Opinion ID: 779237
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Timing of NEPA review

Text: 14 NEPA, 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321 et seq., requires the preparation of a detailed environmental impact statement (EIS) for all major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment. 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(C) (1994). Federal regulations permit an agency that is planning a major federal action to conduct a less exhaustive Environmental Assessment (EA) to determine whether the proposed action will significantly affect the environment and thus whether an EIS is required. 40 C.F.R. §§ 1501.4(b), 1508.9 (2001). Here, the Forest Service issued an EA for the timber sale in March 1999, which included a brief discussion of the need for a road density amendment. Two months later the Forest Service issued a decision notice approving the sale, as well as a finding that the sale would not significantly affect the environment so as to require an EIS. 15 Plaintiffs challenge the timing of this NEPA review. Specifically, Bear Creek argues that the Forest Service decided to amend the Forest Plan road density standard for the Darroch-Eagle site before analyzing the environmental effects of such an amendment under NEPA. If true, the Forest Service violated NEPA, which requires that an assessment be prepared early enough so that it can serve practically as an important contribution to the decisionmaking process and will not be used to rationalize or justify decisions already made. Metcalf v. Daley, 214 F.3d 1135, 1142 (9th Cir.2000) (quoting Save the Yaak Comm. v. Block, 840 F.2d 714, 718 (9th Cir.1988)) (internal quotations omitted); see also 40 C.F.R. §§ 1501.2, 1502.5 (2001). The Supreme Court has stated that environmental assessments shall be prepared at the feasibility analysis (go-no go) stage, Andrus v. Sierra Club, 442 U.S. 347, 351-52 n. 3, 99 S.Ct. 2335, 60 L.Ed.2d 943 (1979), and this circuit has interpreted NEPA to require environmental analysis before any irreversible and irretrievable commitment of resources. Metcalf, 214 F.3d at 1143; see also Friends of Southeast's Future v. Morrison, 153 F.3d 1059, 1063 (9th Cir.1998), Conner v. Burford, 848 F.2d 1441, 1446 (9th Cir.1988). We will uphold the Forest Service's decision not to prepare an EA until March 1999 unless that decision was unreasonable. See Friends of Southeast's Future, 153 F.3d at 1062. 16 As evidence of the Forest Service's predetermination to amend the forest plan, plaintiffs point to a memorandum from Forest Service Transportation Engineer Jonathan Kempff to Forest Service staff regarding the Treatment of Roads for the BSL [Big Sky Lumber] Timber Sales. This memorandum, sent on August 7, 1998, addressed issues common to several timber sales, including the Darroch-Eagle sale involved here. It states: 17 The following criteria are intended to guide each project team in consistently approaching road issues on each BSL timber sale project:
18 Avoid travel management (TM) issues. Each project includes an amendment to exempt it from having to achieve elk habitat effectiveness [HEI] standards of the Forest Plan, page II-18. 19 Plaintiffs argue that this memorandum evidences a clear decision, predating the relevant EA by seven months, to adopt a road density amendment as part of the Darroch-Eagle sale. At most, however, we read the Kempff memorandum to indicate that the Forest Service contemplated waiving the road density standard for Gallatin II timber sale projects, including the Darroch-Eagle sale involved in this appeal, before conducting the Darroch-Eagle EA. However, such contemplation does not amount to a NEPA violation unless the Kempff memorandum committed the Forest Service to the amendments proposed. See Metcalf, 214 F.3d at 1143 (the issue we must decide here is whether the Federal Defendants prepared the EA too late in the decision-making process, i.e., after making an irreversible and irretrievable commitment of resources); Friends of Southeast's Future, 153 F.3d at 1063. 20 It did not. Nothing in the record indicates that the Forest Service made its final decision on the Darroch-Eagle amendment until after conducting its EA. Put another way, the agency was free to decide not to amend the Forest Plan road density standard up until the time it issued its Decision Notice for the Darroch-Eagle timber sale. This contrasts greatly, for example, with the situation faced by this court in Metcalf, in which NEPA review was held to be untimely. See Metcalf, 214 F.3d at 1145. There, the government defendants had signed binding contracts committing project resources before evaluating the project's environmental effects under NEPA. Such a commitment, the court held, hampered NEPA's purpose and prevented the agency from taking the requisite hard look at the environmental consequences of its action. Id. Here, by contrast, the EA served its intended purposes: to force the Forest Service to confront (and to publicize) the environmental consequences of its plan before committing to it. 21 We affirm the district court on this issue.