Opinion ID: 2637049
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exclusion of Federally Permitted Toxic Discharges from the Osprey Project's Consistency Review

Text: In Hammond v. North Slope Borough, [14] we described the relevant effects of the Alaska Coastal Management Act as follows: The Alaska Coastal Management Act, AS 46.40.010-.210, provides for the establishment of an Alaska Coastal Management Program (ACMP), which is partly designed to ensure that the development of industrial and commercial enterprises is consistent with the environmental and cultural interests of the state. AS 46.40.020. The Act provides that the ACMP is to consist of standards issued by a Coastal Policy Council and district management programs established by coastal resource districts. AS 46.40.030. The current ACMP establishes an Office of Coastal Management which must, among other things, review state and federal actions for consistency with the Alaska coastal management program, subject to council review. 6 AAC 80.030(a)(3). The regulations also provide that a state agency may authorize uses or activities in the coastal area under its statutory authority only if the agency finds that the use or activity is consistent with the applicable district program and the standards contained in this chapter. 6 AAC 80.010(b).... . . . . The ACMP consists of two elements: the local district programs and the state standards found in 6 AAC 80.040.120. The state standards are extremely protective of the environment. For example, in areas in which there is a substantial possibility that geophysical hazards may occur, state agencies must ensure that measures have been taken to minimize property damage and protect against loss of life before development of the area may begin. 6 AAC 80.050. State agencies must also recognize and assure opportunities for subsistence usage of coastal areas and resources. 6 AAC 80.120.... With regard to the habitats in coastal areas, they must be managed so as to maintain or enhance the biological, physical, and chemical characteristics of the habitat which contribute to its capacity to support living resources. 6 AAC 80.130(b).... Agencies must also discourage activities which would decrease the use of barrier islands by coastal species, including polar bears and nesting birds. 6 AAC 80.130(c)(5). These requirements, however, are not absolute. Conflicting uses and activities may be allowed by the district or appropriate state agency if: (1) there is a significant public need for the proposed use or activity; (2) there is no feasible prudent alternative to meet the public need for the proposed use or activity ...; (3) all feasible and prudent steps to maximize conformance with the standards ... will be taken. 6 AAC 80.130(d).... Thus, there are two alternative methods a state agency may use. Either the agency must find that all the specific environmental protections have been met or, if there will be conflicting uses, the agency must find that the three pronged test delineated above has been satisfied. [15]
Cook Inlet Keeper asserts that the state violated this process by completely excluding the Osprey's wastewater discharge activities from the project's consistency review process. It maintains that when a project like the Osprey platform undergoes a consistency review, the state must evaluate all licensed or permitted activities involved in the entire project, regardless of whether individual permits have already been issued. According to Cook Inlet Keeper, the entire Osprey exploratory platform is a single project encompassing all the activities associated with the Osprey. In particular, Cook Inlet Keeper contends, the Osprey's wastewater discharges are part of the Osprey project because they are reasonably foreseeable impacts of the platform's construction and operation. The state and Forest Oil respond that the EPA's general permit authorizing exploratory drilling discharges covers all oil and gas exploration in the Cook Inlet  including the Osprey's exploration activities. Because the general permit underwent its own consistency review process and was found to be consistent with the Coastal Program, they reason, the consistency review process for the Osprey project had no need to consider these already-permitted activities. But Cook Inlet Keeper answers that even though the state determined the EPA's general permit to be consistent with the Coastal Program, the state has not conducted a specific consistency review of the Osprey's discharge activities in the particularized context of the Osprey project; this project-specific evaluation, Cook Inlet Keeper insists, is mandated by law and necessary as a practical matter to enable the state to accurately assess the environmental consequences of the Osprey project as a whole. Cook Inlet Keeper's arguments have merit. In contending that the issuance of a general permit for a given activity exempts that activity from project-specific review in future projects, the state mistakenly conflates two separate processes. As the Alaska Coastal Management Act's implementing regulations make clear, the Act's consistency review requirements apply independently of, and in addition to, any requirements that attach to the issuance of a permit authorizing a discrete activity: In authorizing uses or activities in the coastal area under its statutory authority, each state agency shall grant authorization if, in addition to finding that the use or activity complies with the agency's statutes and regulations, the agency finds that the use or activity is consistent with the applicable district program and the standards contained in this chapter. [16] By distinguishing consistency review from compliance with agency permitting requirements, this regulation strongly suggests that an activity generally found to meet permitting requirements cannot, by mere virtue of already having been generally permitted, evade inclusion in a subsequent consistency review process that is statutorily mandated for a specific new project in which that activity will occur. Added support for this proposition is found in statutory provisions requiring project-specific consistency review. Under AS 44.19.145(a)(11), the Governor's Office of Management and Budget must conduct a consistency review and make a consistency determination when a project requires a permit, lease, or authorization from two or more state resource agencies. [17] A consistency review also must be performed when a project requires a permit, lease, or authorization from only a single agency; but in such cases the issuing agency is responsible for coordinating the project's consistency review: If a consistency review is not subject to AS 44.19.145(a)(11) because the project for which a consistency review is made requires a permit, lease, or authorization from only one state agency, that state agency shall coordinate the consistency review of the project. [18] Read together, these statutory provisions unequivocally establish that consistency review must be a project -specific process. And this point becomes even clearer when these provisions are read in conjunction with the above-quoted regulation requiring the state to determine consistency in addition to finding that the use or activity complies with the agency's statutes and regulations that govern issuance of permits. [19] The statutory definition of consistency review further reinforces the project-specific nature of the consistency review process; and this definition also clarifies that each consistency review determination must encompass the entire project: `[C]onsistency review' means the evaluation of a proposed project against the standards adopted by the council under AS 46.40.040 and a district coastal management program approved by the council under AS 46.40.060. [20] Regulations governing the Division of Governmental Coordination cement the latter point  that a consistency determination must encompass the entire project it covers  by broadly defining project to encompass any activity or use that will be located in or may affect the coastal zone of this state and that is subject to consistency review under 16 U.S.C. 1456(c), or that requires the issuance of at least one state permit; project includes each phase of a project when a land or water activity is developed or authorized in discrete phases, and each phase requires a state decision regarding permits[.] [21] And as Cook Inlet Keeper further correctly points out, additional, albeit less direct, support for the same point may be found in 6 AAC 50.050, which sets out two exclusive mechanisms for shortcutting the full consistency review process  categorical approval (subsection (b)) and general concurrence (subsection (c)). [22] Neither of these shortcuts includes omitting from the scope of a particular project's consistency review process a project activity that happens to be preauthorized under the terms of a general, area-wide permit. Other provisions similarly underscore the importance of including within the scope of a project's consistency review all proposed project uses and activities for which permits are required, not just those for which permits have yet to be issued. For example, a state agency conducting a consistency review must solicit comments from any coastal resource district in which a project is proposed to be located or which may experience a direct and significant impact from a proposed project[.] [23] And AS 46.40.210(7)(C) includes within the definition of use of direct and significant impact any use or associated activity that proximately contributes to a material change or alteration in the natural or social characteristics of a part of the state's coastal area and in which . . . the use would, of itself, constitute a tolerable change or alteration of the resources within the coastal area but which, cumulatively, would have an adverse effect. Moreover, in the analogous context of phased consistency review, it is noteworthy that the issuance of a permit or authorization based on a consistency review conducted at an early phase of a project does not exempt the permitted use or activity from further review. Even though AS 46.40.094 specifically allows the state discretion to segment projects into progressive phases and provides that each phase may undergo its own consistency review and permitting process, the statutory phasing mechanism expressly restricts this approach to situations in which each successive phase must undergo further discretionary review and the reviewing agency conditions its current consistency determination by requiring that a new consistency determination be made at each successive phase. [24] The phasing statute thus assures repeated consistency review and gives no indication that the earlier consistency determination should truncate the presumably more comprehensive scope of each successive determination. To the contrary, as we expressly observed when we interpreted AS 46.40.094 in Kachemak Bay Conservation Society v. State, Department of Natural Resources, the statute's authorization of a phased consistency review process does not allow the state to avoid thorough review of a project or its potential effects by artificially dividing the project, because it does not relieve the state of its duty to take a continuing `hard look' at future development.... To the contrary, [the state] is obliged, at each phase of development, to issue a ... conclusive consistency determination relating to that phase before the proposed development may proceed. [25] Just as with phased review under AS 46.40.094, then, the division of the Osprey project's actual permitting process into two distinct permitting segments  one federal process and one state process  should provide no occasion for an artificially segmented consistency review process in which neither consistency review comprehensively considers or finally determines the consistency of all permitted uses and activities included in the whole project at issue. For as we have observed on other occasions, the more segmented an assessment of environmental hazards, the greater the risk that prior permits will compel [the state] to approve later, environmentally unsound permits. [26] Despite the state's and Forest Oil's protests to the contrary, we find little danger of superfluity or inefficiency in requiring the Osprey's discharge activities to undergo two separate reviews for consistency with the Coastal Program. The two separate consistency reviews at issue here encompassed two separate projects. The first broadly focused on the consistency of the EPA general permit that authorizes various levels of discharges by exploratory platforms throughout the upper Cook Inlet region, while the second should have more specifically focused on the consistency of the activities encompassed by all necessary Osprey project permits  those already issued and those still to be issued. Nor do the terms of the general permit purport to exempt the Osprey project from a further, project-specific consistency review process. To the contrary, Part VI(K) of the EPA general permit expressly states that [n]othing in this permit must be construed to ... relieve the Permittee from any responsibilities... established pursuant to any applicable state law or regulation[.] To be sure, the general permit's review process covered much ground that ordinarily would have been covered by the Osprey project's individualized review process had the Osprey's review process included Forest Oil's discharge activities. And by the same token, the favorable consistency determination given to the general permit certainly might have provided a strong foundation for evaluating the consistency of Forest Oil's proposed discharges in the context of the Osprey's project-specific review process. To this extent, then, the evidence presented in the earlier review and the state's evaluation of that evidence in its first consistency determination could have illuminated the latter process: the need for a second, project-specific review certainly would not have required the state to ignore the first or to redetermine issues that it had already fully considered. But on the other hand, the mere existence of an earlier consistency determination for the EPA's general permit could not by itself justify completely excluding the subject of wastewater discharge activities from the Osprey project's project-specific consistency review. Nor could it excuse the state from complying with its usual duty to take a hard look at the whole Osprey project and make an appropriately explained determination of the entire project's consistency with all relevant Coastal Program standards. Because the Osprey's discharge activities unquestionably comprised part of the Osprey project, we hold that a complete consistency review for the project could not be conducted without considering those activities.