Court Opinion

ID: 9473587
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:33:43.385021+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:36.921851
License: Public Domain

H ARLINGTON WOOD, Jr., Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Some of the enjoyment that thousands of people derive from this unique scenic area on a small bit of the Illinois shore of the Mississippi River is being sacrificed and the area damaged without sufficient justification for the financial benefit of a private commercial company.
Judge Beatty, the trial judge, knows this territory. He does not need to rely on a stagnant record and pictures to appreciate the diverse and adverse impact which will result from this commercial intrusion into this living park-like area. We should not therefore, in keeping with the spirit of Anderson v. City of Bessmer, North Carolina, — U.S. -, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985), so lightly toss his findings over the side. We should begin with them even if, as the majority says, they were prepared for him. Judge Beatty found that “the Corps has failed to take the ‘hard look’ required to support its conclusions, and has failed to document that ‘hard look’ in the Environmental Assessment, Findings of Fact and Finding of No Significant Impact, in violation of 42 U.S.C. Sec. 4332(2)(C) [NEPA] and the applicable regulations.” Specifically, Judge Beatty held that the Corps’ Finding of No Significant Impact was arbitrary and capricious because: the Corps inadequately considered the fleeting facility’s impact on aesthetic values and recreational activities; the Corps excluded from consideration the cumulative impact of existing and foreseeable barge fleeting operations on Alton Lake; the Corps did not take a “hard look” at the facility’s potential impact on the mussel bed and over-wintering catfish and did not give adequate weight to the views of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Illinois Department of Conservation; and the Corps inadequately evaluated the degree to which the fleeting operation’s effects on the quality of the human environment are likely to be highly controversial, as required by 40 C.F.R. § 1508.27(b)(4). In addition, the court held that the Corps, and I believe this to be particularly significant in this case, violated section 102(2)(E) of NEPA, 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(E), and implementing regulations by failing to “study, develop, and describe appropriate alternatives.”
*455The majority opinion pays little heed to Judge Beatty’s findings preferring to recast the issue and then to proceed with its own de novo consideration of the problems. The majority’s newly framed issue is “whether the Corps should have prepared an environmental impact statement.” Judge Beatty did not need to reach that question. He found only that the required initial step, the preparation of the Environmental Assessment, was inadequate to base the finding of No Significant Impact. The Corps, he found, did not take the “hard look” at the environmental consequences required by Kleppe v. Sierra Club, 427 U.S. 390, 410 n. 21, 96 S.Ct. 2718, 2730 n. 21, 49 L.Ed.2d 576 (1976). The majority, in response to its recast issue, raises the spec-tre of the Corps being required to produce, as in some other case, an environmental impact statement, possibly of 858 pages, and separate appendices requiring an expenditure of thousands of dollars. This, it says, would be economically unfeasible for a routine permit, 14,000 of which the Corps receives in a year. There is no need, however, for economic alarm as that is not this case.
The Corps produced an Environmental Assessment about the length of this opinion. Judge Beatty found, apart from the brevity of the Assessment, that the Corps only went through the motions. The Corps’ soft, not hard, look may have been considered sufficient since the commercial intrusion was to be only temporary. Like many projects, however, it is less temporary now than it was originally. The latest forecast we have is that the time for completion of the new lock, to which this commercial intrusion is tied, has now been extended to 1988. This commercial permit supposedly would expire at that time.
I differ with the majority not only on what the issue on appeal is, but also with its view of the various environmental elements'. I come to a conclusion generally supporting Judge Beatty’s findings, a few of which will be commented on briefly.
A. Aesthetics.
To the Corps a thing of real beauty and professional enjoyment will be the new lock when it is completed, not the bluffs and river. That can be excused since the Corps, after all, is made up of professional and talented engineers, not artists, nature lovers, catfish fishermen, bikers, hikers, symphony directors, picnickers, joggers, local residents, students, or tourists driving peacefully along the Great River Road.
The Great River Road along the Mississippi River bank was created by Congress in 1973 to provide the public with access to the river’s scenic views and recreational activities. The State of Illinois cooperated by acquiring scenic easements, including a scenic easement adjacent to this particular proposed commercial site.1 That particular scenic easement and others nearby will now be good for an unobstructed view of barges, about the most uninteresting things afloat, not nearly as interesting to many as a piece of floating driftwood. For any barge enthusiasts there may be, as has been suggested, the heavy barge traffic and extensive commercial barge operations elsewhere along the river shore should provide more than ample barge-viewing opportunities. There is some concern that the Mighty Mississippi River will become in time the Mighty Mississippi Barge Canal. I doubt that the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago would care to have one of the barges on display, even temporarily.
The majority measures the visual obstruction and impact of this commercial permit area only by the length of six barges in a row which a motorist going 40 mph would pass in 25 seconds. Some motorists, I think, would drive faster than that just to get past the barges. You can see the barges, tugboats, and related activity, however, on your approach long before you get there as you look up or down the river.
*456There is also an impact on the two little historical towns of Chautauqua and Elsah, but they are dismissed by the majority since they are between 1.5 and 4.0 miles downstream. Elsah is a charmer, a bit of the 1800’s nestled in a little valley on the bank of the Mississippi River.2 Since 1973 Elsah has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Principia College is within walking distance. Fortunately this commercial barge operation will not be at the foot of Elsah’s main street, but nevertheless it is in Elsah’s and Chautauqua’s neighborhood. Neighborhoods have their own character and what harms part of a neighborhood harms it all. It is about the same as rezoning a residential area in order to permit some company to establish a gas station in the middle of it. The adverse impact on the whole neighborhood is greater than the mere width of the gas station lot.
B. Recreational Activities.
The area’s recreational activities are deemed trivial by the majority, but that is not so for others, including that lonely jogger. The sport fisherman is said to be affected by this commercial barge facility for no more than the 1500 feet width of the site. Fishermen well recognize that finding to be at least a fishing error, if not a legal error. The boat and barge traffic coming and going to the facility from all angles stirring up the water "and silt and the attendant noise and activity will extend well beyond the site’s 1500 feet frontage. The fishermen, at least while they are fishing, are ordinarily a quiet lot for they know that you do not throw rocks in the water to attract fish.
The mooring area is not considered by the majority to be an obstruction to navigation, but the Corps conceded that it is. In any event the commercial barge traffic coming and going in all directions from the main river channel to this five acres of water, will be a hazard for amateur boaters.
There are many ways that the enjoyment and use of this area will be affected, but we cannot pursue them all here.
C. Aquatic Life.
One of the largest mussel beds known to be in the upper Mississippi touches this commercial site. These mussels, according to the majority, at best are good for cat food and buttons. The Attorney General of Illinois, with help from the Illinois Department of Conservation, as can be seen from his brief, however, holds the lowly mussel in higher esteem.
Mussels play several important roles in the riverine ecosystem including serving as a food source for certain birds and several species of fish. Mussels also provide a substrate for supporting numerous organisms such as algae, flatworm, leeches, and other mollusks which in turn serve as a food source. As filter-feeders, mussels reduce the amount of impurities in the water and serve as a valuable scientific tool providing important information regarding the presence of pesticides, heavy metals, and other pollutants in the river. It is uncontro-verted that the mussel bed at this site has been productively harvested commercially for many years.
As for the bewhiskered catfish, the majority finds that he will only be minutely affected by being discouraged from scavenging beneath the barges. Not so. The actual concern is that the river bottom underlying and near this site where the tugboats will be approaching and maneuvering may provide potentially irreplaceable overwinter habitat for catfish which they need to survive. The majority apparently is not concerned since catfish, after all, it notes, are also farmed.3 True, but there is still a *457substantial catfish harvest in the river. In 1977, for instance, the harvest ranked first monetarily in the upper Mississippi. And, there are still a few people left who enjoy fishing along the bank with a cane pole, worm, and a red striped bobber.4
The barge operation is characterized by the majority as a static maritime parking lot with little activity, almost a pastoral scene. It is much more. It will be a mooring site, but there will be activity in assembling tows and their tugboats. Some of these tugboats develop 5,000 horsepower. It has been estimated that a single tow passage can move 2,700 pounds of sediment into nearby marshes and downriver creating turbidity that can last for several hours. Tugboats maneuvering at the site will have a scouring effect on the bottom causing injury to the mussels, fish, and plant life. With continuous turbidity fish and plant life and bottom fauna have little chance of surviving. This is one way things not now on the endangered list can get there.
The special conditions of the Corps’ permit itself, intended to assuage environmental concerns, belies the majority’s static view of this commercial site. Only “major repairs” are prohibited, so the site may be used for repairs considered less than major, whatever they may be. Work barges, anchor barges, fleet barges, derelicts and sunken vessels cannot be permanently moored at the site. They may be moored there temporarily, however long “temporarily” may be. Another interesting special Corps’ condition requires minimization of the use of searchlights and noise from bullhorns and machines at the site, whatever that “minimization” may be. Residents along the river might adopt a little self-help by pulling down their window shades at night to obstruct the powerful searchlights. I have nothing to suggest, however, about how to minimize a bullhorn. That all tells us too that this new commercial area, even at night, will not be quiet and peaceful.
Conclusion.
I have expressed these different views of the environmental situation, not to substitute my judgment for the Corps, but to suggest that these considerations should have been enough to prompt the Corps, at least, to take a genuine “hard look” and to say to the company, “There are too many people and environmental problems in this special River Road area. Let’s see if we can’t locate a suitable alternative site. Other barge companies have found them so you probably can too somewhere up or down this big river where environmental harm can be minimized. It may be a little less economical or convenient for you, but after all, it is, as you say, only temporary.”
Judge Beatty found the Corps did not comply with section 102(2)(E), 42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(E) which requires the Corps to study, develop, and describe appropriate alternatives.5 The majority correctly states that this alternative requirement is independent o'f the question of an environmental impact statement which we have been considering, and is operative even if the agency finds no significant environmental impact. It is also stated by the majority that the company did make a study of alternate sites and found none to its liking. Permitting the company by itself and for itself to find and propose an alternate site *458less convenient for its pocketbook is a little like consulting the fox about the best location for the chicken house. The district engineer for the Corps, however, agrees that alternate sites could be found, but opted unfortunately to let this commercial enterprise into this “park” for the operational efficiency of the company and reduced fuel consumption.
The majority holds that the Corps, in spite of the statute and regulations, was entitled to accept the company’s view of alternate sites. The alternative site burden is unloaded on those citizens or organizations who express environmental concerns. The Corps, the majority says, is not a business consulting firm, and the Corps would have to evaluate the company’s business needs. Also the Corps would have to determine whether permission could be secured from owners at the alternate sites. That burden does not and should not lie with the concerned citizens who are now being held in default by the majority for not doing what the Corps and the company should have done. In any event section 102(2)(E) of NEPA, 42 U.S.C. § 4832(2)(E), provides that the Corps “shall study, develop, and describe appropriate alternatives to recommend courses of action in any proposal which involves unresolved conflicts concerning alternative uses of available resources.” That was not seriously done and it should have been.
In this case, I would, as Judge Beatty did, leave the question open for the Corps, if it desires, to take the required “hard look.” If a new look, but this time a “hard look” is to be taken, I would direct that special emphasis be given to alternative sites because of the unique circumstances of this special area. With a little encouragement from the Corps the company would soon find a suitable substitute area although it would be its second choice. It would, after all, be only temporary, and temporary works both ways, so the economic impact on the company of an extra mile or two should not be devastating. The impact on the company, in any event, would be a great deal less than even the temporary impact of its priv.ate commercial activities on the environment and the many citizens who could enjoy this area, a very rare area in this part of the world.
I must therefore respectfully dissent.

. To appreciate the many activities this Great River Road Project offers, citizens may write to the Division of Tourism, Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, 227 South College, Springfield, Illinois 62706 for a copy of Great River Road, Illinois.

. To understand and appreciate this rare little town, its people, and homes, see Better Homes and Gardens, Country Homes, September/October, 1984 which is devoted primarily to Elsah.

. The Illinois Department of Conservation, Division of Fisheries, Springfield, Illinois 62706, in a publication, Potential of Catfish Farming in Illinois, by AI Lopinot and Ray Fisher, begins with this background and words of caution:
In recent years, successful catfish farming in Arkansas and Mississippi has aroused considerable interest. Both states are in the heart of the catfish farming belt as is Illinois in the corn belt. The potentials for catfish
*457farming in Illinois are very limited because of the short growing season, lack of economical water supplies, and unexplored markets for the higher priced domestic product.
To enter the catfish farming business requires suitable land for pond construction, an ample supply of water, a market for the fish, and technical know-how. Technical knowledge cannot be overemphasized — too many popular articles neglect this important issue, resulting in bankruptcy for many "rookie" catfish farmers. In addition, the potential farmer will need suitable financial backing and a license from the state in order to sell the fish.

. In the past year friends of mine fishing the tributaries have caught catfish weighing over 30 pounds, which even though it does little to help this case, at least has the makings of good fish stories.

. 33 C.F.R. §§ 209.410(d)(l)(ii) & 230.5(e), 33 C.F.R. App. B, P. 8(a), and 40 C.F.R. §§ 1500.-2(e) & 1501.2(c) also require consideration of alternatives.