Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca1-24-01138/USCOURTS-ca1-24-01138-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 899
Nature of Suit: Other Statutes - Administrative Procedure Act/Review or Appeal of Agency Decision
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 24-1138

NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION;

FRIENDS OF THE FRANK J. WOOD BRIDGE,

Plaintiffs, Appellants,

HISTORIC BRIDGE FOUNDATION; WATERFRONT MAINE, BRUNSWICK, LLC,

Plaintiffs,

v.

PETER PAUL MONTGOMERY BUTTIGIEG, in his official capacity as 

Secretary of the United States Department of Transportation; 

SHAILEN BHATT, in his official capacity as Administrator, 

Federal Highway Administration; TODD JORGENSEN, in his official 

capacity as Administrator, Federal Highway Administration Maine 

Division; BRUCE VAN NOTE, in his official capacity as 

Commissioner, Maine Department of Transportation,

Defendants, Appellees.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE

[Hon. Lance E. Walker, U.S. District Judge] 

Before

Gelpí, Kayatta, and Aframe, 

Circuit Judges.

Christopher M. Cody, with whom Elizabeth S. Merritt and Andrea 

C. Ferster were on brief, for appellants.

John Emad Arbab, Attorney, Environment and Natural Resources 

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Division, U.S. Department of Justice, with whom Todd Kim, Assistant 

Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. 

Department of Justice, Joan M. Pepin, Attorney, Environment and 

Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice, and Silvio 

J. Morales, Attorney, U.S. Department of Transportation, were on 

brief, for appellees Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg, Shailen 

Bhatt, and Todd Jorgensen.

Thomas A. Knowlton, Deputy Attorney General of Maine, with 

whom Aaron M. Frey, Attorney General of Maine, and Anne M. Pare, 

Chief Counsel, Maine Department of Transportation, were on brief, 

for appellee Bruce Van Note.

January 10, 2025

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KAYATTA, Circuit Judge. We consider for a fourth time 

the fate of the Frank J. Wood Bridge ("the Bridge"), a key piece 

of Maine's infrastructure connecting the municipalities of Topsham 

and Brunswick. Built in 1932, the Bridge is no longer capable of 

safely performing its needed role, and traffic restrictions and 

eventual closure will likely result absent substantial 

rehabilitation or replacement.

Maine's Department of Transportation (MDOT) concluded 

that replacement makes more sense than rehabilitation. Because 

federal funds will be used to replace the Bridge, MDOT was

therefore required to obtain the approval of the Federal Highway 

Administration (FHWA) and to comply with several federal statutes, 

including -- because the Bridge is part of a historic district and 

is itself historic -- section 4(f) of the Department of 

Transportation (DOT) Act. See DOT Act, Pub. L. No. 89-670, § 4(f), 

80 Stat. 931, 932 (1966), codified as amended at 49 U.S.C. § 303(c)

(limiting approvals of projects which "use" a protected property 

to situations where there is "no prudent and feasible 

alternative"); 23 C.F.R. § 774.17 (2024) (providing that an 

alternative is not "prudent" under section 4(f) if it "results in 

additional construction, maintenance, or operational costs of an 

extraordinary magnitude"); see also 54 U.S.C. § 306108 (requiring 

federal agencies to "take into account the effect of [any] 

undertaking on any historic property"). Over the objections of 

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pro-preservation groups -- including the plaintiffs prosecuting 

this appeal -- the FHWA granted MDOT approval under section 4(f) 

to replace the Bridge.

A petition for review to the district court followed, 

Hist. Bridge Found. v. Chao, 517 F. Supp. 3d 9 (D. Me. 2021), in 

which plaintiffs and others presented "a slew of line-item 

challenges to various [agency] calculations," Hist. Bridge Found.

v. Buttigieg, 22 F.4th 275, 281 (1st Cir. 2022). The district 

court rejected all of plaintiffs' challenges. Hist. Bridge Found.

v. Chao, 517 F. Supp. 3d at 32.

Plaintiffs' first appeal to this court followed. We 

rejected all of plaintiffs' challenges, save one. Hist. Bridge

Found. v. Buttigieg, 22 F.4th at 282–86. The surviving challenge

pertained to the manner in which MDOT compared the costs of 

replacement and rehabilitation in concluding that rehabilitation 

would represent a cost of "extraordinary magnitude" under 23 C.F.R. 

§ 774.17 (2024), so as to render rehabilitation not "prudent" under 

section 4(f). Id. at 284. As explained in more detail in our 

opinion on that prior appeal, MDOT concluded that the 

rehabilitation alternative would cost over double the cost of 

replacement, for a shorter service life. Id. at 279. In so 

concluding, MDOT did not rely on the differential that would result 

from discounting future costs to present value -- although it 

calculated that differential, roughly 53%, in a calculation known 

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as life-cycle cost analysis. Id. at 284–86. Nor did the agency 

explain why it did not rely on discounted costs, apart from 

"rel[ying] on non-discounted future costs as the better basis upon 

which to compare the alternatives," id. at 279, despite evidence 

that the DOT and the FHWA's own guidelines identify discounting as 

"the standard and preferred way to compare future costs," id. at 

284–85 (citing, among others, Off. of Asset Mgmt., FHWA, Pub. 

No. FHWA IF-02-047, Life-Cycle Cost Analysis Primer 9 (2002)). We 

therefore vacated the FHWA decision in part and remanded the case 

"for the strictly limited purpose of allowing the agency to further 

justify use of the service-life analysis and/or to decide whether 

a 53% price differential represents a cost of an extraordinary 

magnitude under 23 C.F.R. § 774.17." Id. at 286.

The district court then did as we ordered, remanding the 

case to the FHWA with identical instructions. On remand, the FHWA 

also did as we ordered, training its attention on deciding whether 

a 53% price differential between new construction and 

rehabilitation represented a cost of an extraordinary magnitude. 

The FHWA concluded that the 53% differential did constitute a cost 

of an extraordinary magnitude.

Rather than contesting that finding, plaintiffs sought 

to reframe the inquiry by pointing to the fact that MDOT had

recently increased its own estimate of the cost of building a new 

bridge from $13 million to $42 million. That increase in 

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construction costs, plaintiffs contended, eliminated -- indeed 

reversed -- the 53% differential. And to parry any assumption 

that the cost of rehabilitating the bridge had similarly escalated,

plaintiffs submitted calculations of engineer Robert Shulock, who

"updated" MDOT's 2016 cost estimate for rehabilitation in light of 

inflation. According to Shulock and plaintiffs, the updated cost 

of rehabilitation using life-cycle cost analysis would be 

approximately $25 million, a roughly $18-million savings from 

MDOT's updated estimate for reconstruction.

In its final Section 4(f) Limited Scope Re-Evaluation 

("Re-Evaluation"), the FHWA did not accept plaintiffs' invitation 

to conduct its own calculation of the updated costs of each 

alternative; nor did it recalculate the differential between 

rehabilitation and reconstruction. It did "acknowledge[]" that 

its own cost estimates for replacing the Bridge had increased from 

$13 million in 2019 to $42 million in 2022. But it pointed to our 

mandate that remand was to be "strictly limited to either 

justifying its prior use of non-discounted costs, and/or deciding 

whether a 53% price differential represented a cost of 

extraordinary magnitude." Moreover, relying on an internal 

evaluation of Shulock's calculations, the agency stated that it 

found Shulock's "updated" rehabilitation costs to be "flaw[ed]." 

"Among other things," the agency opined that:

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• Shulock's inflation rate of 23% was too low, as 

compared to steel component rates of 66–90%

revealed by producer price indices and a general 

increase in construction costs of approximately 

40%, all of which indicated that "the ratio of 

increased costs reflected in the recent work plan 

estimates for the replacement alternative would 

apply at least equally to [the] rehabilitation 

[a]lternative."

• Shulock's estimate failed to include major items 

that were included in the replacement estimate, 

such as "local amenities, utility work, and full 

right-of-way costs."

• Shulock underestimated the costs of "painting, site 

access/trestle, removal of existing slab, and 

construction of the temporary bridge" that would be 

required to rehabilitate the Bridge.

• Shulock overlooked the difference in "long-term 

maintenance costs [which is] what truly separate[s]

the two alternatives."

• Shulock relied on a bridge rehabilitation project 

in New Hampshire as evidence of costs but failed to 

account for the fact that its square footage was 

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one-third that of the Bridge and its scope was not

as extensive.

The agency concluded that it was "not persuaded that the 

effects of inflation and other cost considerations presented in 

public comments materially change the conclusions reached in its 

draft [section] 4(f) Re-Evaluation." It did explain that "[i]n

addition to dollar values, there is added risk and uncertainty to 

keeping a fracture critical bridge in service beyond its intended 

service life, even if it is extensively rehabilitated."1 This 

additional risk is not "fully capture[d]" by cost estimates because 

"there is no consistent way to continuously monitor for defects." 

And "[i]f a fracture critical component were to fail, it could 

cause a bridge to collapse." Regular inspections would be 

necessary to reduce this risk, and those would be time-intensive 

and highly disruptive.

I.

In February 2023, plaintiffs again sued in United States 

district court, alleging that it was arbitrary and capricious under 

the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) for the FHWA not to have 

considered the updated cost information in MDOT's own 

1 As we noted in Historic Bridge v. Buttigieg, "[a] 

fracture-critical bridge has elements that lack 'redundancy,' such 

that the failure of one of those elements 'may ultimately lead to 

a catastrophic failure of the entire bridge.'" 22 F.4th at 278

n.1. 

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possession -- and that if it had, it would have found that 

rehabilitation is a prudent and feasible alternative.2 After 

fielding plaintiffs' varied efforts at enjoining construction on 

the project,3 the district court granted summary judgment for the 

2 In the district court, plaintiffs challenged the FHWA's 

decision under both section 4(f) and the National Environmental 

Protection Act (NEPA). On appeal, plaintiffs state in a footnote 

that they "believe that the [a]gencies violated [NEPA] by ignoring 

new information . . . . However, this appeal focuses primarily on 

the violation of [s]ection 4(f)." Because they do not argue a 

NEPA claim on appeal aside from this cursory reference, any such 

claim is waived for underdevelopment. See United States v. 

Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990) (applying the "settled 

appellate rule that issues adverted to in a perfunctory manner, 

unaccompanied by some effort at developed argumentation, are 

deemed waived"). As a result, we discuss only the section 4(f) 

issue.

3 In March 2023, MDOT awarded a nearly $50-million contract 

to begin construction on the Bridge replacement. Nat'l Tr. for 

Hist. Pres. v. Buttigieg, No. 2:23-cv-00080, 2024 WL 69855, at *4

(D. Me. Jan. 5, 2024). In response, plaintiffs moved for a 

preliminary injunction to prevent construction going forward. 

After the district court denied their motion, plaintiffs appealed 

to this court and sought an emergency motion for an injunction 

pending an appeal. We denied plaintiffs' emergency motion for an 

injunction pending appeal without prejudice for non-compliance 

with Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 8(a), instructing that 

plaintiffs should first seek an injunction pending appeal from the 

district court. In response to this court's order, plaintiffs 

filed an emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal in the 

district court. They also requested a temporary restraining order 

to halt work on bridge reconstruction, and in the case of a denial, 

a stay of construction activities pending appeal. The district 

court denied both requests; plaintiffs then renewed their 

emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal with us. We 

denied this last request by stating, "[o]ur strictly limited remand 

did not provide the occasion for a new foray by the plaintiffs 

and, in any event, the new foray now attempted does not look 

especially promising, even were its pursuit otherwise appropriate 

notwithstanding our strictly limited remand."

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agencies. Nat'l Tr. for Hist. Pres. v. Buttigieg, No. 2:23-cv00080, 2024 WL 69855, at *1–2 (D. Me. Jan. 5, 2024). In relevant 

part, the district court found that the FHWA "was required to use 

[MDOT's] 2016 cost estimates because those estimates were before 

the agency 'at the time of the agency action.'" Id. at *9 (quoting 

Dep't of Homeland Sec. v. Regents of the U. of Cal., 591 U.S. 1, 

20–21 (2020)). The district court also reasoned that the agency 

"complied with [this court's] remand instructions," which 

specifically instructed the FHWA to either justify its use of 

non-discounted figures or consider whether a 53% price 

differential was an extraordinary cost. Id. Because the district 

court found that the agencies properly used the 2016 cost 

estimates, it found it "unnecessary to consider [p]laintiffs' 

arguments concerning whether the rehabilitation alternatives would 

be a prudent and feasible alternative if 2022 cost estimates were 

used." Id. at *9 n.7. Plaintiffs appealed.

II.

"Agency determinations under . . . section 4(f) are 

reviewed under the [APA] and accordingly shall not be overturned 

unless arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise 

not in accordance with law." Hist. Bridge Found. v. Buttigieg, 22 

F.4th at 282 (cleaned up); see 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). Under this 

standard, a reviewing court should "determine whether the agency 

has examined the pertinent evidence [and] considered the relevant 

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factors." Airport Impact Relief, Inc. v. Wykle, 192 F.3d 197, 202 

(1st Cir. 1999) (quoting Penobscot Air Servs., Ltd. v. FAA, 164 

F.3d 713, 719 (1st Cir. 1999)). "The agency must explain the 

evidence which is available, and must offer a 'rational connection 

between the facts found and the choice made.'" Motor Vehicle Mfrs. 

Ass'n of U.S. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 52 

(1983) (quoting Burlington Truck Lines, Inc. v. United States, 371 

U.S. 156, 168 (1962)). We review a district court's decision under 

the APA de novo. Hist. Bridge Found. v. Buttigieg, 22 F.4th at 

282.

III.

On appeal, plaintiffs do not contest that a 53% 

differential is a cost of extraordinary magnitude. Instead, as 

they argued before the agency and in the district court, they 

contend that the FHWA should not have so limited its inquiry on 

remand. Rather, say plaintiffs, the FHWA should have reassessed

the relative costs of the alternatives in view of a significant 

increase in construction costs during the six years that had passed 

since the record before the FHWA was first compiled. And they 

contend that the FHWA's decision to continue to assume that 

rehabilitation would cost roughly 53% more than new construction 

was arbitrary and capricious.

As the district court concluded, our mandate in the prior

appeal provides the simple answer to this argument. There, the

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issue before us reflected the agency's 2019 comparison of 2016 

cost estimates of the principal rehabilitation and new 

construction alternatives. Hist. Bridge Found. v. Buttigieg, 22 

F.4th at 284. Without discounting to present value, those costs 

generated a roughly 103% price differential, id. at 279, 281, and 

it was that differential that the agency found to be a cost of 

extraordinary magnitude. But discounting costs to present value 

generated only a roughly 53% differential. Thus, we issued a clear

mandate: The remand proceeding was to be "strictly limited" to 

either justifying the decision not to use discounted costs or to 

opining on whether that differential was a cost of extraordinary 

magnitude. Id. at 286. Plaintiffs now resist this straightforward 

reading by arguing that our mandate allowed the agency to decide 

much more -- i.e., to "deal with the problem afresh." See SEC v. 

Chenery Corp. (Chenery II), 332 U.S. 194, 201 (1947). But this 

reading of our mandate makes no sense. An order that a remand 

proceeding be "strictly limited" to deciding an explicitly 

identified and narrow issue does not ordinarily grant license to 

consider other issues "afresh." 

Nevertheless, say plaintiffs, the agency inherently 

retained the ability to reopen the proceeding to reconsider its 

prior conclusions based on new evidence. As plaintiffs point out, 

the Supreme Court has noted the possibility that, upon remand for 

further justification of its decision, an "agency can 'deal with

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the problem afresh' by taking new agency action." Regents of the 

U. of Cal., 591 U.S. at 20–21 (2020) (citing Chenery II, 332 U.S. 

at 201). Whether it can do so when the remand mandate is limited 

as it is here, we need not decide. Rather, we will assume without 

deciding that the agency did have the discretion to reopen the 

proceeding.

Primed with that assumption, plaintiffs' argument 

proceeds in two alternative forms. First, and principally, they 

argue that the agency did in fact reopen the record to consider 

new cost information by responding to Shulock's estimates, and 

therefore was required to recalculate the differential between 

reconstruction and rehabilitation. Second, and much less clearly, 

plaintiffs seem to suggest that, if the agency did not reopen the 

proceeding to consider updated cost information, it acted

arbitrarily and capriciously. Because we reject both arguments, 

we need not reach plaintiffs' contention that, if the agency had 

recalculated the differential, it would have necessarily found 

that rehabilitation was a prudent and feasible alternative.4

4 Nor do we accept plaintiffs' invitation to "supplement[] 

the record" with new cost information, tendered to support a claim 

that the agency was "wrong" in deciding not to recalculate the 

price differential in the Re-Evaluation. Plaintiffs support this 

argument with cases considering information that arose after an 

agency's decision. See, e.g., Valley Cmty. Pres. Comm'n v. Mineta, 

373 F.3d 1078, 1089 & n.2 (10th Cir. 2004) (finding that it was 

not an abuse of discretion for the district court to consider a 

letter sent to the FHWA after its determination that a project 

would not affect any section 4(f) sites); Am. Petroleum Inst. v. 

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A.

Plaintiffs argue that, by considering and rebutting 

Shulock's cost estimates, the FHWA reopened the record -- in other 

words, it took into account new cost information that was not in 

the record at the time of our remand. See Pub. Emps. for Env't 

Resp. v. Hopper, 827 F.3d 1077, 1089–90 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (finding 

that the Fish and Wildlife Service reopened the record by choosing 

to rely on new, post-remand analysis proffered by its in-house 

economist). And, plaintiffs say, because the agency considered 

new costs, it was required to take the next step and recalculate 

the differential. See id. at 1090 (holding that it was arbitrary 

and capricious for the Fish and Wildlife Service to "disregard"

new, post-remand data submitted by plaintiffs where it had 

otherwise reopened the record).

EPA, 540 F.2d 1023, 1034 (10th Cir. 1976) (upholding an EPA 

regulation based on the record before the EPA at the time it took 

action and finding that "data obtained after promulgation" 

strengthened that conclusion by showing "the validity of the EPA 

actions"); Amoco Oil Co. v. EPA, 501 F.2d 722, 729 n.10 (D.C. Cir. 

1974) (while reviewing an EPA regulation, supplementing the record 

with post-promulgation testimony before a congressional committee 

because the testimony "b[ore] directly upon the plausibility of 

certain predictions made by the [EPA] Administrator in 

promulgating the Regulations"). Here, MDOT awarded a construction 

contract for $50 million after the Re-Evaluation. See Nat'l Tr., 

2024 WL 69855, at *4. But at the time of the Re-Evaluation, MDOT 

had already increased its estimate for the project to upwards of 

$48 million. Thus, supplementing the record with the price of the 

construction contract would not significantly alter the analysis, 

much less show that the agency's section 4(f) determination was 

"wrong."

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We disagree. As plaintiffs point out on reply, the 

agency did engage an in-house expert to review Shulock's estimates. 

But we view that engagement with Shulock's estimates as a 

belt-and-suspenders explanation for why the agency was not

reopening the proceeding to take into account new costs. 

Plaintiffs' entire rationale for reopening was predicated on a 

contention that the rehabilitation costs had not risen 

commensurately with new construction costs. That contention, in 

turn, rested on Shulock's submission. So by explaining why it 

found that submission to be seriously flawed, the FHWA effectively 

explained why plaintiffs had not shown cause to reopen the 

proceeding to consider new costs even were it an option to do so. 

Hence, the premise of plaintiffs' principal argument -- that the 

agency reopened the record to consider new cost information -- is 

simply not correct.

B.

Largely latent in plaintiffs' briefs is an alternative 

argument that the agency acted arbitrarily and capriciously by 

failing to reopen the record to consider updated cost information.

We disagree. The fact that, in general, the costs of construction 

rose between 2016 and 2022 is hardly surprising. So MDOT's new

2022 construction estimate provided no cause for questioning its 

own comparison between construction and rehabilitation 

alternatives unless one thought that the costs of rehabilitating 

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the bridge did not also rise commensurately. Presumably for this 

reason, plaintiffs proffered Shulock's cost estimate to show that 

there was cause to expect significantly different increases in the 

relative costs. The FHWA, however, was unimpressed with that 

submission. And it explained why. Not only did Shulock omit 

certain construction, right-of-way, and maintenance costs from his 

rehabilitation estimate, but he also used an apparently very low 

inflation rate and relied on lower out-of-state bid prices in 

calculating his estimate. These perceived flaws, among others, 

are like the thirteenth chime of the clock -- they not only seemed 

wrong, but they also cast doubt on all of Shulock's reasoning that 

preceded them.

Plaintiffs' counsel seeks to parry this line of 

reasoning by attempting to quantify the FHWA's stated criticisms 

of Shulock's analysis. But much of this attempted quantification 

was not in the record at the time of the Re-Evaluation, and thus 

is not appropriate for our review. See Chenery II, 332 U.S. at 

196 ("[A] reviewing court . . . must judge the propriety of 

[agency] action solely by the grounds invoked by the agency."). 

Moreover, counsel's attempts do not address all of the agency's 

concerns -- notably, counsel's attempts do not seem to use an 

inflation rate that moots the agency's breakdown of greater 

inflation rates for specific components, nor do they meet the 

thrust of the agency's observation that a key difference between 

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rehabilitation and reconstruction was the cost and challenge of 

maintenance. As a result, we find that the record supports the

agency in its rejection of Shulock's estimates as compelling 

reasons to expand the scope of the remand proceeding.

In sum, the FHWA was acting in response to a "strictly 

limited" instruction from this court. Hist. Bridge Found. v. 

Buttigieg, 22 F.4th at 286. By deciding whether a 53% price 

differential was a cost of extraordinary magnitude, the agency did 

precisely what we told it to do -- plaintiffs hardly argue 

otherwise. And on this record we cannot say that its failure to 

recalculate the differential between rehabilitation and 

reconstruction using updated cost information was arbitrary and 

capricious.

Our disposition of this appeal finds support in 

contemplating the ramifications of a contrary holding. Many months 

and years can pass between the end of an agency proceeding and the 

end of judicial challenges to such a proceeding. Furthermore, 

multi-issue appeals raising a slew of challenges are not unusual. 

Were we to adopt plaintiffs' view that agencies on remand can be 

compelled, on a record like this one, to reopen their proceedings 

and "update" their assessments, finality and repose would diminish 

as proceedings might never end.

IV.

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm.

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