Court Opinion

ID: 9466737
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:26:01.230672+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:55.551060
License: Public Domain

KENNEDY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The adequacy of an agency’s response to “significant new information” is a point on which authority is scarce, and the question will assume ever greater importance as the life cycle of projects requiring NEPA compliance lengthens. Vermont Yankee emphasized that an EIS must be finished at a fixed time, and yet the CEQ regulations reasonably recognize that in some instances new evidence may be revolutionary enough to require a new or supplemental EIS. Our present interpretation of 40 C.F.R. § 1502.-9(c)(l)(ii) finds support in an analogous section on “Incomplete or Unavailable Information.” See 40 C.F.R. § 1502.22(b)(2); Gelpe & Tarlock, The Uses of Scientific Information in Environmental Decision-making, 48 S.Cal.L.Rev. 371, 392-96, 419-27 (1974).
Not every item of new evidence requires a formal EIS or supplement. There are other and less cumbersome ways for an agency to evaluate new information and explain why it finds no need for a new EIS. I agree with the court that the Maacama Fault Study performed this needed function here. I concur in the judgment.