Opinion ID: 327674
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Postal Service is subject to NEPA

Text: 6 Appellant's claim that it is exempt from the requirements of NEPA compels a close examination of the language and policy of two statutes: NEPA and the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, upon which appellant relies. The requirements of NEPA are, by this time, well known. That Act provides, among other things, that 7 (2) all agencies of the Federal Government shall 8 (C) include in every recommendation or report on proposals for legislation and other major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment, a detailed statement by the responsible official on 9 (i) the environmental impact of the proposed action, 10 (ii) any adverse environmental effects which cannot be avoided should the proposal be implemented, 11 (iii) alternatives to the proposed action, 12 (iv) the relationship between local short-term uses of man's environment and the maintenance and enhancement of long-term productivity, and 13 (v) any irreversible and irretrievable commitments of resources which would be involved in the proposed action should it be implemented. 14 Prior to making any detailed statement, the responsible Federal official shall consult with and obtain the comments of any Federal agency which has jurisdiction by law or special expertise with respect to any environmental impact involved. Copies of such statement and the comments and views of the appropriate Federal, State, and local agencies, which are authorized to develop and enforce environmental standards, shall be made available to the President, the Council on Environmental Quality and to the public as provided by section 552 of Title 5, and shall accompany the proposal through the existing agency review processes; 15 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C). It is clear that NEPA was designed to cover almost every form of significant federal activity. Calvert Cliffs' Coordinating Comm., Inc. v. United States Atomic Energy Comm'n, 146 U.S.App.D.C. 33, 449 F.2d 1109 (1971). The Service concedes that the VMF-housing project is a major federal action significantly affecting the quality of the human environment. Indeed, appellant admits that were it not for section 410 of the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, 39 U.S.C. § 410, it too would have to comply with NEPA. 6 However, according to the Service, section 410 removes it from the environmental mandate Congress has imposed on all federal agencies. Section 410 provides in part: 16 (a) Except as provided by subsection (b) of this section, and except as otherwise provided in this title or insofar as such laws remain in force as rules or regulations of the Postal Service, no Federal law dealing with public or Federal contracts, property, works, officers, employees, budgets, or funds, including the provisions of chapters 5 and 7 of title 5, shall apply to the exercise of the powers of the Postal Service. 17 The Service contends that this exemption is a generous one, emphasizing not only the variety of subjects covered but also the breadth of the phrase dealing with. But the exemption in section 410 is obviously not unlimited, and the precise question before us is whether NEPA is properly characterized as a law dealing with public or Federal contracts, property, works, officers, employees, budgets, or funds. Although the question is a close one, we conclude that it should be answered in the negative. 18 The Postal Reorganization Act was passed to 19 Eliminate serious handicaps that are now imposed on the postal service by certain legislative, budgetary, financial, and personnel policies that are outmoded, unnecessary, and inconsistent with the modern management and business practices that must be available if the American public is to enjoy efficient and economical postal service . . . . 20 H.R.Rep.No.91-1104, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. 2 (1970), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1970, pp. 3649, 3650. It was apparent that Congress felt the old Post Office Department to be entangled in layers of restrictive laws and regulations. 21 The committee's inquiries and every responsible study show that the Postmaster General is blocked or undercut at every turn by a labyrinth of postal statutes echoing every postal concern, interest, or whim expressed by Congress over a 200-year period. Laws have changed laws and have added to the body of them so that, by accretion, they have multiplied, decade by decade, leaving the Postmaster General bound in his own house. Twist and turn as he may, he cannot function in the public interest as a responsible manager. 22 S.Rep.No.91-912, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. 2 (1970). Congress intended to free the Service from the shackles of the past so it could operate its day-to-day affairs in a businesslike way. H.R.Rep.No.91-1104, supra, at 5. Congress wanted the Service to update financial policy, modernize employee- management relations, procure flexible and efficient transportation services, and determine postal rates professionally. Id. Thus, the reference in section 410(a) to federal laws relating to contracts, property, works, officers, employees, budgets, or funds reflected a congressional focus on efficient day-to-day management of the new Service. 7 23 NEPA, passed in response to widespread public concern about the nature and quality of our environment, 8 is an entirely different type of law. To quote from the Act's declaration of national environmental policy: 24 The Congress, recognizing the profound impact of man's activity on the interrelations of all components of the natural environment, particularly the profound influences of population growth, high-density urbanization, industrial expansion, resource exploitation, and new and expanding technological advances and recognizing further the critical importance of restoring and maintaining environmental quality to the overall welfare and development of man, declares that it is the continuing policy of the Federal Government, in cooperation with State and local governments, and other concerned public and private organizations, to use all practicable means and measures, including financial and technical assistance, in a manner calculated to foster and promote the general welfare, to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans. 25 42 U.S.C. § 4331(a). The contrast between the specific concerns of section 410 and the broad policy mandate of NEPA is instructive. The Postal Reorganization Act was designed to modernize the day-to-day operation of the Service; NEPA was passed (t)o declare a national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment. 42 U.S.C. § 4321. Section 410 involves contracts, property and works; NEPA encompasses major agency actions such as project proposals, proposals for new legislation, regulations, policy statements, or expansion or revision of on-going programs. S.Rep.No.91-296, supra, at 20. The Postal Reorganization Act is managerial; NEPA is policy oriented. In fact, insofar as the former act was designed to enhance day-to-day business discretion, NEPA in no way interferes. NEPA does not require specific results in particular situations. It merely establishes a reordering of priorities, so that environmental costs and benefits will assume their proper place along with other considerations. Calvert Cliffs', supra, 449 F.2d at 1112. 26 Our conclusion that NEPA is not the kind of federal law envisioned by section 410 of the Postal Reorganization Act is fortified by the sequence of passage of the two statutes. The legislation that became NEPA passed the Senate and the House in July and September 1969, respectively, 9 and after conference was finally enacted and made effective January 1, 1970. 10 The Postal Reorganization Act was enacted on August 12, 1970, but its genesis began at least as early as January 3, 1969, when postal reform legislation was placed before the House, and April 22, 1969, when full Committee hearings began on a bill that was the forerunner of the Act. H.R.Rep.No.91-1104, supra, at 2-4. It is most unlikely that Congress had in mind the almost contemporaneous provisions of NEPA as one of those ancient accretions of legislative, budgetary, financial, and personnel policies that . . . (were) outmoded, unnecessary, and inconsistent with . . . modern management and business practices, id. at 2, U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1970, p. 3650, and therefore covered by the exemption of section 410(a). 27 The Service contends that later legislative developments argue against this conclusion. It points out that in 1973, at a time when the Service position regarding NEPA was already known, Representative Keating introduced a bill that would make NEPA applicable to the Service 11 but Congress did not act upon it. It would be dangerous, however, to draw any inference from such inaction. Congress is exceedingly busy and most members probably never knew of Representative Keating's bill which, so far as we have been told, did not even reach the stage of committee consideration. 12 Appellant also stresses that Congress expressly made the Service subject to the Noise Control Act of 1972, 42 U.S.C. § 4901 et seq. Here too, conflicting inferences are possible. The Service suggests that when Congress wished to make it subject to an environmental statute Congress knew how to do so. However, NEPA was enacted before the Postal Reorganization Act, while the Noise Control Act was passed over two years later. In addition, it can be said that by including the Service among the agencies subject to the Noise Control Act, Congress was merely reaffirming the importance of having environmental legislation apply as widely as possible. 13 We do not suggest that congressional intent on the issue before us is as clear as crystal. 14 We believe only that, as best as we can make out its clouded will, Congress did not have a statute like NEPA in mind when it listed the exemptions in section 410(a). 28 In addition, the policy considerations behind NEPA are particularly compelling. Congress made that clear in section 102 of NEPA, 42 U.S.C. § 4332, which provides that: 29 The Congress authorizes and directs that, to the fullest extent possible : (1) the policies, regulations, and public laws of the United States shall be interpreted and administered in accordance with the policies set forth in this chapter . . . 30 and commands all agencies of the Federal Government to follow specified procedures. (Emphasis added.) These are strong words. The Council on Environmental Quality has, as the district court observed, lent added emphasis to this language by noting in its Guidelines that every federal agency shall comply with . . . (NEPA's procedural and other mandates) unless existing law applicable to the agency's operations expressly prohibits or makes compliance impossible. 15 We do not suggest that the policy animating the Postal Reorganization Act is insignificant or should be ignored. But Congress apparently regarded the NEPA goal of a better environment as unusually important. Surely we should be slow to hold NEPA, as applied to the Service, repealed by implication, cf. Regional Rail Reorganization Act Cases, 419 U.S. 102, 133, 95 S.Ct. 335, 42 L.Ed.2d 320 (1974), even though there is a need to streamline postal efficiency by freeing the Service from red tape. See Morgan Associates v. United States Postal Service, 511 F.2d 1223, 1224 n.2 (2d Cir. 1975). Moreover, there is a limit to how far the private enterprise analogy can be pushed. While Congress has made the Service less like a government agency and more like a private business, the Service is still a hybrid; it does furnish an essential public service and has public functions and responsibilities. 16 Indeed, this is the justification for the position the Service takes that it is not required to comply with local zoning laws. 17 If that position is sound and if the Service is not subject to NEPA, then its power to build hundreds of postal facilities all over the nation, unhampered by the environmental concerns of the local community, would be under little or no legal control. 18 While the Service commendably has recognized such concerns, 19 there is a world of difference between requirements imposed by statute and those assumed voluntarily and with reservations. 31 What little case authority we have found tends to support our conclusion that the Service is subject to the requirements of NEPA. In Ely v. Velde, 451 F.2d 1130 (4th Cir. 1971), administrators of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration argued that certain provisions of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C. § 3701 et seq., mandated a federal policy of hands off the local police, and barred the application of NEPA to grants made to local law enforcement under the Safe Streets Act. The court rejected that claim, noting that the policy of the Safe Streets Act was not as sweeping as the LEAA contends and that all federal agencies are under an injunction . . . to exert utmost efforts to apply NEPA to their own operations. 451 F.2d at 1137-38. The court also rejected the LEAA's administrative interpretation that held NEPA to be inapplicable, noting that the usual presumption of correctness that accompanies administrative interpretations did not apply to the LEAA's interpretation of NEPA since NEPA was beyond the agency's area of expertise. 20 451 F.2d at 1135-36 n. 14. We realize that the case is suggestive only, since the exemptive language in section 410(a) had no precise counterpart in the Safe Streets Act. 32 Only one case has directly treated the ostensible conflict between section 410(a) and NEPA. In City of Thousand Oaks v. United States, CV 74-2186-JWC (C.D.Cal. Sept. 3, 1974), plaintiff requested an injunction against the construction of a post office on the ground that no EIS had been filed. The district court refused the injunction, holding that because of section 410 NEPA did not apply to the Service. In a one-page order filed on the day of argument of the expedited appeal, the Ninth Circuit stated: We do not approve the basis upon which the trial court dismissed, but we affirm the judgment. The appeals court held that the negative statement filed by the Service was adequate. City of Thousand Oaks v. United States, No. 74-2685 (9th Cir. Oct. 1, 1974). Here, too, the precedent is less than compelling because of the lack of discussion, but the case does tend to support the result we reach. 21 33 In sum, the issue before us is a difficult one. But from a careful examination of NEPA and the Postal Reorganization Act, the relevant legislative history of these statutes, the policies behind them and the limited guidance from the cases, we conclude that section 410(a) does not exempt the Service from NEPA and that the Service must comply with the requirements of that statute. 34