Opinion ID: 5127172
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Study Areas

Text: In evaluating the environmental consequences of the project, the FAA generally utilized two “study areas”—the General Study Area and the Detailed Study Area. The General Study Area “is defined as the area where both direct and indirect impacts may result from the development of the Proposed Project.” The Detailed Study Area, on the other hand, “is generally defined as the areas where direct physical impacts may result from the Proposed Project[.]” The General Study Area’s “purpose . . . is to establish the study area for the quantification of impacts to resource categories that involve issues that are regional in scope and scale, including noise, land use, socioeconomic impacts, and Section 4(f) and 6(f) resources.” The Detailed Study Area’s purpose, meanwhile, “is to establish the study area for environmental considerations that deal with specific and direct physical construction or operational issues that directly affect natural resources such as water resources, air quality, and hazardous materials.” The CCA’s general argument here is that the FAA’s defined geographical boundaries encompassing the study areas did not appropriately capture the true environmental impacts of the project. 2 2 As an initial matter, although the FAA argues that most of the CCA’s arguments are not preserved for the CCA’s failure to exhaust them, it appears the CCA sufficiently exhausted the arguments they present here. See Lands Council v. McNair, 629 F.3d 1070, 1076 (9th Cir. 2010) (“[A] claimant need not raise an issue using precise legal formulations, as long as enough clarity is provided that the decision maker understands the issue raised. Accordingly, alerting the agency in general terms will be enough if the agency has been given ‘a chance to bring its expertise to bear to resolve [the] claim.’” (citation omitted)). CTR. FOR COMMUNITY ACTION V. FAA 15 In attacking the parameters of the study areas, the CCA repeatedly asserts that the FAA did not conform its study areas to the FAA’s Order 1050.1F Desk Reference. Most, if not all, of the CCA’s improper study areas arguments are derived by evaluating the conformity of the findings in the EA to the guidance provided by the Desk Reference. But the CCA’s arguments in this regard are unavailing because the CCA does not dispute the fact that the Desk Reference does not serve as binding guidance upon the FAA: “This Desk Reference may be cited only as a reference for the guidance it contains, and may not be cited as the source of requirements under laws, regulations, Executive Orders, DOT or FAA directives, or other authorities.” FAA 1050.1F Desk Reference, Introduction (July 2015). 3 We “review an agency’s alleged noncompliance with an agency pronouncement only if that pronouncement actually has the force and effect of law.” W. Radio Servs. Co., Inc. v. Espy, 79 F.3d 896, 900 (9th Cir. 1996) (citation omitted). We do “not review allegations of noncompliance with an agency statement that is not binding on the agency.” Id. In Western Radio, we held that “neither the [Forest Service’s] Manual nor [its] Handbook has the force and effect of law[,]” and thus we “review[ed] the Service’s issuance of a permit only under its binding regulations.” Id. at 902; see also River Runners for Wilderness v. Martin, 593 F.3d 1064, 1071, 1073 (9th Cir. 2010) (“The text of the 2001 Policies makes clear that they are intended only to provide guidance within the Park Service, not to establish rights in the public 3 The applicable Desk Reference at the time of the FAA’s EA was the July 2015 version, not the February 2020 version the CCA relies upon. In any event, no party has suggested that the difference in substance between the pre-amended and amended versions affects the outcome of this case. 16 CTR. FOR COMMUNITY ACTION V. FAA generally . . . . The Court therefore may not set aside the . . . Plan because it fails to comply with portions of the 2001 Policies[.]”). The only argument the CCA makes to support its assertion that the Desk Reference is relevant is that the FAA itself pointed to the Desk Reference as a reference in analyzing the environmental consequences of the Project. Yet without more, these references are insufficient to “bind” the FAA here. See W. Radio, 79 F.3d at 902. References to the Desk Reference “cannot bind” the FAA “to a Manual or Handbook that is neither promulgated pursuant to congressional procedure nor contemplated in a statute.” Id. And “[m]ere incorporation does not convert a procedural guideline into a substantive regulation.” Id. We therefore cannot review the CCA’s allegations that the EA’s study areas are deficient per the Desk Reference. The FAA’s nonadherence to the Desk Reference cannot alone serve as the basis for holding that the FAA did not take a “hard look” at the environmental consequences of the Project. Instead, the CCA must show that the FAA’s nonadherence to the Desk Reference has some sort of EA significance aside from simply failing to follow certain Desk Reference instructions. But the CCA has not done so here. The CCA first argues that the General Study Area is deficient because the FAA failed to create individualized study areas for individual impact categories (i.e., individualized study areas for the Project’s effects on air quality, noise, water, etc.). The CCA, however, has conceded that “[t]he EA may rely on one sufficiently large study area to address all . . . impacts.” And the CCA does not explain why the circumstances of the Project dictated different study areas based on different environmental impacts, apart from summarily concluding that it did. On CTR. FOR COMMUNITY ACTION V. FAA 17 the other hand, the FAA justified the parameters of its General Study Area, in part, as being based on the region around the Airport affected by noise, the region considered to be Airport property, and the region north of the Airport through which vehicle traffic was expected to flow to and from the project site. Without an explanation as to why a more individualized study area per environmental impact was needed, the CAA raises no substantial questions as to whether the Project may cause significant degradation of some environmental factor, and there is no reason to believe that the FAA’s use of the General Study Area as a general baseline to evaluate multiple environmental impacts was an abrogation of its responsibility of taking a hard look at the environmental consequences of the Project. See J.W., 626 F.3d at 438; George, 577 F.3d at 1011. Next, the CCA generally attacks the EA’s consideration of the impact of the Project on air quality. The CCA argues that the General Study Area does not appropriately encompass the effect of vehicle traffic on air quality because “the FAA’s air quality analysis only captures air quality impacts to an area that is less than five miles wide and four miles long, even though many air quality impacts occur outside the General Study Area.” These assertions, however, are belied by the fact that the FAA did evaluate air quality impacts outside of the General Study Area and provided a detailed explanation of its methodology in that regard. There is no indication from the EA that the FAA limited its consideration of air quality impacts within the geographical parameters of the General Study Area only. For example, throughout the EA, the FAA continuously evaluates the impact of vehicular emissions and the Project in general on the air quality within the South Coast Air Basin. The Basin encompasses a geographical 18 CTR. FOR COMMUNITY ACTION V. FAA area greater than the General Study Area and is overseen by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) under the direction of the California Air Resources Board to ensure air pollutant levels adhere to state and federal standards. In ascertaining the impact of vehicular emissions on air quality, the FAA considered the “[a]verage truck trip length for delivery trucks,” and the average 64.25-mile length truck trip, goes far beyond the “five-by-four mile General Study Area[.]” Moreover: The air quality analysis for this EA includes direct and indirect emissions inventories, as well as air dispersion modeling for landside sources (area, energy, and mobile) and airside sources (aircraft operations and GSE). Mass emissions inventories were prepared for both construction and operations of the Proposed Project and No Action Alternative. The criteria pollutant emission inventories developed as part of this EA used standard industry software/models and federal, state, and locally approved methodologies. Emissions of regulated pollutants were calculated to determine if the impacts to air quality from the Proposed Project would potentially be significant under the federal Clean Air Act of 1970, as amended. For those Proposed Project pollutant emissions that exceeded mass emissions thresholds, dispersion-modeling analyses were performed to determine if the Proposed Project would contribute to an exceedance of a [National Ambient Air Quality Standard]. CTR. FOR COMMUNITY ACTION V. FAA 19 So contrary to what the CCA suggests, the FAA did go beyond the General Study Area in ascertaining the true scope of both the Project’s emissions and the impact of those emissions. The CCA also argues that the General Study Area does not appropriately encompass the socioeconomic impacts of the Project. Specifically, the CCA argues that “the General Study Area is significantly smaller than the local population centers for the Cities of San Bernardino, Highland, Redlands, and unincorporated San Bernardino County, even though Eastgate is located in or borders each of these areas.” Yet, as is the case with most of their study area arguments, the CCA fails to articulate exactly why the FAA needed to expand the General Study Area to include more of the local population centers than it already did. Simply summarily asserting that the FAA should have expanded its General Study Area to include more people based on the guidance offered in the nonbinding Desk Reference is insufficient to render the FAA’s chosen socioeconomic General Study Area arbitrary when it was based, in part, on expected noise and vehicle traffic considerations. The CCA’s next argument is that the EA deficiently examines whether “the proposed action or alternative(s) creates impacts that are incompatible with existing and/or future planned uses in the study area.” The only specific argument the CCA makes here, however, is that the General Study Area “is not big enough to be able to evaluate whether the Project navigates truck trips through residential neighborhoods . . . [so] it is . . . far too small to determine whether the Project will lead to any incompatible land uses from truck traffic.” But the parameters of the General Study Area were based, in part, on “the neighborhoods north of the Airport through which employee vehicle and truck traffic is 20 CTR. FOR COMMUNITY ACTION V. FAA expected to flow to and from the Proposed Project site[.]” The CCA has not pointed to anything suggesting that traffic stemming from the Project is expected to flow to residential neighborhoods outside of those parameters. Without more, the CCA’s argument here is meritless. Finally, the CCA attacks the legitimacy of the Detailed Study Area examined by the FAA. More specifically, the CCA argues that the FAA failed to comply with the Desk Reference’s instruction that the FAA must consider the “existing contaminated sites at the proposed project site or in the immediate vicinity of a project site” and include “local disposal capacity for solid and hazardous wastes generated from the proposed action or alternative(s).” But with respect to the two hazardous material sites the FAA allegedly failed to properly evaluate, the CCA has not explained why those sites fall within the “proposed project site or in the immediate vicinity of a project site” when they fall “more than 1.5 miles and 0.75 miles, respectively, from the [Project] Site.” Distance is relative, and what may seem sufficiently close for consideration to a non-expert may not in fact be so. Without an explanation of why that is the case here, we cannot conclude that the FAA acted arbitrarily in purportedly omitting those two sites from the Detailed Study Area. Additionally, although the CCA harps on the exclusion of certain sites from the Detailed Study Area where “past waste management [and] disposal practices” may have contaminated the surrounding soil and groundwater, the CCA ignores the FAA’s consideration of the remediation and monitoring efforts at these sites in determining that they do not present any notable risks. This remediation and monitoring effort also applies to the two hazardous materials sites, mentioned above, that the CCA highlights. CTR. FOR COMMUNITY ACTION V. FAA 21 Lastly on this point, the CCA asserts that “the FAA does not explain how and why on an active Superfund site this tiny section encompasses the entire geographic area that may be directly or indirectly impacted by hazardous materials from this Project” and “fails to account for the common sense reality that wind and trucks carrying materials also transport dust containing hazardous materials outside the Detailed Study Area and throughout the Project site and beyond.” But the CCA fails to point to any evidence to support its assertion that the Detailed Study Area failed to encompass the true scope of the impact of hazardous materials. Cf. Bark, 958 F.3d at 870–71. In sum, the CCA has not carried its burden of showing missteps on the part of the FAA. Without the CCA meeting this burden, we cannot conclude that a substantial question has been raised as to whether the Project may have a significant effect on the environment, or that the FAA skirted its duty of taking a “hard look” at the environmental consequences of the Project.