Opinion ID: 1443077
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether the FWS Complied with NEPA in Adopting the Depredation Order

Text: In order to adopt the Depredation Order, the FWS was required by NEPA to prepare an EIS that would provide full and fair discussion of significant environmental impacts and ... inform decisionmakers and the public of the reasonable alternatives which would avoid or minimize adverse impacts or enhance the quality of the human environment. 40 C.F.R. § 1502.1; see 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C). NEPA is a procedural statute that mandates a process rather than a particular result.... [It] does not command an agency to favor any particular course of action, but rather requires the agency to withhold its decision to proceed with an action until it has taken a `hard look' at the environmental consequences. Stewart Park & Reserve Coal., Inc. (SPARC) v. Slater, 352 F.3d 545, 557 (2d Cir.2003) (internal citation omitted). The court's role is to ensure that NEPA's procedural requirements have been satisfied, not to interject itself within the area of discretion of the executive as to the choice of the action to be taken. Kleppe v. Sierra Club, 427 U.S. 390, 410 n. 21, 96 S.Ct. 2718, 49 L.Ed.2d 576 (1976) (internal quotation marks omitted). Where there is uncertainty regarding the potential effects of an agency action, speculation in an EIS is not precluded, [but] the agency is not obliged to engage in endless hypothesizing as to remote possibilities. County of Suffolk v. Sec'y of Interior, 562 F.2d 1368, 1379 (2d Cir.1977). Even where this uncertainty arises from disparate state and local regulation that may affect federal action, we have not required detailed information regarding the effects of these regulations in an EIS where such information would be of little or no utility in determining the impact of state and local exercise of regulatory powers, since each of the states and municipalities affected could change its regulations ... between the publication of the EIS and the time when such local regulations would affect the federal action. Id. The plaintiffs point to the lack of site-specific or localized analysis in the EIS as evidence that the FWS violated NEPA's requirement to examine and permit the public to comment on the environmental impact of the proposed Depredation Order. But under the order, the FWS did not commit itself to any site-specific actions, and it would have been largely speculative for the FWS to identify the specific, localized areas where control efforts under the order would take place. We therefore do not think that the FWS was obligated under NEPA to include site-specific analyses in the EIS. Under the Depredation Order, local agencies have discretion to select the particular sites at which to pursue depredation control efforts, subject of course to the constraints set forth in the Depredation Order. The Depredation Order does not itself mandate that local agencies utilize their authority under the Order. And, because cormorant depredation is highly localized, and because the Depredation Order limits control efforts only to those cormorants found committing or about to commit depredation, the exact locations where local agencies might act pursuant to the Depredation Order could not be known with any certainty by the FWS in advance. These compounded uncertainties would render any site-specific EIS virtually impossible to prepare. Not only would it be uncertain where control efforts under the Depredation Order could take place, it would remain uncertain whether any control efforts actually would take place there. The FWS had no means of reliably identifying the relevant sites, let alone ascertaining whether any actions under the Depredation Order would be warranted at that site. Effects that are not reasonably foreseeable need not be included in an EIS. See 40 C.F.R. § 1508.8 (including as effects for EIS purposes those which are caused by the action and are later in time or farther removed in distance, but are still reasonably foreseeable); Suffolk County, 562 F.2d at 1378 (If the additional information would at best amount to speculation as to future event or events, it obviously would not be of much use as input in deciding whether to proceed.). The FWS therefore did not violate NEPA by omitting site-specific analyses in this case. In the absence of any certain site-specific action, then, it was sufficient for the FWS here to prepare only a programmatic EIS. See 40 C.F.R. § 1502.4(c) (Environmental impact statements on broad actions may be prepared [g]enerically, including actions which have relevant similarities, such as common timing, impacts, alternatives, methods of implementation, media, or subject matter.); see also Friends of Yosemite Valley v. Norton, 348 F.3d 789, 801 (9th Cir.2003) (NEPA requires a full evaluation of site-specific impacts only when a `critical decision' has been made to act on site development  i.e., when the agency proposes to make an irreversible and irretrievable commitment of the availability of resources to [a] project at a particular site. The determination of whether a `critical decision' has been made begins with an accurate description of the [agency's] proposed action. (emphases, internal quotation marks, and citations omitted)). Any site-specific actions to which the FWS or any other agency subsequently committed would require the preparation of a site-specific EIS  even if the action were undertaken pursuant to the Depredation Order  if the programmatic EIS is insufficient to address the environmental impact of the site-specific action. See Nat'l Audubon Society v. Hoffman, 132 F.3d 7, 13 (2d Cir.1997) (citing Manatee County v. Gorsuch, 554 F.Supp. 778 (M.D.Fla.1982)). But because the Depredation Order itself does not commit FWS to any site-specific control efforts, its adoption did not require any corresponding site-specific EIS. The FWS did not violate NEPA in adopting the Depredation Order.