Opinion ID: 622359
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The 2008 Security Assessment

Text: NEPA requires supplementation of any NEPA analysis in response to significant new circumstances or information relevant to environmental concerns and bearing on the proposed action or its impacts. 40 C.F.R. § 1502.9(c)(1)(ii). Supplementation is not required every time new information comes to light after the EIS is finalized. To require otherwise would render agency decisionmaking intractable, always awaiting updated information. Marsh v. Oregon Natural Res. Council, 490 U.S. 360, 373-74, 109 S.Ct. 1851, 104 L.Ed.2d 377 (1989). Whether new information requires supplemental analysis is a classic example of a factual dispute the resolution of which implicates substantial agency expertise. Id. at 376, 109 S.Ct. 1851. Tri-Valley CAREs contends that the DOE violated the NEPA supplementation rule when it failed to supplement the FREA to address the results of its Security Assessment (SA) conducted at LLNL in 2008 by the DOE's Health, Safety and Security Office of Independent Oversight. The SA included a mock attack on the Superblock, where special nuclear materials are stored, and identified several deficiencies in performance of LLNL's protective force. The SA gave LLNL's protective force the lowest possible rating, Significant Weaknesses. Specifically, the SA identified deficiencies in LLNL's physical security systems and protection program management. In July 2008, however, the DOE prepared a supplemental report to determine whether the SA constituted significant new information requiring supplementation of the FREA. There, the DOE examined whether the low rating, and the deficiencies identified therein, significantly altered the outcomes of any of the three terrorist attack scenarios (as previously discussed, (1) intentional airplane crash, (2) intentional theft and release from LLNL outsider, and (3) intentional theft and release from LLNL insider). Because the DOE determined in its supplemental report that the SA did not show a seriously different picture of the likely environmental harms stemming from the proposed project, we must defer to the DOE's finding that a supplemental REA was not required. Wisconsin v. Weinberger, 745 F.2d 412, 416-17 (7th Cir.1984).