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Parties Involved:
Cape Wind Associates, LLC
Intervenor for Respondent
Federal Aviation Administration
Respondent
Town of Barnstable, Massachusetts
Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued September 14, 2011 Decided October 28, 2011 

No. 10-1276 

TOWN OF BARNSTABLE, MASSACHUSETTS

PETITIONER

v. 

FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, 

RESPONDENT

CAPE WIND ASSOCIATES, LLC,

INTERVENOR

Consolidated with 10-1307 

 

On Petitions for Review of an Order 

of the Federal Aviation Administration 

W. Eric Pilsk argued the cause for Barnstable, petitioner 

in No. 10-1276, and for the Alliance to Protect Nantucket 

Sound, petitioner in No. 10-1307. With him on the briefs 

were Catherine M. van Heuven and Charles C. Lemley. 

Daniel J. Lenerz, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

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

Tony West, Assistant Attorney General, Michael Jay Singer, 

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Attorney, Richard H. Saltsman, Assistant Chief Counsel for 

Litigation, Federal Aviation Administration, and Vicki 

Leemon, Manager. 

Geraldine E. Edens, Frederick R. Anderson, and Daniel 

G. Jarcho, were on the brief for intervenor Cape Wind 

Associates, LLC.

Before: TATEL and BROWN, Circuit Judges, and 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge

WILLIAMS. 

WILLIAMS, Senior Circuit Judge: Cape Wind Associates 

has proposed building 130 wind turbines, each 440 feet tall, in 

a 25-square mile area of Nantucket Sound—an area roughly 

the size of Manhattan island. If constructed, the project would 

be the nation’s first offshore wind farm. See Impact Study of 

130 Offshore Wind Turbines in Nantucket Sound at 1 fig.1, 

Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) 59, shown below: 

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As required by federal regulations, Cape Wind notified 

the Federal Aviation Administration of its proposed 

construction. See 14 C.F.R. § 77.13. After a preliminary 

investigation, the FAA issued a Notice of Presumed Hazard, 

J.A. 43, and initiated more extensive aeronautical studies to 

decide whether the project would “result in an obstruction of 

the navigable airspace or an interference with air navigation 

facilities and equipment or the navigable airspace.” 49 U.S.C. 

§ 44718(b). The FAA also circulated a public notice of these 

studies and invited interested persons to submit comments. 

The FAA ultimately issued 130 identical Determinations 

of No Hazard, one for each of the proposed wind turbines. In 

the determinations, the FAA concluded that the turbines 

“would have no substantial adverse effect on the safe and 

efficient utilization of the navigable airspace by aircraft or on 

the operation of air navigation facilities.” See, e.g., 

Determination of No Hazard to Air Navigation, No. 2009-

WTE-332-OE (May 17, 2010) (“Determination”) at 1, J.A. 1. 

Although it ultimately decided that the project was not a 

hazard, its decision was contingent on Cape Wind’s 

implementing a number of measures to mitigate the turbines’ 

adverse impact on nearby radar facilities. See Determination 

at 5–6, J.A. 5–6. 

Petitioners—the town of Barnstable, Massachusetts and 

the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, a non-profit 

organization of private citizens and other organizations—

challenge these No Hazard determinations. They argue that 

the FAA violated its governing statute, misread its own 

regulations, and arbitrarily and capriciously failed to calculate 

the dangers posed to local aviation. 

In response, the FAA claims that petitioners lack standing 

to challenge the FAA’s determinations and that their merits 

claims are faulty. We find that petitioners do have standing 

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and that the FAA did misread its regulations, leaving the 

challenged determinations inadequately justified. 

* * * 

Petitioners bear the burden of providing, “by affidavit or 

other evidence,” “specific facts” sufficient to demonstrate 

standing; once provided, however, those facts “will be taken 

as true” by this Court. Sierra Club v. EPA, 292 F.3d 895, 899 

(D.C. Cir. 2002) (quoting Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 

U.S. 555, 560 (1992)). At this stage, however, we must 

assume the petitioners will prevail on the merits, see City of 

Waukesha v. EPA, 320 F.3d 228, 235 (D.C. Cir. 2003), which 

means we must assume the FAA would determine the wind 

farm poses a hazard of the degree and kind the petitioners 

allege. 

Of the three familiar prerequisites to Article III 

standing—injury, causation, and redressability—the FAA 

acknowledges the adequacy only of petitioners’ injury claims. 

These include the risk of collisions, as well as delay and 

inconvenience for pilots and other members of the Alliance 

involved in aviation over and about the proposed wind farm 

area, with collateral damage for Barnstable as owner and 

operator of the town’s municipal airport (HYA) and for 

members of the Alliance affected by the adverse impact on 

aviation. Accordingly, petitioners seek a determination from 

the FAA that the wind farm poses an unmitigable hazard. 

But the FAA sharply asserts inadequacy as to causation 

and redressability. Here petitioners’ burden is to show that 

their injuries are fairly traceable to the challenged conduct and 

that any ultimate success on the merits would yield a 

“significant increase in the likelihood that [they] would obtain 

relief that directly redresses the injur[ies] suffered.” Utah v. 

Evans, 536 U.S. 452, 464 (2002); see also Nat’l Parks 

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Conservation Ass’n v. Manson, 414 F.3d 1, 7 (D.C. Cir. 2005) 

(quoting the same). Put another way, there must be a 

“substantial probability” that a favorable outcome would 

redress petitioners’ injuries. St. John’s United Church of 

Christ v. FAA, 550 F.3d 1168, 1170 (D.C. Cir. 2009). 

Potentially undermining petitioners’ showing of causation 

and redressability is the fact that the FAA’s hazard 

determinations, by themselves, have “no enforceable legal 

effect.” BFI Waste Sys. v. FAA, 293 F.3d 527, 530 (D.C. Cir. 

2002) (quoting Aircraft Owners & Pilots Ass’n v. FAA, 600 

F.2d 965, 966 (D.C. Cir. 1979)). The Interior Department, as 

lessor of the project area to Cape Wind, is the ultimate arbiter 

of whether the wind farm receives government permission. 

See 43 U.S.C. § 1337(p) (delineating Interior’s authority to 

grant leases on the outer continental shelf). Thus, answering 

the causation and redressability questions requires us, first, to 

assume that the FAA will determine that the wind farm poses 

a hazard of the degree and kind petitioners allege, and second, 

to appraise the likely effects of such a finding on Interior—

specifically whether it would generate a significant increase in 

the likelihood that Interior would exercise its authority to 

revoke the lease or to modify it in a way that would in whole 

or in part redress petitioners’ threatened injuries. See 

Commercial Lease of Submerged Lands for Renewal Energy 

Development on the Outer Continental Shelf (Oct. 6, 2010) 

(“Lease”), available at http://www.boemre.gov/offshore/Rene

wableEnergy/PDFs/CapeWind_signed_lease.pdf, at 3 §§ 7, 8. 

We conclude that petitioners have shown the requisite 

likelihood. Interior repeatedly assigned the FAA a significant 

role in its decision-making process, mandating that Cape 

Wind “could not begin construction until [its] receipt of the 

FAA’s final determination on whether a hazard exists and 

[Cape Wind’s] compliance with any resulting mitigation 

measures.” Record of Decision, Cape Wind Energy Project, 

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Horseshoe Shoal, Nantucket Sound (Apr. 28, 2010) (“Record 

of Decision”), available at http://boemre.gov/offshore/renewa

bleenergy/PDFs/CapeWIndROD.pdf, at 24. And despite 

recognizing that “FAA [hazard] determinations are advisory 

in nature,” Interior incorporated in the lease a requirement that 

Cape Wind abide by any mitigation measures FAA might 

propose in its ultimate determination. Id. at 59. Thus the final 

lease with Cape Wind states that if the FAA “imposes 

requirements on the Lessee which supersede those in the 

[prior] FAA Determination [], the Lessee shall comply instead 

with such superseding post-lease requirements.” Lease at C28. Interior thereby gave its blessing to the FAA to impose 

any future mitigation measures that the FAA might deem 

necessary to reduce or eliminate a hazard on Cape Wind, and 

to do so without any further consultation. 

In a curious display of agency modesty, the FAA 

dismisses its influence with Interior. It emphasizes that 

Interior reached its decision only after years of deliberation 

that involved consultation with over a dozen agencies, and 

that Interior decided to move forward with the project only 

“[a]fter careful review of the project need, the various 

alternatives considered, the concerns expressed through years 

of public comment, as well as the many agency consultations 

that were conducted and the potential impact to Nantucket 

Sound and environs therein.” Record of Decision at 5. 

But in fact the evidence seems to us to show that Interior 

would take an FAA finding of hazard very, very seriously. 

First, the statutory mandate under which Interior issued the 

lease explicitly requires it to take into account the “safety” of 

the activities enabled by the lease. 43 U.S.C. § 1337(p)(4). 

Interior acknowledges this obligation in the lease itself. Lease 

at 3. 

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And the record contains numerous contentions indicating 

that the wind farm might pose just such a safety risk. For 

example, petitioners cite evidence that the many pilots who 

regularly operate under visual flight rules (“VFR”) near the 

proposed wind farm would have a difficult time staying 

beneath the foggy and otherwise inclement weather that often 

plagues Nantucket Sound, while at the same time maintaining 

a safe distance from the wind turbines. During such times, 

there would be a “clear risk of collision with the wind turbine 

generators.” Submission of managers of the Barnstable, 

Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard airports (May 14, 2010) at 

4, J.A. 586. The “finely balanced airspace over Nantucket 

Sound is already one of the most congested, foggy, and 

dangerous airspaces on the eastern seaboard.” Submission of 

chairman of Barnstable airport (Mar. 17, 2009) at 3, J.A. 109. 

A group of air traffic controllers summed it up by saying that 

adding the turbines to the area would be a “disaster waiting to 

happen.” Submission of National Air Traffic Controllers 

Association (Oct. 19, 2004) at 3, J.A. 343. 

Petitioners also submitted evidence that attempts to 

circumvent the turbines would not solve the problem. Such 

attempts, said the CEO and president of Island Airways after 

reviewing the volume of traffic and its multiple layers, would 

be “problematic because even horizontal diversions of only 

one or two miles can further compress air traffic into 

concentrated corridors.” Aff. of W. Scott LaForge (June 15, 

2010) at 5, J.A. 857. A “horizontal diversion around a 25 

square mile project would certainly lead to concentrated 

corridors of travel” and thereby “increase the possibility of a 

collision.” Id. Moreover, such “encroachment of established 

VFR routes [would] severely compromise [pilots’] ability to 

execute collision avoidance maneuvers in the dead center of 

the three airports of Nantucket Sound.” Letter from W. Scott 

LaForge (Apr. 14, 2009) at 2, J.A. 138. 

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While of course the wind farm may be one of those 

projects with such overwhelming policy benefits (and political 

support) as to trump all other considerations, even as they 

relate to safety, the record expresses no such proposition. 

Moreover, of the many agencies that Interior consulted, it 

adopted prospective, automatic incorporation of mitigation 

measures proposed by only two—the Coast Guard and the 

FAA. See Lease at C-28, C-30. Interior’s deference to these 

two agencies, one tasked with protecting safety on the sea and 

the other in the air, appears to reflect a serious effort to meet 

its statutory obligation to ensure safety. We note, moreover, 

that the Coast Guard determined only that navigation at sea 

would be “moderately impaired.” Record of Decision at 25. 

The required assumption of the merits in favor of petitioners 

precludes our supposing that the FAA’s ultimate label will 

speak only of a “moderate” aviation hazard. 

The FAA also argues that Interior did not wait for a final 

determination before approving the project. But it is hardly 

surprising that Interior’s decision came shortly before the 

FAA’s final determination. In 2001, when Cape Wind first 

proposed the project, the turbines had been designed to be 417 

feet tall; only later did it raise them to 440 feet. The FAA had 

studied the impact of the original configuration and had issued 

a no-hazard determination. See Record of Decision at 24. 

Interior cited this previous study in its Record of Decision, id., 

and likely did not expect that the 23-foot height increase 

would alter the FAA’s viewpoint. Despite this expectation, 

Interior still conditioned any start of construction on receipt of 

a final FAA determination. Id. 

The facts here are rather similar to those underlying our 

decision in National Parks Conservation Ass’n v. Manson, 

414 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2005), where we found that petitioners 

had standing to challenge a non-binding Department of 

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Interior opinion on the visibility impact of a project over 

which the State of Montana had sole and final authority. Id. at 

6–7. The state agency there retained “discretionary authority” 

over whether the challenged project ultimately went forward, 

id. at 6; the only legal effect of a federal finding on visibility 

would have been to require the state agency to consider the 

federal report, and, if it disagreed, to justify its decision in 

writing, id. In fact, in an opinion we cited, the Montana 

Supreme Court had reversed the state agency’s earlier 

determination in part because it found that Montana law 

compelled the state agency to make its decision independently 

of Interior’s opinion. See Mont. Envtl. Info. Ctr. v. Mont. 

Dep’t of Envtl. Quality, 112 P.3d 964, 972 (Mont. 2005). 

Although we noted in National Parks that Interior’s opinion 

had been “virtually dispositive” of the state’s earlier decision, 

414 F.3d at 6, this fact was not necessary to our standing 

determination as the intervening Montana Supreme Court 

decision had relegated Interior’s opinion to an important, but 

nevertheless advisory role. Yet we still found standing 

because a changed ruling “doubtless would significantly 

affect” the state decision. Id. at 7. 

Indeed, courts have often found standing where there was 

no binding legal mechanism by which the challenged action 

might be redressed. See, e.g., Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 

170 (1997) (finding standing despite noting that the ultimate 

decision-maker was “technically free to disregard” the 

challenged opinion). Given Interior’s incorporation in the 

lease of all past and prospective mitigation measures proposed 

by the FAA, its conditioning of initial construction on the 

final FAA decision, and its persistent attention to the safety 

mandate in its authorizing statute, we think it improbable that 

Interior would then turn around and blithely disregard a 

determination that the project posed a substantial danger to 

aviation safety that defied cure through mitigation measures. 

We find it “likely, as opposed to merely speculative,” that the 

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Interior Department would rethink the project if faced with an 

FAA determination that the project posed an unmitigable 

hazard. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561. 

* * * 

Petitioners make two arguments on the merits. They 

contend that the FAA’s No Hazard determinations are 

arbitrary and capricious because they depart from the 

agency’s own internal guidelines. They also argue that the 

FAA failed to fulfill its obligations under 49 U.S.C. 

§ 44718(b). We need reach only the first of these arguments 

because we agree with petitioners that, in light of the FAA’s 

improper application of its own handbook, the FAA did not 

“adequately explain its result.” Public Citizen v. FAA, 988 

F.2d 186, 197 (D.C. Cir. 1993). 

According to the handbook, see Procedures for Handling 

Airspace Matters, FAA Order 7400.2G (Apr. 10, 2008) 

(hereafter “handbook”), the FAA can find a hazard if the 

proposed structure would have a “substantial adverse effect.” 

Id. § 7-1-3(e). A “substantial adverse effect” is defined to 

include one that would have an “[a]dverse effect” on a 

“significant volume of aeronautical operations.” Id. § 6-3-5 

(defining “Substantial Adverse Effect”); see also id. § 6-3-4 

(noting that the volume of flights is significant “if one or more 

aeronautical operation per day would be affected”). We will 

return shortly to the concept of “adverse effect.” 

After discussing the adverse effects the turbines would 

have on nearby radar facilities, the FAA’s Determination 

addressed the impact on VFR operations, purporting to find 

no adverse effect on such operations. In so doing, the FAA 

relied solely on § 6-3-8(c)1 of the handbook, which says: 

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A structure would have an adverse [aeronautical] effect 

upon VFR air navigation if its height is greater than 500 

feet above the surface at its site, and within 2 statute 

miles of any regularly used VFR route. 

Handbook, § 6-3-8(c)1 (accurately paraphrased in 

Determination at 7, J.A. 7). After acknowledging that a 

regularly used VFR route would be affected, and correctly 

reciting § 6-3-8(c)1, the FAA leapt to the conclusion that the 

turbines would not have an adverse effect because they would 

not exceed the 500-foot threshold. Id. (“Therefore, . . . , the 

wind turbines . . . do not meet the criteria to have an adverse 

effect.”). 

But under any reasonable reading of the handbook, § 6-3-

8(c)1 simply identifies one circumstance in which a structure 

could have an adverse effect, potentially one among many. A 

different part of the handbook, § 6-3-3 (including subsections 

(a) through (f)), introduces the concept of “adverse effect”: 

 6-3-3. Determining adverse effect. 

A structure is considered to have an adverse 

aeronautical effect if it first exceeds the obstruction 

standards of part 77, and/or is found to have physical 

or electromagnetic radiation effect on the operation of 

air navigation facilities. A proposed or existing 

structure, if not amended, altered, or removed, has an 

adverse effect if it would: 

. . . 

 b. Require a VFR operation, to change its regular 

flight course or altitude. 

§ 6-3-3 (emphasis added). It is undisputed that the project 

turbines would (i) have the threshold “physical or 

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electromagnetic radiation effect on the operation of air 

navigation facilities” (per the first sentence), and would (ii) 

“[r]equire a VFR operation, to change its regular flight course 

or altitude” (per the second sentence, together with § 6-3-

3(b)).1

 See Determination at 5, 7. The FAA’s complete 

reliance on § 6-3-8(c)1 is therefore inconsistent not only with 

the language of that provision (reading into it a non-existent 

“only”), but with the organization of the handbook, which 

anticipates that structures qualifying under either segment of 

§ 6-3-3’s first sentence are to be assessed for the harms 

identified in the second sentence’s subsections (a) through (f). 

Improperly relying solely on § 6-3-8(c)1, the FAA failed 

to supply any apparent analysis of the record evidence 

concerning the wind farm’s potentially adverse effects on 

VFR operations. A study by a consulting firm, MITRE, 

commissioned by the FAA, charted how many flights flew 

through a three-dimensional zone around the project, the 

boundaries of which were 500 feet to the side and 1000 feet 

above the turbines. The study found that over the course of a 

90-day period 425 VFR flights flew through the immediate 

vicinity of the project site and that 94.1% of these 425 were 

flying at an altitude of 1000 feet or less. J.A. 381, 391–92. 

The 425 flights would be, of course, more than four and a half 

times the one flight per day that § 6-3-4 sets as the threshold 

of significance. 

Once the turbines are built, many of these flights may be 

forced to be rerouted or to proceed in violation of the FAA’s 

own regulation, 14 C.F.R. § 91.119, which requires a 500-foot 

 1

 In assuming that elements (i) and (ii) are both necessary, we 

give the benefit of the doubt to the FAA, reading the “first” of § 6-

3-3’s first sentence as implying that structures qualify as having 

adverse effects only if they satisfy the criteria of both the first 

sentence and the second (through one or more of its subsections). 

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distance between an aircraft and any structure. Further, the 

FAA’s own weather compressibility study concluded that, 

during instances of inclement weather, “VFR aircraft could 

potentially be compressed to a lower altitude” to avoid cloud 

cover, such that they also would come within 500 feet of the 

turbines in violation of § 91.119. J.A. 469. Indeed, § 6-3-

8(b)2 of the handbook says that any structure “that would 

interfere with a significant volume of low altitude flights by 

actually excluding or restricting VFR operations in a specific 

area would have a substantial adverse effect and may be 

considered a hazard to air navigation.” The FAA may 

ultimately find the risk of these dangers to be modest, but we 

cannot meaningfully review any such prediction because the 

FAA cut the process short in reliance on a misreading of its 

handbook and thus, as far as we can tell, never calculated the 

risks in the first place.

The FAA repeatedly notes in its brief that the handbook 

“largely consists of criteria rather than rules to follow.” 

Respondent’s Br. at 40. We agree. Any sensible reading of 

the handbook, and of § 6-3-8(c)1 in particular, would indicate 

there is more than one way in which the wind farm can pose a 

hazard to VFR operations. Indeed, other sections of the 

handbook, especially when read in light of some of the 

evidence noted above, suggest that the project may very well 

be such a hazard. Here, by abandoning its own established 

procedure, see D&F Alfonso Realty Trust v. Garvey, 216 F.3d 

1191, 1197 (D. C. Cir. 2000), the FAA catapulted over the 

real issues and the analytical work required by its handbook. 

Whether in fact an application of the handbook’s 

guidelines to the studies discussed above will cause the FAA 

to find the project a hazard, and if so, of what degree, we 

obviously cannot tell at this stage. But it surely is enough to 

trigger the standard requirement of reasoned decision-making, 

i.e., to require the FAA to address the issues and explain its 

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conclusion. Public Citizen, 988 F.2d at 197. The FAA’s 

misplaced reliance on § 6-3-8(c)1 is no substitute. 

* * * 

The petitions for review are accordingly granted, and the 

FAA’s determinations are 

Vacated and Remanded. 

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