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    Natres Module 2

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    Angel Navarroza
    The Supreme Court ruled that: 1) The Court of Appeals erred in finding that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should have given determinative weight to environmental factors like crowding low-income housing, and should not have considered delay, when choosing between sites for housing. 2) Once an agency has made a decision following the procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the only role for courts is to ensure the agency considered environmental consequences. 3) Courts cannot substitute their own judgment for the agency's choice of action. Here, HUD considered environmental impacts as required, so its decision was upheld.

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    Natres Module 2

    Uploaded by

    Angel Navarroza
    144 views3 pages
    The Supreme Court ruled that: 1) The Court of Appeals erred in finding that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should have given determinative weight to environmental factors like crowding low-income housing, and should not have considered delay, when choosing between sites for housing. 2) Once an agency has made a decision following the procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the only role for courts is to ensure the agency considered environmental consequences. 3) Courts cannot substitute their own judgment for the agency's choice of action. Here, HUD considered environmental impacts as required, so its decision was upheld.

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    Natres Module 2

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    The Supreme Court ruled that: 1) The Court of Appeals erred in finding that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should have given determinative weight to environmental factors like crowding low-income housing, and should not have considered delay, when choosing between sites for housing. 2) Once an agency has made a decision following the procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the only role for courts is to ensure the agency considered environmental consequences. 3) Courts cannot substitute their own judgment for the agency's choice of action. Here, HUD considered environmental impacts as required, so its decision was upheld.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    144 views3 pages

    Natres Module 2

    Uploaded by

    Angel Navarroza
    The Supreme Court ruled that: 1) The Court of Appeals erred in finding that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should have given determinative weight to environmental factors like crowding low-income housing, and should not have considered delay, when choosing between sites for housing. 2) Once an agency has made a decision following the procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the only role for courts is to ensure the agency considered environmental consequences. 3) Courts cannot substitute their own judgment for the agency's choice of action. Here, HUD considered environmental impacts as required, so its decision was upheld.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 3

    United States Supreme Court

    BALTIMORE GAS & ELECTRIC CO. v. NRDC, (1983)


    No. 82-524
    Argued: April 19, 19United States Supreme Court
    BALTIMORE GAS & ELECTRIC CO. v. NRDC, (1983)
    No. 82-524
    Argued: April 19, 1983 Decided: June 6, 1983
    Section 102(2)(C) of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to consider
    the environmental impact of any major federal action. The dispute in these cases concerns the adoption by
    the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of a series of generic rules to evaluate the environmental
    effects of a nuclear powerplant's fuel cycle. In these rules, the NRC decided that licensing boards should
    assume, for purposes of NEPA, that the permanent storage of certain nuclear wastes would have no
    significant environmental impact (the so-called "zero-release" assumption) and thus should not affect the
    decision whether to license a particular nuclear powerplant. At the heart of each rule is Table S-3, a
    numerical compilation of the estimated resources used and effluents released by fuel cycle activities
    supporting a year's operation of a typical light-water reactor. Challenges to the rules ultimately resulted in
    a decision by the Court of Appeals, on a petition for review of the final version of the rules, that the rules
    were arbitrary and capricious and inconsistent with NEPA because the NRC had not factored the
    consideration of uncertainties surrounding the zero-release assumption into the licensing process in such
    a manner that the uncertainties could potentially affect the outcome of any decision to license a plant.

    Held:

    The NRC complied with NEPA, and its decision is not arbitrary or capricious within the meaning of 10(e)
    of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Pp. 97-108.

    (a) The zero-release assumption, which was designed for the limited purpose of individual licensing
    decisions and which is but a single figure in Table S-3, is within the bounds of reasoned decisionmaking
    required by the APA. The NRC, in its statement announcing the final Table S-3 rule, summarized the
    major uncertainties of long-term storage of nuclear wastes, noted that the probability of intrusion was
    small, and found the evidence "tentative but favorable" that an appropriate storage site [462 U.S. 87,
    88] could be found. Table S-3 refers interested persons to staff studies that discuss the uncertainties in
    greater detail. In these circumstances, the NRC complied with NEPA's requirements of consideration and
    disclosure of the environmental impacts of its licensing decisions. It is not the task of this Court to
    determine what decision it would have reached if it had been the NRC. The Court's only task is to
    determine whether the NRC had considered the relevant factors and articulated a rational connection
    between the facts found and the choice made. Under this standard, the zero-release assumption, within
    the context of Table S-3 as a whole, was not arbitrary or capricious. Pp. 97-106.
    (b) It is inappropriate to cast doubt on the licensing proceedings simply because of a minor ambiguity in
    the language of an earlier rule as to whether licensing boards were required to consider health effects,
    socioeconomic effects, or cumulative impacts, where there is no evidence that this ambiguity prevented
    any party from making as full a presentation as desired or ever affected the decision to license a plant. Pp.
    106-108
    Calvert Cliffs Coordinating Committee v. United States Atomic Energy
    Commission
    449 F.2d 1109 (D.C. Cir. 1971)

    The US AEC (forerunner of the Department of Energy) was encouraging


    utilities to build nuclear power plants. Baltimore Gas and Electric decided to
    build one in rural Maryland.
    Two years after construction began, the Federal government passed
    the National Environmental Policy Act (aka NEPA) 42 U.S.C. 4321-4370.
    o NEPA 102(2)(C) requires preparation of an Environmental Impact
    Statement (EIS).
    AEC issued a regulation requiring permit applicants to prepare EISs. However,
    they felt that they did not have to consider the conclusions of the report unless
    parties raised specific challenges to it during the licensing process.
    o Basically, AEC was treating the EIS as just more paperwork. The EIS
    needed to be prepared and filed, but it was not considered within AEC's
    licensing board process to decide whether to issue a permit or not.
    No one at AEC would look at the EIS unless an environmental
    issue was raised by a party to the proceeding.
    o Technically, NEPA only requires you to consider the likely
    environmental effects of your activities. It doesn't say what you should
    do once you've considered the problem.
    A local environmental group (CCCC) sued AEC, arguing that AEC's
    regulations violated NEPA because they did not require AEC to independently
    assess environmental impacts.
    The Appellate Court found for CCCC and remanded back to AEC for further
    rulemaking to improve their regulations.
    o The Appellate Court noted that NEPA 102(2)(E) requires that all
    Federal agencies must considered NEPA "to the fullest extent possible."
    o The Appellate Court found that compliance "to the fullest extent
    possible" demands that environmental issues be considered at every
    important stage of the decision-making process.
    The preparation of the EIS must be more than simply a pro forma
    ritual.
    o Therefore, the Appellate Court found that AEC procedural rules did not
    comply with Congressional policy as enunciated in NEPA.
    This case established that NEPA has judicially enforceable duties.
    o At this point, NEPA was new, and the concept that individual people
    could use it to get the judiciary to tell the executive branch what to do
    was a pretty radical idea.
    Strycker's Bay Neighborhood Council, Inc. v. Karlen

    No. 79-168

    Decided January 7, 1980*

    444 U.S. 223

    Syllabus

    Held: The Court of Appeals erred in concluding that, when the Department of Housing
    and Urban Development (HUD) considered alternative sites before redesignating a
    proposed site for middle-income housing as one for low-income housing it should have
    given determinative weight to environmental factors such as crowding low-income
    housing into a concentrated area and should not have considered the delay that would
    occur in developing an alternative site as an overriding factor. Once an agency has
    made a decision subject to the procedural requirements of the National Environmental
    Policy Act of 1969, the only role for a court is to insure that the agency has considered
    the environmental consequences; it cannot interject itself within the area of discretion of
    the executive as to the choice of the action to be taken. Here, there is no doubt that
    HUD considered the environmental consequences of its decision to redesignate the
    proposed site for low-income housing, and the Act requires no more.

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