Opinion ID: 3005368
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: NEPA’s Environmental Review Requirement

Text: NEPA requires the federal government to identify and assess in advance the likely environmental impact of its proposed actions, including its authorization or permitting of private actions. Dep’t of Transp. v. Pub. Citizen, 541 U.S. 752, 756-57 (2004). NEPA’s mandate, which incorporates notice and comment procedures, serves the twin purposes of ensuring that (1) agency decisions include informed and careful consideration of environmental impact, and (2) agencies inform the public of that impact and enable interested persons to participate in deciding what projects agencies should approve and under what terms. Id. at 768. The statute serves those purposes by requiring federal agencies to take a “hard look” at their proposed actions’ environmental consequences in advance of deciding whether and how to proceed. Robertson v. Methow Valley Citizens Council, 490 U.S. 332, 350-51 (1989). The statute does not dictate particular decisional outcomes, but “merely prohibits uninformed—rather than unwise—agency action.” Id. at 351; see also Pub. Citizen, 541 U.S. at 756-57. At the heart of NEPA is the procedural requirement that federal agencies prepare and make publicly available, in anticipation of proposed “major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment,” an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that assesses the action’s anticipated direct and indirect environmental effects, and that the agencies consider alternatives that might lessen any adverse environmental impact. 42 U.S.C. § 4332(C); 40 10 C.F.R. § 1508.11. Regulations promulgated by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) provide common guidance for all federal agencies in carrying out their NEPA responsibilities. Pub. Citizen, 541 U.S. at 757; see 40 C.F.R. pts. 1501-02. Some agencies, such as the Corps, have promulgated their own, complementary NEPA regulations in order to provide additional guidance to their personnel to carry out the directives of the statute and the CEQ regulations in agency-specific contexts. See, e.g., 33 C.F.R. § 325 App. B (Corps regulations); see also 40 C.F.R. § 1500.2(a)-(b). The CEQ regulations explain that NEPA’s “federal actions” may encompass the federal government’s own undertakings, such as promulgating a rule or building a public project, as well as government authorizations or support of non-federal activities, such as approving private construction activities “by permit or other regulatory decision.” 40 C.F.R. § 1508.18(a), (b)(4). The CEQ regulations clarify that the term “major” “reinforces but does not have a meaning independent of significantly,” 40 C.F.R. § 1508.18, and explain that interpretation of the term “significantly” entails case-by-case consideration of the context of the action and the severity of its impact, id. § 1508.27. When it is uncertain whether a proposed federal action will “significantly affect” the environment so as to require an EIS, the regulations call for the agency to prepare an Environmental Assessment (EA)—essentially, a preliminary consideration of potential environmental effects in a “concise public document” designed to “provide sufficient evidence and analysis for determining whether” an EIS is needed. Id. §§ 1501.4(b)-(c), 1508.9; see Pub. Citizen, 541 U.S. at 75758. If, informed by the EA, the agency finds no need for an EIS, it must prepare a “finding of no significant impact” (FONSI) that includes or summarizes the EA and briefly 11 explains why the agency believes the action will not have a significant effect on the environment. 40 C.F.R. §§ 1501.4(e), 1508.13. For example, the EAs performed by the Corps and the Bureau in this case assessed the anticipated environmental effects—on soil, water, species, air quality, noise, and cultural resources—of granting Enbridge’s requested easements to run Flanagan South across the federal lands. The agencies’ EAs resulted in a FONSI for each easement. Each form of NEPA analysis—EA/FONSI or EIS—requires public notice and comment, id. §§ 1503.1, 1501.4(e), 1506.6, and each is subject to judicial review, see, e.g., Pub. Citizen, 541 U.S. at 763-64; Grand Canyon Trust v. FAA, 290 F.3d 339, 340-42 (D.C. Cir. 2002). Sierra Club’s objection in this suit concerns the scope, not the intensiveness, of the agencies’ analyses. That is, Sierra Club does not complain that an agency improperly prepared an EA and issued a FONSI when it should have prepared an EIS. Rather, it complains that no agency ever conducted pipeline-wide NEPA analysis to any degree, whether an EA or an EIS. Sierra Club identifies three groups of federal agency approvals that, it contends, support its claim that federal law requires a pipeline-wide NEPA analysis of the Flanagan South project: (1) easements granted by the Corps and the Bureau for the pipeline to span two parcels of federally owned riverside land and 34 parcels of federally managed Indian lands; (2) Clean Water Act verifications issued by the Corps concluding that 1,950 water crossings complied with the Clean Water Act under Nationwide Permit 12; and (3) conditional permission for Enbridge to take endangered species in the course of constructing and maintaining the pipeline without incurring liability under the ESA— permission provided through an Incidental Take Statement, 12 issued by the Service and implemented by the Corps in its verifications. Sierra Club contends that those actions triggered a requirement under NEPA that one of the agencies review the environmental impact of the entire pipeline, including portions outside the segments that the federal actions purported to address.
Both the Corps and the Bureau granted Enbridge easements to cross federal and Indian lands. See 30 U.S.C. § 185(a) (authorizing agencies to issue rights of way for transportation of oil and gas across federal lands); 25 U.S.C. § 321 (authorizing the Department of the Interior to issue rights of way for oil and gas transportation across Indian lands). The Corps easements allowed the pipeline to cross 1.3 miles of land in two parcels owned by the federal government along the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers. The Bureau easements afforded rights of way across 34 tracts, or 12.3 total miles, of Indian lands the Bureau manages in trust for tribes. The Corps and Bureau prepared three discrete NEPA analyses, in the form of EAs, to consider the anticipated environmental effects of granting Enbridge rights to construct segments of the pipeline across those lands. Each analysis considered only the environmental impact anticipated within its respective geographic area.
Nationwide Permit 12 The next category of federal actions involved verifications by the Corps, which authorized the Flanagan South pipeline to cross minor waterways consistent with the Clean Water Act. The Corps has responsibility for implementing the provisions of the Act relevant here, including by requiring permits for construction activities that 13 involve dredge and fill of water features (including wetlands) subject to the Act’s jurisdiction. See 33 U.S.C. § 1344. The Corps grants Clean Water Act permits in one of two ways: It issues individual permits that are tailored to specific projects, id. § 1344(a), or it promulgates general permits, such as Nationwide Permit 12, and later “verifies” that specific manifestations of a generally approved type of project, such as crossings by pipelines and other utility lines, qualify thereunder, see id. § 1344(e); see also Reissuance of Nationwide Permits, 77 Fed. Reg. 10,184, 10,271-72 (Feb. 21, 2012). General permits authorize categories of actions that will, alone and together, cause only minimal adverse environmental effects. 33 U.S.C. § 1344(e). They may extend to activities throughout a state, a region, or the nation; must be reevaluated at least every five years if they are to be reissued; and may contain general conditions applicable to all projects subject to approval thereunder. See id. Nationwide Permit 12 “addresses the construction, maintenance, repair, and removal of all utility lines throughout the nation,” including lines “carrying resources (like water, fuel, and electricity), facilitating communication (like telephone lines, internet connections, and cable television), and removing waste.” Sierra Club, Inc. v. Bostick, 787 F.3d 1043, 1058 (10th Cir. 2015); see also 77 Fed. Reg. at 10,271-72 (broadly defining “utility line” to include “any pipe or pipeline for the transportation of any gaseous, liquid, liquescent, or slurry substance, for any purpose, and any cable, line, or wire for the transmission for any purpose of electrical energy, telephone, and telegraph messages, and radio and television communication”). There is no dispute that the Flanagan South oil pipeline qualifies as a “utility line” under Nationwide Permit 12. Nationwide Permit 12 authorizes utility line construction activities that affect no more than a 14 half-acre of jurisdictional waters at any single crossing. See 77 Fed. Reg. at 10,271, 10,290. After the Corps has promulgated a general permit, with public notice and an opportunity for a hearing, regional staff members consider requests for “verifications” of projects thereunder. For a project to qualify for verification under a general permit, a Corps District Engineer must conclude that it complies with the general permit’s conditions, will cause no more than minimal adverse effects on the environment, and will serve the public interest. 33 C.F.R. §§ 330.1(e)(2), 330.6(a)(3)(i). Because the Corps cannot accurately anticipate the effects of thousands of future activities at the time it promulgates a general permit, the general permit’s basic terms may later be supplemented by a Corps District Engineer’s decision to attach additional, project-specific conditions at the verification stage. 33 C.F.R. §§ 330.1(e)(2), 330.6(a)(3)(i); see also Ohio Valley Envtl. Coal. v. Bulen, 429 F.3d 493, 501 (4th Cir. 2005). If a District Engineer deems a project inappropriate for verification under a general permit, the engineer may require that the project instead proceed under an individual permit. 33 C.F.R. § 330.6(a)(2), (d). In this case, four regional Corps offices each issued verifications of the Flanagan South project for their respective regions under Nationwide Permit 12. The 1,950 crossings the Corps verified here collectively comprise about 13.7 miles, or roughly 2.3 percent, of the Flanagan South pipeline’s 593mile route. The Corps did not require any separate permits. It did, however, impose conditions on the verifications to ensure compliance with the Endangered Species Act, as contemplated by the Clean Water Act’s minimal-adverseimpacts requirement. 15 The Corps performed a NEPA analysis when it promulgated Nationwide Permit 12, and Sierra Club does not here challenge the adequacy of the Corps’s analysis at that stage. See 77 Fed. Reg. at 10,187. The Corps did not conduct any further NEPA analysis of its verifications of Flanagan South under the nationwide permit. The Corps’s practice is to perform NEPA analysis for general permits in advance of their promulgation, and not to conduct additional NEPA analysis when it verifies specific activities under the general permits. See, e.g., Bostick, 787 F.3d at 1054;3 Snoqualmie Valley Pres. All. v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng’rs, 683 F.3d 1155, 1158 (9th Cir. 2012). The Corps represented to this court that it is very common for domestic oil pipelines to be constructed without any whole-pipeline NEPA analysis, and estimates that 180 oil pipelines have been constructed primarily over private lands without analysis of the environmental effects of the pipeline as a whole.
Consultation and Authorization The third type of federal action at issue is the conditional, limited authorization of the Flanagan South pipeline under the Endangered Species Act. Following interagency consultation required by Section 7 of the ESA in connection with federal agency actions, the Service issued and the Corps implemented 3 For thoughtful analysis of the scope of the Corps’s obligations under NEPA, see Bostick, 787 F.3d at 1062 (McHugh, J., concurring). To the extent that the Corps, both in Bostick, see id. at 1062-63, and in this case, see Oral Arg. Rec. (Apr. 9, 2015) 30:2031:37, understood its NEPA obligations as confined to considering environmental effects on CWA jurisdictional waters, its view misapprehends the obligations of any agency taking action subject to NEPA to do a comprehensive analysis of all types of foreseeable environmental effects. See 40 C.F.R. §§ 1508.8, 1508.27. 16 an Incidental Take Statement to minimize the project’s impact on two endangered species, the Indiana Bat and the American Burying Beetle, and to authorize incidental take of those species. When Congress enacted the ESA, it “intended endangered species to be afforded the highest of priorities.” Tenn. Valley Auth. v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 174 (1978); see generally 16 U.S.C. § 1531. The ESA generally prohibits the “take” of any members of endangered animal species, defining “take” as “to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.” 16 U.S.C. §§ 1532(19), 1538(a)(1)(B). Notwithstanding that prohibition, private parties such as Enbridge may obtain authorization for incidental take of species where the take is not the project’s objective and is sufficiently limited that it does not jeopardize the survival of the species. See id. §§ 1536(a)(2), 1539(a)(2)(B). A party may obtain such limited permission for the incidental take of species in either of two ways. First, a party may apply to the Service for a permit under Section 10 of the ESA, and the Service may issue a permit directly to that party to take members of listed species “if such taking is incidental to, and not the purpose of, the carrying out of an otherwise lawful activity.” Id. § 1539(a)(1)(B); see, e.g., Gerber v. Norton, 294 F.3d 173, 175 (D.C. Cir. 2002) (Service issuing Section 10 permit to a developer to take endangered fox squirrels incidental to constructing a residential housing project). A Section 10 permit application must include a conservation plan that specifies the likely impact of the anticipated take as well as steps for minimizing and mitigating such impact (with identified funding sufficient to implement those steps), and that identifies which potentially less harmful alternatives were 17 considered and why they are not being used. 16 U.S.C. § 1539(a)(2)(A). Enbridge considered and decided against seeking a Section 10 permit, as detailed below. Second, and less directly, a private party may take listed species by complying with an ITS issued by the Service pursuant to ESA Section 7. Section 7 requires other federal agencies to consult with the Service whenever they have reason to believe that listed species or critical habitats may be affected by their planned actions, including authorizations of private parties’ actions. Id. § 1536(a). Accordingly, in this case the Corps and the Bureau, as “action agencies,” consulted with the Service in light of the Clean Water Act verifications that the Corps was issuing and the easements that both agencies were granting to Enbridge. See id.; see generally U.S. Fish & Wildlife Serv. & Nat’l Marine Fisheries Serv., Endangered Species Consultation Handbook (March 1998) (hereinafter “Section 7 Handbook”), http://www.fws.gov/endangered/esa-library/pdf/ esa_section7_handbook.pdf. The Service allows private parties to participate in a Section 7 consultation when the contemplated action involves the action agency’s approval of private-party conduct, see 16 U.S.C. § 1536(b); 50 C.F.R. § 402.14, and Enbridge actively participated in the ESA Section 7 consultation relating to Flanagan South. In a Section 7 consultation, the Service prepares a Biological Opinion identifying the project and any likely impact on listed species or their habitat. 16 U.S.C. § 1536(a)- (c); 50 C.F.R. §§ 402.02, 402.14(e), (g)-(h). The Service cannot approve proposed actions that are likely to jeopardize the continued existence of listed species or critical habitats. 16 U.S.C. §§ 1536(a)(2), (b)(4). If an action will likely result in at most a limited take that is incidental to the project, the Service provides the consulting agency and private party with 18 an ITS as part of the Biological Opinion. Id.; 50 C.F.R. § 402.14(i). An ITS identifies reasonable and prudent measures—such as mitigation, monitoring, and reporting— necessary or appropriate to minimize the impact on species likely to be incidentally affected by the project, and terms and conditions required to implement those measures. 16 U.S.C. § 1536(b)(4); 50 C.F.R. § 402.14(i)(1)(ii), (iv); see, e.g., San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Auth. v. Jewell, 747 F.3d 581, 597-99 (9th Cir. 2014), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 948 (2015). It is up to an action agency that has consulted with the Service under Section 7 to determine whether and how to proceed with its proposed action (including permitting private activity) in light of an ITS issued by the Service. 50 C.F.R. § 402.15(a); see 16 U.S.C. § 1536(b)(4). However, the action agency and private party (unless it has obtained a Section 10 permit) must comply with the Service’s ITS if they wish to be insulated from ESA liability for taking species incidental to the project. 16 U.S.C. § 1536(o)(2); 50 C.F.R. § 402.14(i)(5); see, e.g., Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 169-70 (1997). In this case, the Service consulted with the Corps and the Bureau, and Enbridge participated. The agencies and Enbridge negotiated for more than a year over several questions, including whether Enbridge would seek a Section 10 permit or a Section 7 ITS; whether the Biological Opinion and its ITS would cover only the verification and easement areas or the whole Flanagan South project; and the geographic extent to which the Corps was responsible for incorporating the ITS in its verifications and enforcing it outside those jurisdictional areas. The Service ultimately prepared a Biological Opinion that examined the entire length of the pipeline. See 50 C.F.R. § 402.02 (“Action area means all areas to be affected directly or indirectly by the Federal action and not merely the immediate area involved in the action.”). 19 Neither the Service nor the Corps or Bureau prepared any NEPA analysis of the issuance or implementation of the ITS. The Service determined that, if Enbridge took certain mitigation measures and performed onsite monitoring for five decades, the project would result in a tolerable degree of incidental take of the two identified endangered species and their critical habitat. The Service so specified in the ITS it issued pursuant to Section 7. If the ITS were made a binding condition of a contract, permit, lease or easement, and Enbridge complied with those terms and conditions, the ITS specified that it would provide Enbridge a safe harbor from ESA liability for incidentally taking those species within the geographic scope of any area in which Enbridge was bound to, and did, comply.