Opinion ID: 4547167
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: NEPA Adequacy

Text: To support their respective contentions about what type of NEPA analysis was required for the 2017 lease sale, Plaintiffs and Defendants rely in part on cases which imply that the relevant inquiry is whether the previous EIS adequately analyzed the impacts of the subsequent action. We decline to take this approach. In Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project v. Blackwood, we concluded that the Forest Service’s previous programmatic forest plan EIS did not obviate the need for an EIS for several proposed timber salvage sales in an area NAEC V. USDOI 25 burned by a large wildfire. 161 F.3d 1208, 1210, 1214 (9th Cir. 1998). The Forest Service argued that its EA for one of the salvage sales was sufficient given that it tiered to the forest plan EIS for additional analysis. Id. at 1214. We disagreed, finding that the forest plan EIS analysis was inadequate because it “d[id] not, and could not, evaluate the impacts of this catastrophic fire, or the additional environmental impacts that large scale logging of severely burned areas could bring.” Id. Plaintiffs here also allege significant developments that could not have been evaluated in the 2012 EIS because they did not take place until later. Our decision in Blue Mountains is of little utility to us in evaluating this case, however, because the fact that the proposed timber salvage sales constituted a new project was not in dispute. 14 Instead, the dispute focused on whether the EA for the new project contained sufficient analysis. Here, BLM did not prepare a contemporary NEPA analysis (such as an EA) for the 2017 lease sale. Rather, BLM argues that the 2012 EIS did contemplate the 2017 lease sale and already performed the necessary analysis. In Pit River Tribe, the plaintiffs challenged a 1998 geothermal lease extension in the volcanic Medicine Lake Highlands in California. The agencies involved had prepared a nationwide programmatic EIS in 1973, which “d[id] not adequately address the potential impacts of leasing.” 469 F.3d at 783. Subsequently, the agencies prepared EAs in 1981 and 1984 which considered leases but did not consider the impacts of “actual geothermal development.” Id. at 784. The agencies then issued leases in 1988 which did not reserve an absolute right to prohibit 14 Furthermore, the timber salvage sales involved surface-disturbing activities, making them more analogous to oil and gas permits for exploration or development than to oil and gas leases. Id. at 1210. 26 NAEC V. USDOI development. Id. Because the statute of limitations had run, the plaintiffs challenged only the 1998 extensions of those leases, and not the original 1988 leases. Id. at 781. The agencies argued that they had completed the required NEPA analysis in 1973, 1981, and 1984. Id. We disagreed, and concluded that the agencies were required to prepare a new EIS for the 1998 lease extensions. Id. at 784. Pit River Tribe illustrates that the adequacy of analysis in previous NEPA documents for the present action may influence whether we construe those NEPA documents as covering the present action. Relatedly, Pit River Tribe shows that adequacy may remain relevant even after the statute of limitations has run. However, it appears that the agencies in Pit River Tribe conceded that the lease extensions constituted a new action, arguing rather that a new NEPA analysis was unnecessary because the leases only maintained the status quo. See id. We held that the extensions did not simply maintain the status quo because they granted a new right to additional years of development which had not been granted previously. Id. In Mayo v. Reynolds, the D.C. Circuit considered a NEPA claim where the plaintiff alleged that the National Park Service “was required to issue a new EA or EIS” for each year’s proposed elk hunting authorization pursuant to a fifteen-year elk-reduction program in Grand Teton National Park. 875 F.3d 11, 14, 19 (D.C. Cir. 2017). The Park Service argued that it had prepared the required analysis in an initial EIS for the entire fifteen-year program, and the court agreed. Id. at 14–15. The court endorsed the Park Service’s assertion that although NEPA requires agencies to take a “hard look” at environmental impacts, NEPA “does not . . . require the agency to take a new look every time it takes a step that implements a previously-studied action, so NAEC V. USDOI 27 long as the impacts of that step were contemplated and analyzed by the earlier analysis.” Id. The court concluded that the original EIS had already taken a hard look at all the potential impacts associated with each year’s hunt. Id. at 21. Our concern with relying on NEPA adequacy as the sole determinant of whether an action requires a “new look,” as Mayo puts it, is that this robs the statute of limitations of effect in certain situations. Specifically, the statute of limitations becomes meaningless where some steps of a previously studied action remain to occur after expiration of the limitations period. Such a result might discourage agencies from bothering to prepare EISs that contemplate the entirety of a multi-step, long-term project at all, contrary to NEPA’s goals that agencies analyze connected and cumulative actions as much as possible in one EIS. See 40 C.F.R. § 1508.25(a). Nor are we satisfied with saying that, if the relevant inquiry is whether the initial EIS was adequate, the statute of limitations simply bars the inquiry.