Opinion ID: 691024
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: ESA Procedures Have Displaced NEPA Requirements.8

Text: 49 In Merrell v. Thomas, 807 F.2d at 778, we found that NEPA did not apply when the EPA registered pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), 7 U.S.C. Secs. 136-136y. We traced the legislative history of FIFRA and concluded that because Congress created two different mechanisms in FIFRA and NEPA, and because Congress declined the opportunity to apply NEPA to FIFRA, that it intended that FIFRA procedures replace NEPA for pesticide registration. See id. at 778-79. Congress amended FIFRA after the passage of NEPA. Without mentioning NEPA, Congress created a procedure that made the NEPA procedure superfluous. Id. at 778. However, the process under FIFRA was different from the NEPA procedures in several important respects, and the legislation represented a compromise among the various interested parties. See id. Congress amended FIFRA again in 1975, 1978, and 1984. Though it had the opportunity on those three occasions to alter legislatively the EPA's earlier interpretation of FIFRA that did not require compliance with NEPA, Congress declined to do so. We thus concluded that Congress did not intend for NEPA to apply to FIFRA. 50 The legislative history of the ESA at issue in the instant case follows a similar pattern and convinces us that Congress intended that the ESA procedures for designating a critical habitat replace the NEPA requirements. In 1978, eight years after the effective date of NEPA, Congress enacted a set of amendments to the ESA. The amendments provided a procedure for the designation of a critical habitat and allowed Congress to consider the economic impact of a designation. The language of the House Committee Report indicates that the members contemplated the structure of the entire process for designating critical habitats. 9 The report indicates that the committee members wished to introduce some flexibility into the stringent requirements of the ESA. H.R.Rep. No. 1625, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. 14, reprinted in 1978 U.S.C.C.A.N. 9453, 9464. The report states that the legislation aims to improve the listing process and the public notice process ensuring that the Secretary only makes a critical habitat designation after a thorough survey of all the available data and after notice to the affected communities. Id. The report later describes the extensive notice provisions that will insure that the Department of the Interior is not listing species and designating critical habitat without consulting the views of the people of the affected area. Id. at 16. 51 The procedure Congress chose, as in Merrell, makes the NEPA procedure seem superfluous. Before the Secretary can issue a final critical habitat designation, he or she must now (1) publish a notice and the text of the designation in the Federal Register; (2) give actual notice and a copy of the designation to each state affected by it; (3) give notice to appropriate scientific organizations; (4) publish a summary of the designation in local newspapers of potentially affected areas; and (5) hold a public hearing if one is requested. 16 U.S.C. Sec. 1533(b)(5). This carefully crafted congressional mandate for public participation in the designation process, like the FIFRA procedures reviewed in Merrell, displaces NEPA's procedural and informational requirements. 52 The process requires that the Secretary examine the effects of his or her actions by taking into account economic and other relevant impacts. Through that analysis and by examining the best scientific data available, 16 U.S.C. Sec. 1533(b)(2), the Secretary will consider impacts that concern NEPA, to the extent that the critical habitat designation has a positive environmental effect on the species in question. The critical designation process also provides for public notice, another goal of NEPA. See Robertson, 490 U.S. at 349, 109 S.Ct. at 1845. 53 As in Merrell, however, the procedure in the statute at issue represents a compromise between disparate points of view, H.R.Rep. No. 1625 at 13-14, 1978 U.S.C.C.A.N. 9463, 9464, which leaves little room for the imposition of the NEPA requirements. In Merrell, we concluded that applying NEPA to FIFRA's registration process would sabotage the delicate machinery that Congress designed to register new pesticides. Merrell, 807 F.2d at 779. The same is true here. Congress through debate and compromise forged a specific process for the Secretary to follow when addressing the needs of endangered species. Requiring the EPA to file an EIS would only hinder its efforts at attaining the goal of improving the environment. Pacific Legal Foundation, 657 F.2d at 837. 54 In addition, the ESA has an important mandate that distinguishes it from NEPA. Congress gave a special guideline to the Secretary in the critical habitat process. Though the Secretary may exclude from the critical habitat any area, the exclusion of which, would be more beneficial than harmful, he or she must designate any area without which the species would become extinct. 16 U.S.C. Sec. 1533(b)(2). This mandate conflicts with the requirements of NEPA because in cases where extinction is at issue, the Secretary has no discretion to consider the environmental impact of his or her actions. 55 Congress also made an implicit choice to accept the Secretary's policy not to prepare EISs when designating critical habitats. This choice is added evidence that Congress did not intend NEPA to apply to critical habitat designations. In 1988, Congress amended the ESA again. Though it addressed other parts of Sec. 1533 (Sec. 4 of the ESA), Congress did not change the critical habitat provisions. This inaction is significant because before the 1988 amendments, in 1981, the Sixth Circuit in Pacific Legal Foundation, 657 F.2d at 835, held that NEPA did not apply when the Secretary listed a species as threatened or endangered under the ESA and suggested in dicta that the process of designating a critical habitat might provide the functional equivalent of an EIS. 10 56 More importantly, in 1983, the Secretary announced in the Federal Register his decision not to prepare EAs (and, therefore, EISs) before making critical habitat designations. 48 Fed.Reg. 49,244 (1983). In the 1988 amendments, Congress did not respond to this interpretation of Sec. 1533. [W]hen Congress revisits a statute giving rise to a longstanding administrative interpretation without pertinent change, the 'congressional failure to revise or repeal the agency's interpretation is persuasive evidence that the interpretation is the one intended by Congress.'  Commodity Futures Trading Comm'n v. Schor, 478 U.S. 833, 846, 106 S.Ct. 3245, 3254, 92 L.Ed.2d 675 (1986) (quoting NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U.S. 267, 274-75, 94 S.Ct. 1757, 1761-62, 40 L.Ed.2d 134 (1974)); see also Merrell, 807 F.2d at 779. 57 Douglas County argues that the legislative history of the ESA is not comparable to that of FIFRA. The County relies primarily on a statement in the Conference Committee Report for the 1978 ESA amendments which requires that actual notice of the critical habitat designation and any environmental assessment or environmental impact statement be supplied to affected local governments. H.Conf.Rep. No. 1804, 95th Cong., 2d Sess., 27 (1978), reprinted in 1978 U.S.C.C.A.N. 9484, 9494. The statement is far from a clear, considered indication of congressional intent. The comment does not direct the Secretary to prepare an EA or an EIS, it just states that if one is available, it should be forwarded. In light of the fact that this language did not become part of the final statute, and in light of the rest of the legislative history, we think this phrase does not indicate that Congress intended NEPA to apply to ESA critical habitat designations. 58 The district court, finding that Congress intended NEPA to apply to critical habitat designations, made much of the debate on the Senate floor over the 1978 amendments. See Douglas County, 810 F.Supp. at 1483. If that debate demonstrates anything to us, it demonstrates that though the Senate considered amending the ESA to state clearly that NEPA applied to ESA critical habitat designations, Congress chose not to make that statement. 59 The County argues that Jones v. Gordon, 792 F.2d 821 (9th Cir.1986) should control our analysis regarding NEPA's applicability. Jones, involved Sea World's application for a permit under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to take ten killer whales from the wild. Jones carries the torch of Flint Ridge, 426 U.S. at 788, 96 S.Ct. at 2438, finding no irreconcilable conflict between NEPA and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Jones, 792 F.2d at 825. But in Jones we do not state that the finding of an irreconcilable statutory conflict is the only way to avoid the NEPA provisions, and it is unclear from the opinion whether the plaintiffs advanced other theories. Moreover, this court, in Merrell, joined the Sixth Circuit in Pacific Legal Foundation, 657 F.2d at 835, in finding that the irreconcilable conflict test did not afford the only exception to the application of NEPA to federal actions. Therefore, we find that Jones does not control. 60 As for the concern that if the Secretary is not subject to the NEPA requirements, he or she will have unchecked discretion in making critical habitat designations, we believe that the procedural requirements of the ESA, combined with review of decisions possible under the Administrative Procedure Act, are adequate safeguards. 11 61