This case arose out of the U.S. Coast Guard's decision to close its Support
Center on Governors Island, New York. Plaintiffs, Knowles et al., alleged that
defendants, the Coast Guard, failed to comply with the National Environmental
Policy Act (NEPA), National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), Freedom of Information
Act, and other Federal ethics laws and regulations. Plaintiffs sought a preliminary
injunction to prevent the Coast Guard from executing its plan to discontinue
all of its operations on Governors Island. Following a decision in 1996 denying
the preliminary injunction, both plaintiffs and defendants filed cross motions
for summary judgment. Among the important issues raised in this case were segmentation,
the integration of an agency's NEPA and NHPA obligations, and the use of an
independent contractor to prepare NEPA documentation.
Plaintiffs claimed that the Coast Guard improperly "segmented" its
environmental review process in order to avoid NEPA's requirement of preparing
an Environmental Impact Statement because they saw it as a foreseeable event
that the Coast Guard would "dispose" of the property after the Support
Center was closed. Therefore, they argued, the actions of disposal and closure
were interdependent. The court stated that "only when a given project effectively
commits decision makers to a future course of action will this form of linkage
argue strongly for joint environmental evaluation." Based on the evidence
presented, the district court found that the closure of the Support Center did
not commit the property either to disposal or to the sale and re-development
anticipated by plaintiffs. In view of these circumstances, the court determined
that the Coast Guard did not segment the project in order to circumvent any
provisions of NEPA.
Plaintiffs further claimed that the Coast Guard violated NEPA and NHPA not only
by failing to perform the review processes concurrently, but also by signing
the Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) prior to concluding NHPA Section
106 review process. Additionally, plaintiffs complained that there was no public
participation in the development of the Programmatic Agreement (PA) under Section
106 addressing the effects of the closure action. The Council on Environmental
Quality's (CEQ) regulations call for the integration of the NEPA requirements
"with other planning and environmental review procedures required by law
or by agency practice so that all such procedures run concurrently rather than
consecutively." The court also noted that NHPA's implementing regulations
contemplate that NEPA and NHPA review should be integrated closely, but both
the Section 106 and CEQ regulations allow for phased compliance and implementation
of reviews in a flexible manner. The record showed that the Coast Guard had
initiated Section 106 review at the outset of the NEPA process and had negotiated
with various parties to finalize a PA and formulate caretaker provisions before
issuing the FONSI. It also indicated that individuals, organizations, and local
authorities participated in the NEPA process.
In summary, the court concluded that the Coast Guard was not required to complete
the Section 106 process before issuing the FONSI, and to the extent that plaintiffs
complained about the level of public participation in the PA, the court stated
that this agreement is not an "environmental document" subject to
the public notice provisions of 40 C.F.R. Section 1506(b).
Plaintiffs also questioned the Coast Guard's use of non-agency personnel, independent
contractors, to prepare the environmental studies, and asserted that this violated
NEPA. The court dismissed this contention, stating that a Government agency
is permitted to use outside consultants to prepare environmental documents provided
that the agency independently reviews and verifies the underlying data.
After reviewing plaintiffs' multiple arguments, the court found that they had
failed to demonstrate the existence of any material issue of disputed fact,
and, dismissing the complaint, awarded summary judgment in favor of the Coast
Guard.
| Go to Table of Contents | Go to Top |