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

Heading: Limited Scope of the ITS

Text: The Corps’s implementation of the ITS through its Clean Water Act verifications was federal action that required NEPA review, but the NEPA obligations arising out of that action extended only to the segments under the Corps’s asserted Clean Water Act jurisdiction. The verifications purported to enforce the ITS against Enbridge only with respect to the water-crossing segments that the Corps verified under Nationwide Permit 12; they did not purport to permit any take of species (or authorize any other action, for that matter) outside those segments along the rest of the pipeline. Indeed, the Corps explicitly disclaimed that it would enforce compliance with the ITS with respect to the pipeline as a whole. 29 The record contextualizes and confirms the geographic limitation of the verifications’ implementation of the ITS. The Corps, the Service, and Enbridge debated jurisdictional issues in the course of their Section 7 consultation. The Service and Enbridge sought a pipeline-wide ITS, while the Corps emphatically disclaimed responsibility outside the verification areas. Enbridge requested that the Corps consult with the Service under Section 7 “on the entire pipeline route instead of the areas tied to Corps jurisdiction/regulatory control,” perhaps because it envisioned that would be tantamount to a shortcut Section 10 process. App. 402-403; see also App. 382. The Corps suggested that the Service issue a Section 10 permit covering non-Corps areas, but the Service responded that it could not do so because Enbridge had chosen not to apply for a Section 10 permit. App. 403. The Corps continued to maintain that it had authority over “a very small percentage” of the pipeline and that it would “only initiate Section 7 ESA consultation, as appropriate, for the limited activities associated with this project that it has sufficient control and responsibility to evaluate,” noting the Service might “provide authorization for any take . . . outside of the Corps permit area under Section 10.” Id. The fact that the Service’s Biological Opinion assessed the entire Flanagan South project does not undermine our holding concerning the limited scope of NEPA-triggering implementation of the ITS via the verifications. The ITS provided that “the Corps . . . must insure that the [ITS’s measures] become binding conditions of any contract or permit issued [to Enbridge] to carry out the proposed action for the exemption in section 7(o)(2) to apply.” App. 296. It further provided that the ITS’s safe harbor could lapse if the Corps failed to “implement the terms and conditions” or “require any contracted group to adhere to the terms and 30 conditions of the [ITS] through enforceable terms that are added to the permit.” Id. The four regional Corps offices, in turn, issued verifications defining the limited scope of the ITS’s “binding conditions,” see id., by “authoriz[ing] [Enbridge’s] work . . . conditional upon [Enbridge’s] compliance with the mandatory terms and conditions associated with the incidental take that may occur within the Corps delineated permit areas,” App. 176 (emphasis added); see App. 385, 421 (other verifications with same language); see also App. 225-26 (biological opinion delimiting the Corps’s jurisdictional areas as the verified water crossings and the two easements). The verifications reiterate that “[f]ailure to comply with the terms and conditions [of the ITS] within the Corps permit areas (i.e., separate and distant [sic: distinct] waterbody crossings, where work is verified by the Corps under Nationwide Permit Number 12), where take of the listed species occurs or adverse effects to designated critical habitat occurs, would constitute an unauthorized take, and it would also constitute non-compliance with your Corps permit.” App. 176 (emphasis added). The verifications explicitly advised Enbridge that the ITS does not constitute authorization for Enbridge to take endangered species beyond the verified crossings. In particular, “in order to legally take a listed species,” the Corps emphasized that Enbridge “must have separate authorization under the Endangered Species Act (e.g. an ESA Section 10 permit, or a Biological Opinion [] under ESA 7, with ‘incidental take’ provisions with which [Enbridge] must comply).” Id. Sierra Club’s claim for whole-pipeline NEPA analysis based solely on the ITS therefore fails because, per the terms of the ITS and the verifications themselves, the Corps had not bound Enbridge to comply with the ITS beyond those 31 segments of the pipeline subject to the Corps’s Clean Water Act jurisdiction. Moreover, Enbridge did not obtain a Section 10 permit to take listed species on the balance of the pipeline outside the scope of the ITS-implementing verifications. Given that NEPA-triggering federal action occurred with regard to the segments of the pipeline subject to the verifications by virtue of the ITS being incorporated with respect to those sections, we need not separately consider whether the Corps’s verification of the pipeline’s water crossings under Nationwide Permit 12, standing alone, would have required NEPA analysis. Even assuming the verifications, by themselves, did warrant NEPA analysis, the verifications do no more than the ITS to extend the geographic scope of the federal action; it remains limited to the verified segments.