Opinion ID: 777060
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Tiering to the Guidelines

Text: 33 ONRC argues that the EIS is inadequate because its only discussion of the fungus and the Cedar is contained in a brief reference to the Guidelines, and because the EIS illegally tiers to the Guidelines. Tiering, or avoiding detailed discussion by referring to another document containing the required discussion, is expressly permitted by federal regulation: 34 Agencies are encouraged to tier their environmental impact statements to eliminate repetitive discussions of the same issues and to focus on the actual issues ripe for decision at each level of environmental review. Whenever a broad environmental impact statement has been prepared (such as a program or policy statement) and a subsequent statement or environmental assessment is then prepared on an action included within the entire program or policy (such as a site specific action) the subsequent statement or environmental assessment need only summarize the issues discussed in the broader statement and incorporate discussions from the broader statement by reference and shall concentrate on the issues specific to the subsequent action. 35 40 C.F.R. § 1502.20. 36 However, tiering to a document that has not itself been subject to NEPA review is not permitted, for it circumvents the purpose of NEPA. While NEPA empowers neither the plaintiffs nor this court to second-guess the BLM's management decisions, it does require the BLM to articulate, publicly and in detail, the reasons for and likely effects of those management decisions, and to allow public comment on that articulation. See Methow Valley Citizens, 490 U.S. at 349, 109 S.Ct. 1835 (Publication of an EIS ... gives the public the assurance that the agency has indeed considered environmental concerns in its decisionmaking process.). Although the Guidelines may contain a detailed analysis of the impact of the fungus on the Port Orford Cedar, the BLM is not excused from its responsibility under NEPA to perform an analysis of the effects of the fungus on the Cedar in an EIS specifically addressed to the Coos Bay RMP. See 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C)(i), (iii). 37 We specifically noted in Northcoast that the Guidelines would not be indefinitely shielded from NEPA review: Although CEQ procedures allow agencies to incorporate by reference certain materials to cut down on the bulk of an EIS, they cannot `tier' their site-specific EISs to the broader [Port Orford Cedar] program where the program itself has not been subject to NEPA procedures. 136 F.3d at 670. We cautioned additionally that judicial estoppel will prevent the Secretaries from arguing they have no further duty to consider their [Port Orford Cedar] management policies when site-specific programs are challenged. Id. We now hold, as we warned in Northcoast that we would, that the EIS for the Coos Bay RMP may not tier to the Guidelines, for which an EIS has never been prepared.