Opinion ID: 779237
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Necessity of a Comprehensive Environmental Review

Text: 24 NEPA requires the Forest Service to prepare an EA to determine whether its proposed action will have a significant effect on the environment. See 40 C.F.R. § 1501.4 (2001); Metcalf, 214 F.3d at 1142. If the EA reveals that the proposed action will significantly affect the environment, the agency must prepare an EIS. See 40 C.F.R. §§ 1501.4, 1508.9 (2001). Here, the Forest Service prepared an EA for the Darroch-Eagle timber sale alone and concluded that the sale would not significantly affect the environment. 25 Plaintiffs argue that the Forest Service was required to issue one comprehensive environmental review document considering, in a coordinated fashion, whether to go forward with all Gallatin II road density amendments. A single NEPA review document is required for distinct projects when there is a single proposal governing the projects, see Kleppe, 427 U.S. at 399, 96 S.Ct. 2718, or when the projects are connected, `cumulative, or similar actions under the regulations implementing NEPA. See 40 C.F.R. § 1508.25 (2001); 1 see also Kleppe, 427 U.S. at 410, 96 S.Ct. 2718. 26 Here, as discussed above with respect to the Kempff memorandum, supra at pp. 892-93, there is no Gallatin II-wide proposal to amend road density standards; rather, each timber sale proposal includes its own recommendation to amend the standard, which is evaluated on a sale-by-sale basis in each EA. Though the sales are related in a broad sense, with each contributing money toward the purchase of private lands under the land consolidation program crafted by Congress, each sale is conducted separately and each may go forward without the others. The Forest Service's decision to treat the amendments as part of separate proposals was not arbitrary. 27 Plaintiffs can nonetheless prevail on their claim that the Forest Service should have issued a single EA or EIS for all Gallatin II road density amendments if they can show that such amendments are connected, cumulative, or similar actions under 40 C.F.R. § 1508.25. See Wetlands Action Network v. United States Army Corps of Eng'rs, 222 F.3d 1105, 1118 (9th Cir.2000). Although federal agencies are given considerable discretion to define the scope of NEPA review, connected, cumulative, and similar actions must be considered together to prevent an agency from dividing a project into multiple `actions,' each of which individually has an insignificant environmental impact, but which collectively have a substantial impact. Id. (quoting Thomas v. Peterson, 753 F.2d 754, 758 (9th Cir.1985)). 28 To prevail, plaintiffs, must show that the Forest Service was arbitrary and capricious in failing to prepare one comprehensive environmental statement. Kleppe, 427 U.S. at 412, 96 S.Ct. 2718. The Supreme Court has emphasized that: 29 The determination of the region, if any, with respect to which a comprehensive statement is necessary requires the weighing of a number of relevant factors, including the extent of the interrelationship among proposed actions and practical considerations of feasibility. Resolving these issues requires a high level of technical expertise and is properly left to the informed discretion of the responsible federal agencies. Absent a showing of arbitrary action, we must assume that the agencies have exercised this discretion appropriately. 30 Id. (citation omitted). 31 We apply an independent utility test to determine whether multiple actions are connected so as to require an agency to consider them in a single NEPA review. Wetlands Action Network, 222 F.3d at 1118. Where each of two projects would have taken place with or without the other, each has independent utility and the two are not considered connected actions. Id. Here, each Gallatin II timber sale has independent utility in that each contributes separately to the fund established by Congress to purchase private lands, and each will go forward without the others. Thus, the timber sales (and, perforce, the timber sale amendments) do not meet this circuit's test for connected actions. 32 Whether the timber sale amendments should be considered cumulative actions under the regulations is a closer call. Cumulative actions are those which when viewed with other proposed actions have cumulatively significant impacts. 40 C.F.R. § 1508.25(a)(2) (2001). This Court has required the Forest Service to analyze five distinct timber sales in a single NEPA analysis where the five sales were located in the same watershed, were part of a single timber salvage project, were announced simultaneously, and were reasonably foreseeable. Blue Mountains, 161 F.3d at 1215 (9th Cir.1998). In doing so, we held that the sales raise substantial questions that they will result in significant environmental impacts. Id. 33 Here, we emphasize that the actions purportedly required to be analyzed together in this case are not the Gallatin II sales themselves, but the road density waivers that plaintiffs foresee being adopted in connection with each sale. As discussed above with respect to the Kempff memorandum, the road density amendments are not governed by a single proposal. The Forest Service will make the decision to adopt each amendment separately, over a period of time, not together as were the Blue Mountains timber salvage sales decisions. See id. at 1215 (all five sales were disclosed by name to a coalition of logging companies, along with estimated sale quantities and timelines even before the... EA was completed). Nothing in the record suggests that the Forest Service's goal was to segment review of the road density amendments so as to minimize their seeming cumulative impact. See Churchill County v. Norton, 276 F.3d 1060, 1079 (9th Cir.2002). We cannot say, on the record before us, that the series of road density amendments are cumulative actions under Section 1508.25(a)(2) so as to require their consideration together in a single NEPA review document.