacts on breeding colonies while off-site 

mitigation is being implemented.” Sierra Club Opening Br. 

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81-82 (emphasis in original). The Corps’s answer here was to 

rely on the mitigation plan’s “more than a one-to-one 

replacement ratio to compensate for the temporal lag between 

the loss of a wetland’s foraging value and when the new 

resource achieves that value.” J.A. 905. We certainly cannot 

say that as a general matter a roughly 33% net quantitative 

gain in habitat offsets a non-trivial “temporal lag”; in an 

extreme case no members of the species would make it 

through to enjoy the replacement area. But here the FWS 

found that the lost habitat, although “within the core foraging 

areas [i.e., within 13 miles] of five wood stork breeding 

colonies,” was not within the “primary or secondary zone” of 

any colonies. J.A. 890. Given the relatively marginal role of 

the lost habitat, it does not seem arbitrary or in contravention 

of its statutory mandate for the Corps to find that the 

mitigation’s more than “one-to-one replacement ratio” made 

up for the temporary deprivation. 

For the indigo snake, the Corps’s 2007 mitigation plan 

concluded that “[i]nadequate habitat for maintenance of 

eastern indigo snakes exists on the impact site in its 

predevelopment state.” J.A. 997 (emphasis added). But 

conservation guidelines submitted in CCTC’s own application 

noted that the snake is “especially vulnerable” to habitat 

“fragmentation” because of the snake’s large range. J.A. 164. 

Nevertheless, the Corps and FWS did not address the 

fragmentation risk. After the permit was suspended in 2008, 

the Corps’s new public notice said that it would “reinitiate 

informal consultation with the [FWS] regarding the issues 

addressed in this public notice.” J.A. 1547.

In this renewed proceeding, the Sierra Club submitted 

two declarations related to the eastern indigo snake. The first 

declarant, a local Sierra Club member, wrote that he had seen 

an eastern indigo snake on the project site in May 2007. J.A. 

1295. The second declaration was from Dr. Kenneth Dodd, a 

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herpetologist who as Staff Herpetologist for the Office of 

Endangered Species in the FWS had been “primarily 

responsible for the listing of the” eastern indigo snake as 

threatened under the ESA. Dr. Dodd asserted that the project 

site was an important “wildlife corridor” linking protected 

areas to the north and south. J.A. 1317. He noted that 

“movements over large areas of fragmented habitats expose 

Eastern Indigo Snakes to increased road mortality,” and that 

“the more edge there is in relation to protected habitat [i.e., 

ratio of perimeter to surface area], the less likely large snakes 

can be maintained.” J.A. 1306. He claimed more broadly that 

the Corps had failed to consider how the project would 

adversely affect the snake through “fragmentation” of its 

“habitat in lands near the site as a result of impacts to the site 

and the wildlife corridor connecting these lands.” J.A. 1317. 

In its second FONSI, issued in August 2009, the Corps 

again did not address the impacts of habitat fragmentation. 

J.A. 1696-97. Given Dr. Dodd’s expertise and experience, 

and the seeming logic of his analysis, as well as CCTC’s own 

acknowledgment of the snake’s vulnerability to fragmentation 

risk, we think his comment qualifies as the sort of “relevant 

and significant” public comment to which an agency must 

respond, lest its action be arbitrary and capricious. See Cape 

Cod Hospital v. Sebelius, 630 F.3d 203, 211 (D.C. Cir. 2011). 

Accordingly, we must remand for further explanation by the 

Corps of its determination that the project was “not likely to 

adversely affect” the indigo snake. We do not reach the issue 

of whether formal consultation is required, but the Corps must 

make some determination on the issue of habitat 

fragmentation, both for ESA and NEPA purposes. 

USCA Case #10-5284 Document #1355320 Filed: 01/30/2012 Page 16 of 17
17

* * * 

Our decision here of course substantially alters the 

substantive merits outcome that underlay the district court’s 

injunction. Accordingly it will be suitable on remand for the 

court to entertain contentions relating to modification of that 

injunction. 

In short, we reverse the district court entirely as to the 

CWA; reverse it as to NEPA except insofar as the court 

required further explanation by the Corps as to potential 

fragmentation of the indigo snake’s habitat; and affirm its 

decision as to the ESA except in so far as it found the Corps’s 

analysis of the indigo snake issue adequate. 

The judgment of the district court is therefore 

Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded. 

USCA Case #10-5284 Document #1355320 Filed: 01/30/2012 Page 17 of 17