Opinion ID: 1042638
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Appellants’ NEPA Claim

Text: Appellants confine their NEPA claim on appeal to the argument that the Navy violated 40 C.F.R. § 1506.1(a) by signing a contract for construction of the USWTR before it has issued an ROD for operations on the USWTR. Appellants make this argument even though the Navy had issued an ROD for its construction of the USWTR. Section 1506.1(a) forbids an agency from taking certain actions before the issuance of its ROD, as follows: (a) Until an agency issues a record of decision as provided in § 1505.2 (except as provided in paragraph (c) of this section), no action concerning the proposal shall be taken which would: (1) Have an adverse environmental impact; or (2) Limit the choice of reasonable alternatives. 40 C.F.R. § 1506.1(a). 18 Case: 12-15680 Date Filed: 10/01/2013 Page: 19 of 41 Under the plain language of Section 1506.1(a), Appellants’ argument fails. The action taken by the Navy that Appellants challenge as violative of Section 1506.1(a)—signing a contract for construction of the USWTR— did not occur before the Navy signed an ROD concerning that construction, but after, and Section 1506.1(a) only precludes agency action taken before the agency signs an ROD. Although Appellants challenged the Navy’s EIS before the district court,4 they no longer dispute that the EIS fully analyzed the environmental impacts of both installation and future operations on the USWTR, including ruling out alternative sites for the range. Having issued an ROD deciding to construct the USWTR, the decision to proceed with the very construction authorized by the ROD could not have violated Section 1506.1(a), which only prohibits actions taken before signing an ROD. Yet, Appellants take issue with the fact that the ROD only authorized half of the entire proposal for the range. Indeed, the ROD states that “[a]t this time the Navy is implementing only a portion of the proposed action, a decision to move forward with installation of the USWTR.” DON185885. The ROD further states 4 Before the district court, Appellants claimed that the Navy’s EIS failed to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of constructing and operating the USWTR and that the analysis was impermissibly segmented in violation of 40 C.F.R. § 1508.25(a)(1) because it only considered the installation phase of the USWTR and not the operations phase. Section 1508.25(a)(1) addresses the scope of an EIS and requires connected actions, which are defined as those that are “closely related,” to be discussed in the same EIS. 40 C.F.R. § 1508.25(a)(1). The district court held that the Navy’s EIS was not impermissibly segmented, and Appellants do not renew their segmentation argument on appeal. 19 Case: 12-15680 Date Filed: 10/01/2013 Page: 20 of 41 that any “decision to implement training” at the USWTR “will be based on the updated analysis of environmental effects in a future [EIS] in conjunction with appropriate coordination and consultation with the [NMFS] and after compliance with applicable laws and executive orders including the [MMPA], the [ESA], the [NEPA] and the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) as they relate to the operation of the proposed USWTR.” Id. The Navy has stated that it will prepare a second ROD that specifically authorizes operations based on updated environmental data, prior to operations ever commencing on the USWTR. In Appellants’ view, the Navy prejudiced its future decision to approve operations on the USWTR by proceeding with the $127 million construction of the USWTR prior to an ROD approving operations. Once construction starts, Appellants argue, the Navy’s future NEPA process will become nothing more than an attempt to “rationalize or justify decisions already made.” Andrus v. Sierra Club, 442 U.S. 347, 351 n.3, 99 S. Ct. 2335, 2338 n.3, 60 L.Ed.2d 943 (1979). But Appellants have presented no authority mandating that an agency must authorize all stages of a project in one ROD. Indeed, the EIS is “[a]t the heart of NEPA,” Dept. of Transp. v. Pub. Cit., 541 U.S. 752, 757, 124 S. Ct. 2204, 2209, 159 L.Ed.2d 60 (2004), rather than the ROD, which is merely a means of documenting the agency’s final decision on a proposed action that required an EIS. While a fundamental NEPA principle is that connected actions be analyzed together in one 20 Case: 12-15680 Date Filed: 10/01/2013 Page: 21 of 41 EIS, see 40 C.F.R. § 1508.25(a), Appellants have conceded that the Navy’s EIS analyzed both phases of the USWTR, and nothing in NEPA reiterates this “antisegmentation” principle with regard to an ROD. 5 Nor are the cases cited by Appellants persuasive, as each case involved an agency’s commitment of resources to a project prior to any environmental analysis being conducted. Andrus, cited by Appellants, merely explains NEPA’s policy that federal agencies must “commence preparation of an environmental impact statement as close as possible to the time the agency is developing or is presented with a proposal” so that the EIS will “serve practically as an important contribution to the decisionmaking process . . . .” 442 U.S. at 351-52 n.3, 99 S. Ct. at 2338 n.3. Similarly in Metcalf v. Daley, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that because a federal agency had committed to support an Indian tribe’s whaling plan long before even beginning to prepare the NEPA documents to support that decision, including the environmental assessment and EIS, the agency violated 40 C.F.R. § 5 Appellants point out that NEPA refers to the ROD in the singular form. See 40 C.F.R. §§ 1506.1 (referencing “a record of decision”), 1505.2 (“each agency shall prepare a concise public record of decision” that must “[s]tate what the decision was”). We decline to interpret these discrete references as foreclosing an agency from signing an ROD authorizing only part of an action. There is no doubt that an ROD is required to finalize an EIS under NEPA. See id. § 1502.2(f). The ROD did that here, and the Navy has stated that a second ROD will be generated, one that finalizes an updated environmental study pertaining to operations, closer in time to operations commencing. The Navy analyzed both phases of the USWTR in its EIS, and that was all that was required of it under NEPA. See id. § 1508.25(a). See also Strycker’s Bay Neighborhood Council, Inc. v. Karlen, 444 U.S. 223, 227-28, 100 S. Ct. 497, 499-500, 62 L.Ed.2d 433 (1980) (per curiam) (noting that the agency considered the environmental effects of its decision and that “NEPA requires no more”). 21 Case: 12-15680 Date Filed: 10/01/2013 Page: 22 of 41 1501.2, which requires a federal agency to integrate the NEPA planning process with other planning at the earliest possible time. 214 F.3d 1135, 1142-45 (9th Cir. 2000). The court stated that at the point that the agency signed the contract with the tribe it made an “irreversible and irretrievable commitment of resources,” such that any environmental assessment prepared by the agency subsequently under those circumstances would be “subject to at least a subtle pro-whaling bias.” Id. at 1143-44. See also Save the Yaak Comm. v. Block, 840 F.2d 714, 718-19 (9th Cir. 1988) (finding that the agency violated 40 C.F.R. § 1501.2’s timeliness requirement because construction contracts were awarded prior to the agency’s preparation of an environmental assessment); Nat’l Audubon Soc’y v. Dep’t of the Navy, 422 F.3d 174, 206 (4th Cir. 2005) (allowing the Navy to conduct certain preliminary activities while it completed its EIS because none of the activities “include cutting even a single blade of grass in preparation for construction” of the project). The difference is clear here: the Navy did not sign the contract for construction of the USWTR until after it issued its EIS and ROD and after those documents had been upheld by the district court. Although not in their briefs, counsel for Appellants named at oral argument Sensible Traffic Alternatives & Resources, Ltd. v. Federal Transit Administration of U.S. Department of Transportation, 307 F. Supp. 2d 1149 (D. Haw. 2004), as the only known case directly addressing the legal question of whether, when an 22 Case: 12-15680 Date Filed: 10/01/2013 Page: 23 of 41 EIS is issued and approved for an entire multiphase project and that EIS admittedly examines all of the necessary environmental concerns, an agency can issue an ROD that accepts only the first phase of the project, leaving acceptance of the remainder of the EIS for a later time. Id. at 1166. The district court in that case answered the question in the affirmative, stating that “[g]iven the purposes of NEPA, there is no categorical bar to the procedure followed here and it was reasonable for the agency to employ it.” Id. However, the district court then stated that it must examine whether the construction of the project limits the choice of reasonable alternatives as to the remainder of the project for which no ROD had yet issued. Id. (citing 40 C.F.R. § 1506.1). In this case, that question has already been answered. The Navy has already fully analyzed reasonable alternative sites for the range in its EIS, an analysis upheld by the district court and no longer challenged on appeal. Mere construction on the already decided-upon site cannot somehow compromise a future analysis of unidentified additional reasonable alternative locations for the range. Having decided, in its EIS and subsequent ROD, where to locate the range after considering the impacts of both installation and operation in the EIS, the Navy has no obligation to revisit or reanalyze its decision in its EIS as to the range’s location. Further, nothing in the record indicates that the Navy will not consider and implement other kinds of alternatives to minimize negative environmental impacts from operations on the range, should 23 Case: 12-15680 Date Filed: 10/01/2013 Page: 24 of 41 operations be found in the already-planned future consultation to pose a threat to listed species. See Brief of Appellees at 50 (“[I]f jeopardy is determined to be likely [during the future consultation on operations], having installed the Range will not limit the reasonable and prudent measures available for structuring operations to avoid jeopardy, including abandonment of the Range.”). In sum, Appellants have not pointed to any provision in NEPA requiring an agency to authorize all phases of a proposed action evaluated in an EIS at the time it issues an ROD. We thus find that it is not an independent violation of NEPA, warranting reversal of the district court’s judgment, for the Navy to enter into a construction contract after it signs an ROD authorizing construction and after having its NEPA analysis upheld by the district court. The district court’s judgment that the Navy complied with NEPA is due to be affirmed.