Opinion ID: 170421
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Road Salt

Text: UEC contends that the Forest Service violated NEPA by failing to analyze the environmental consequences of applying magnesium chloride to Forest Road 30312. As a preliminary matter, we address the Forest Service's argument that this claim is moot. The present litigation notwithstanding, implementation of the Project has begun [3] and, according to David M. Keefe, the Supervisory Forester for the Dixie National Forest, contractors have already completed the application of magnesium chloride to FR 30312. Aple. Supp. App. at 131. Mr. Keefe notes the Barney Top stewardship contract provides for a one-time application of magnesium chloride that will last for multiple years. Id. The Forest Service asserts UEC's claim that the Forest Service violated NEPA by failing to analyze the effect of magnesium chloride is moot because the contractor has already completed its one-time magnesium chloride application. Pursuant to Article III of the Constitution, federal courts may adjudicate only actual, ongoing cases or controversies. Lewis v. Cont'l Bank Corp., 494 U.S. 472, 477, 110 S.Ct. 1249, 108 L.Ed.2d 400 (1990). [I]f an event occurs while a case is pending on appeal that makes it impossible for the court to grant any effectual relief whatever to a prevailing party, the appeal must be dismissed as moot. Church of Scientology v. United States, 506 U.S. 9, 12, 113 S.Ct. 447, 121 L.Ed.2d 313 (1992) (quotation marks omitted). However, even where it is too late to . . . provide a fully satisfactory remedy the availability of a partial remedy will prevent the case from being moot. Id. at 13, 113 S.Ct. 447. See also Airport Neighbors Alliance, Inc., 90 F.3d at 428-29 ([C]ourts still consider NEPA claims . . . when the court can provide some remedy if it determines that an agency failed to comply with NEPA.). We must, therefore, ask whether we can effectuate even a partial remedy in this case where the contractor has already applied magnesium chloride to the road. Included among the project design criteria outlined in the EA is the statement that [m]agnesium chloride will be applied as needed for dust abatement for approximately 5 miles of FR 132 adjacent to Pine Lake Campground. Aplt. App. at 2387. The EA thus does not limit the use of road salt to a single application, but instead provides for its use as needed. Id. The Project was intended to unfold over a four- to six-year period, including an initial three year timber harvest. Joseph Black, a Forest Engineer for the Dixie National Forest, noted in a supplemental affidavit that [g]enerally, magnesium chloride for dust abatement is applied to a road surface once a year. Aple. Supp. App. at 91. Although the Forest Service's present contract calls for only a single application, the EA provides for the use of road salt throughout the life of the Project if necessary. Because the Forest Service retains the flexibility to implement the project design and employ magnesium chloride for dust abatement, this issue is not moot. Moving to the merits of the claim, the Forest Service acknowledges it did not perform a detailed analysis in the [EA] separate from the analysis of the effects of the proposed action as a whole for the application of magnesium chloride. Aple. Br. at 24. It asserts that such an analysis was unwarranted because [applying magnesium chloride] is a routine component of road maintenance, and road maintenance is exempt from NEPA documentation under categorical exclusion 31.12(4) of the Forest Service Handbook. Id. See FOREST SERVICE HANDBOOK 1909.15 (Environmental Policy and Procedures Handbook), Ch. 30, § 31.12(4) (hereinafter the Handbook). The Handbook enumerates several categories of routine maintenance that may be categorically excluded from documentation in an . . . EA, including the [r]epair and maintenance of roads, trails, and landline boundaries. Id. Within this category, the Handbook provides a non-comprehensive list of examples of such repair, including resurfacing and cleaning culverts, pruning vegetation, grooming a trail, surveying, and [g]rading a road and clearing the roadside without the use of herbicides. Id. Notably, none of these illustrative actions include the application of chemicals to roads or surrounding areas. Furthermore, the Handbook explicitly excludes road grading from this categorical exclusion if it is paired with the application of herbicides. As documentation provided by the Forest Service states, seven and one-half to nine tons of magnesium chloride are generally added to each road mile for dust abatement. Aple. Supp. App. at 124. In this case, therefore, as much as 45 tons of magnesium chloride will be spread over the five mile expanse of Forest Service road at each application. This amount of added chemical is simply not equivalent to the minor physical alterations involved in cleaning, pruning, surveying, or grooming. The Handbook's omission of any maintenance requiring the application of chemicals and its explicit exclusion of maintenance reliant upon herbicides, suggests that actions involving the addition of chemicals were not among the types of maintenance categorically excluded from consideration in an EA. We conclude, therefore, that the addition of magnesium chloride is not categorically excluded from consideration in the EA. [4] Because the application of magnesium chloride is not categorically excluded from Forest Service review, we consider whether the agency examined the environmental impact of magnesium chloride applications when evaluating the Project. In July 2004, the same interdisciplinary team . . . assigned to the Barney Top [EA], used the public comments concerning travel management collected through this proposal, to develop a Roads Analysis Report (RAP) analyz[ing] all of the roads within the project area. Aplt. App., vol. 2 at 788, 790; vol. 5 at 2371. The RAP posed the following question: How and where does the road system create potential for pollutants such as chemical spills, oils, de-icing salts, [ [5] ] or herbicides, to enter surface water? Id., vol. 2 at 803 (emphasis added). It concluded that on low volume, low maintenance, forest roads such as those found in the Barney Top area, the potential for this is very low (Gucinski and others). The only areas where this potential exists are [a section of Forest Road 30132]. [6] Id. The EA, completed two months later by the same officials, proposed for the Project the road developments described and analyzed in the RAP. Id. at 2371. In writing the EA, the team directly referenced the conclusions of its RAP. Id. at 2371. The RAP's conclusion, supported with a citation to a published text, that there was only a very low potential of pollution from de-icing salts at FR 132, the RAP's reference in the EA, and the more general discussion of road impacts in the EA, satisfies us that the Forest service sufficiently examined the effects of road salt application and did not act arbitrarily or capriciously.