Opinion ID: 3005368
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Clean Water Act Verifications Under

Text: Nationwide Permit 12 The next category of federal actions involved verifications by the Corps, which authorized the Flanagan South pipeline to cross minor waterways consistent with the Clean Water Act. The Corps has responsibility for implementing the provisions of the Act relevant here, including by requiring permits for construction activities that 13 involve dredge and fill of water features (including wetlands) subject to the Act’s jurisdiction. See 33 U.S.C. § 1344. The Corps grants Clean Water Act permits in one of two ways: It issues individual permits that are tailored to specific projects, id. § 1344(a), or it promulgates general permits, such as Nationwide Permit 12, and later “verifies” that specific manifestations of a generally approved type of project, such as crossings by pipelines and other utility lines, qualify thereunder, see id. § 1344(e); see also Reissuance of Nationwide Permits, 77 Fed. Reg. 10,184, 10,271-72 (Feb. 21, 2012). General permits authorize categories of actions that will, alone and together, cause only minimal adverse environmental effects. 33 U.S.C. § 1344(e). They may extend to activities throughout a state, a region, or the nation; must be reevaluated at least every five years if they are to be reissued; and may contain general conditions applicable to all projects subject to approval thereunder. See id. Nationwide Permit 12 “addresses the construction, maintenance, repair, and removal of all utility lines throughout the nation,” including lines “carrying resources (like water, fuel, and electricity), facilitating communication (like telephone lines, internet connections, and cable television), and removing waste.” Sierra Club, Inc. v. Bostick, 787 F.3d 1043, 1058 (10th Cir. 2015); see also 77 Fed. Reg. at 10,271-72 (broadly defining “utility line” to include “any pipe or pipeline for the transportation of any gaseous, liquid, liquescent, or slurry substance, for any purpose, and any cable, line, or wire for the transmission for any purpose of electrical energy, telephone, and telegraph messages, and radio and television communication”). There is no dispute that the Flanagan South oil pipeline qualifies as a “utility line” under Nationwide Permit 12. Nationwide Permit 12 authorizes utility line construction activities that affect no more than a 14 half-acre of jurisdictional waters at any single crossing. See 77 Fed. Reg. at 10,271, 10,290. After the Corps has promulgated a general permit, with public notice and an opportunity for a hearing, regional staff members consider requests for “verifications” of projects thereunder. For a project to qualify for verification under a general permit, a Corps District Engineer must conclude that it complies with the general permit’s conditions, will cause no more than minimal adverse effects on the environment, and will serve the public interest. 33 C.F.R. §§ 330.1(e)(2), 330.6(a)(3)(i). Because the Corps cannot accurately anticipate the effects of thousands of future activities at the time it promulgates a general permit, the general permit’s basic terms may later be supplemented by a Corps District Engineer’s decision to attach additional, project-specific conditions at the verification stage. 33 C.F.R. §§ 330.1(e)(2), 330.6(a)(3)(i); see also Ohio Valley Envtl. Coal. v. Bulen, 429 F.3d 493, 501 (4th Cir. 2005). If a District Engineer deems a project inappropriate for verification under a general permit, the engineer may require that the project instead proceed under an individual permit. 33 C.F.R. § 330.6(a)(2), (d). In this case, four regional Corps offices each issued verifications of the Flanagan South project for their respective regions under Nationwide Permit 12. The 1,950 crossings the Corps verified here collectively comprise about 13.7 miles, or roughly 2.3 percent, of the Flanagan South pipeline’s 593mile route. The Corps did not require any separate permits. It did, however, impose conditions on the verifications to ensure compliance with the Endangered Species Act, as contemplated by the Clean Water Act’s minimal-adverseimpacts requirement. 15 The Corps performed a NEPA analysis when it promulgated Nationwide Permit 12, and Sierra Club does not here challenge the adequacy of the Corps’s analysis at that stage. See 77 Fed. Reg. at 10,187. The Corps did not conduct any further NEPA analysis of its verifications of Flanagan South under the nationwide permit. The Corps’s practice is to perform NEPA analysis for general permits in advance of their promulgation, and not to conduct additional NEPA analysis when it verifies specific activities under the general permits. See, e.g., Bostick, 787 F.3d at 1054;3 Snoqualmie Valley Pres. All. v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng’rs, 683 F.3d 1155, 1158 (9th Cir. 2012). The Corps represented to this court that it is very common for domestic oil pipelines to be constructed without any whole-pipeline NEPA analysis, and estimates that 180 oil pipelines have been constructed primarily over private lands without analysis of the environmental effects of the pipeline as a whole.