Opinion ID: 3066130
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Essential Information

Text: An agency’s obligation with respect to incomplete or unavailable information is spelled out in 40 C.F.R. § 1502.22. The agency “shall always make clear that . . . information is lacking.” Id. If the missing information is “relevant to reasonably foreseeable significant adverse impacts” and is “essential to a reasoned choice among alternatives and the overall costs of obtaining it are not exorbitant,” the agency must include that information in the EIS. Id. § 1502.22(a). If the missing information “cannot be obtained because the overall costs of obtaining it are exorbitant or the means to obtain it are not known,” the agency must include the following in the EIS: (1) a statement that such information is “incomplete or unavailable”; (2) a statement of the “relevance of the incomplete or unavailable information to evaluating reasonably foreseeable significant adverse impacts on the human environment”; (3) a “summary of existing credible scientific evidence . . . relevant to evaluating the reasonably foreseeable adverse impacts”; and (4) the agency’s “evaluation of such impacts based upon theoretical approaches or research methods generally accepted in the scientific community.” Id. § 1502.22(b). Section 1502.22(b) clarifies that reasonably foreseeable effects “include[] impacts which have catastrophic consequences, even if their probability of occurrence is low.” 14 NATIVE VILLAGE OF POINT HOPE V. JEWELL Much of the information missing from the EIS concerns animal populations potentially affected by oil exploration and production under the leases. The missing information concerns such things as population levels of various species of animals in the Chukchi Sea, including endangered or threatened animals; the locations of various animal populations during the year; the feeding and breeding habits of various animal populations; and the vulnerability of various animal populations to drilling and other exploration and production-related activities. With respect to the potential environmental harm from a large oil spill, BOEM concluded that the missing information was not essential to a reasoned choice among the alternatives. It wrote in the SEIS, “[I]n the unlikely event of a large oil spill, it is well-understood that environmental impacts could be severe. The severity of potential impacts would be nearly identical under any action alternative; therefore, very specific types of information relevant to species, particular life history traits, or behavior do not help substantially in distinguishing among alternatives.” With respect to other activities or events with potential adverse impacts on the animal populations in the Chukchi Sea, BOEM concluded that sufficient protections would be provided by the requirements of other environmental statutes, such as the Clean Air Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (“MMPA”), and the ESA, and by the requirement under NEPA to provide site-specific analyses at later stages of development. Based on these conclusions, BOEM stated in the SEIS that it did not consider any of the incomplete or unavailable information at issue to be “essential to a reasoned choice among alternatives” at this stage of the development process. 40 C.F.R. § 1502.22(a). BOEM therefore did not determine NATIVE VILLAGE OF POINT HOPE V. JEWELL 15 whether the information was unobtainable “because the overall costs of obtaining it are exorbitant or the means to obtain it are not known.” Id. § 1502.22(b). Nor did BOEM go through the steps required by § 1502.22(b) if it had found “essential” information to be unobtainable. Instead, BOEM specifically relied in the SEIS on what it characterized as its “understanding that certain items of presently missing or incomplete information will be known (and utilized to avoid or minimize adverse impacts) at a later stage of OCS Lands Act environmental review.” BOEM promised in the SEIS that it “would thoroughly review specific development & production plans at Step 4 [‘development and production’], if and when a project proponent actually submits a plan. Thus, while certain information may, in fact, be essential at a later stage of OCS Lands Act [review], such information may not be essential to a reasoned choice among alternatives at this lease sale stage.” In Village of False Pass v. Clark, 733 F.2d 605 (9th Cir. 1984), we reviewed an EIS of an oil and gas lease sale under OCSLA. The plaintiff had argued that the commitment made by the government when entering into leases under OCSLA is so substantial that a fully exhaustive environmental analysis under NEPA had to be performed at the lease sale stage. We disagreed, writing: NEPA may require an environmental impact statement at each stage: leasing, exploration, and production and development. Furthermore, each stage remains separate. The completion of one stage does not entitle a lessee to begin the next. 16 NATIVE VILLAGE OF POINT HOPE V. JEWELL Id. at 614. We wrote to the same effect in Northern Alaska Environmental Center: [P]rojects [for the development of oil and gas natural resources] generally entail separate stages of leasing, exploration and development. At the earliest stage, the leasing stage we have before us, there is no way of knowing what plans for development, if any, may eventually materialize. 457 F.3d at 977. A lease sale under OCSLA is analogous to a “programmatic” plan. The required level of analysis in an EIS is different for programmatic and site-specific plans. We wrote in Friends of Yosemite Valley v. Norton, 348 F.3d 789 (9th Cir. 2003): An agency’s planning and management decisions may occur at two distinct administrative levels:
the [agency] develops alternative management scenarios responsive to public concerns, analyzes the costs, benefits and consequences of each alternative in an [EIS], and adopts an amendable [management] plan to guide management of multiple use resources; and (2) the implementation stage during which individual site specific projects, NATIVE VILLAGE OF POINT HOPE V. JEWELL 17 consistent with the [management] plan, are proposed and assessed. Ecology Ctr., Inc. v. United States Forest Serv., 192 F.3d 922, 923, [n.2] (9th Cir. 1999). An EIS for a programmatic plan . . . must provide ‘sufficient detail to foster informed decision-making,’ but ‘site-specific impacts need not be fully evaluated until a critical decision has been made to act on site development.’ N. Alaska Envtl. Ctr. v. Lujan, 961 F.2d 886, 890–91 (9th Cir. 1992). Id. at 800 (alterations in original). Regardless of whether a programmatic or site-specific plan is at issue, NEPA requires that an EIS analyze environmental consequences of a proposed plan as soon as it is “reasonably possible” to do so. We wrote in Kern v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management, 284 F.3d 1062 (9th Cir. 2002), with respect to a programmatic plan: Once an agency has an obligation to prepare an EIS, the scope of its analysis of environmental consequences in that EIS must be appropriate to the action in question. NEPA is not designed to postpone analysis of an environmental consequence to the last possible moment. Rather, it is designed to require such analysis as soon as it can reasonably be done. If it is reasonably possible to analyze the environmental consequences in an EIS for [a Resource 18 NATIVE VILLAGE OF POINT HOPE V. JEWELL Management Plan], the agency is required to perform that analysis. Id. at 1072 (citation omitted); see also Pac. Rivers Council v. U.S. Forest Serv., 689 F.3d 1012, 1025–27, 1029–30 (9th Cir. 2012), dismissed as moot, 133 S. Ct. 2843 (2013). This is not to say that an agency must provide the most extensive environmental analysis possible at the earliest possible moment, for an agency has some flexibility in deciding the level of analysis to be performed at a particular stage. We will defer to the agency’s judgment about the appropriate level of analysis so long as the EIS provides as much environmental analysis as is reasonably possible under the circumstances, thereby “provid[ing] sufficient detail to foster informed decision-making” at the stage in question. Friends of Yosemite Valley, 348 F.3d at 800 (internal quotation marks omitted). In the case before us, we conclude that BOEM has reasonably concluded that the missing information from the FEIS and SEIS is not “essential” to informed decisionmaking at the lease sale stage. We agree with BOEM that compliance with statutes such as the MMPA and the ESA will provide protection for animals covered by those statutes. The MMPA generally prohibits the “take” of marine mammals. 16 U.S.C. § 1371(a). A “take” encompasses any act of “torment” or “annoyance” that “has the potential to injure . . . or . . . disturb a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by causing disruption of natural behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, surfacing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.” Id. § 1362(13), (18)(A)(i)–(ii). Unlawful “takes” trigger civil and criminal penalties. Id. § 1375(a)(1), (b). Further, under the ESA § 7(a)(2), 16 U.S.C. § 1536(a)(2), BOEM must consult with the NATIVE VILLAGE OF POINT HOPE V. JEWELL 19 National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to “insure that any action authorized, funded, or carried out by such agency . . . is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered species or threatened species.” If an action is likely to jeopardize a species, the acting agency must determine whether any “reasonable and prudent alternatives” exist that will avoid jeopardizing that species. 16 U.S.C. § 1536(b)(3)(A). We recognize that BOEM has already consulted with these agencies at the lease sale stage. It may well have to consult with them again at the development and production stage when specific plans have been proposed and site-specific activities are contemplated. (We note that it may also have to consult again at the lease sale stage, once it has performed a proper analysis of the estimated overall oil production.) Because these statutes provide additional protections for animals in the Chukchi Sea, they support BOEM’s conclusion that missing information about these animals was not “essential” at this stage. We also agree with BOEM that further environmental analysis will be appropriate at a later stage. In BOEM’s words, “certain items of presently missing or incomplete information will be known (and utilized to avoid or minimize adverse impacts) at a later stage of OCS Lands Act environmental review.” That is, “when a project proponent actually submits a plan,” BOEM will be required under NEPA to perform a plan- or site-specific environmental analysis of that proposed plan. At that stage, missing or incomplete information that has not been “essential to a reasoned choice among alternatives” at the lease sale stage may later become essential. If there is “essential” information at the plan- or site-specific development and production stage, BOEM will be required to perform the 20 NATIVE VILLAGE OF POINT HOPE V. JEWELL analysis under § 1502.22(b) that it has not performed in the FEIS and SEIS now before us. Of course, we recognize that our discussion and decision in the next Section regarding BOEM’s one billion barrel estimate may have some effects upon the remainder of the FEIS. But we will not at this time speculate about the extent of those effects, if any. The Defendants are in the best position to analyze those effects, if any, and have the duty to analyze them in the first instance.