Opinion ID: 3051166
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: 1988 Management Policies—Impairment, safety

Text: and hazard reviews [5] We do not read the policies cited by the Terbushes to contain mandatory and specific provisions dictating that impairment, safety and hazard “reviews” must occur in the manner they describe, and note that sections of the policies to which they cite vest considerable discretion in the NPS that is clearly grounded in the broad mandate to balance conservation with access and safety. [6] For example, the 1988 Management Policies apply to all national parks and guide policy that “sets the framework and provides direction for management decisions” that are to be made by managers and superintendents, who are to “ascertain park-specific purposes and management direction.” The Management Policies state that “[w]ide variations exist in the TERBUSH v. UNITED STATES 1547 degree to which the laws and proclamations creating the individual units of the national park system prohibit or mandate specific management actions.” Although the policies “generally allow for management discretion . . . they are mandatory where the language so indicates.” More specifically, the so-called “impairment review” described by the Terbushes is explicitly recognized as involving a decision by the superintendent that calls for reconciling the “inevitabl[e] . . . tension between conservation of resources on the one hand and public enjoyment on the other.” This reconciliation calls for judgment on the part of the NPS: [w]hether an individual action is or is not an ‘impairment’ is a management determination. In reaching it, the manager should consider such factors as the spatial and temporal extent of the impacts, the resources being impacted and their ability to adjust those impacts, the relation of the impacted resources to other park resources, and the cumulative as well as the individual effects. This provision is not a mandatory and specific policy, and the language itself implicates the NPS’s broader mandate to balance access with conservation. [7] Nor do the 1988 Management Policies explicitly call for safety and hazard “reviews.” While the document states that facilities “will not be located” in areas where natural processes, including “geologic conditions,” pose a persistent threat “unless no practicable alternative site exists and unless all safety and hazard probability factors have been considered,” nowhere is there an explicit call for a safety and hazard “review.” Rather, “[w]here facilities must be located in such areas, their design and siting will consider the nature of the hazard and include appropriate mitigating measures to minimize the risks to human life and property.” Unlike wetlands 1548 TERBUSH v. UNITED STATES and floodplains, for which the NPS elsewhere provides further requirements to be met prior to development, no further requirements are provided for mitigation measures relating to “geologic conditions.” Absent further mandatory and specific directives, in constructing the facilities atop Glacier Point, the NPS is left to balance its various policy mandates of access, safety and conservation.