Sierra Club v. Gilbert Stamm and other legal cases involving environmental impact statements

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CALVERT CLIFFS' COORD. COM, Cite as 449 F.I only to those environmental issues whol­ly unregulated by any other federal, state or regional body. [9] We believe the Commission's rule is in fundamental conflict with the basic purpose of the Act. NEPA mandates a case-by-case balancing judgment on the part of federal agencies. In each indi­vidual case, the particular economic and technical benefits of planned action must be assessed and then weighed against the environmental costs; alternatives must be considered which would affect the bal­ance of values. See text at page 1113 supra. The magnitude of possible benefits and possible costs may lie any­where on a broad spectrum. Much will depend on the particular magnitudes in­volved in particular cases. In some cas­es, the benefits will be great enough to justify a certain quantum of environ­mental costs; in other cases, they will not be so great and the proposed action may have to be abandoned or significant­ly altered so as to bring the benefits and costs into a proper balance. The point of the individualized balancing analysis is to ensure that, with possible alterations, the optimally beneficial action is finally taken. Certification by another agency that its own environmental standards are sat­isfied involves an entirely different kind of judgment. Such agencies, without overall responsibility for the particular federal action in question, attend only to one aspect of the problem: the magni­tude of certain environmental costs. They simply determine whether those costs exceed an allowable amount. Their certification does not mean that they found no environmental damage what­ever. Jin fact, there may be significant environmental damage (e. g., water pol­lution), but not quite enough to violate applicable (e. g., water quality) stand­ards. Certifying agencies do riot at­tempt to weigh that damage against the opposing benefits. Thus the balancing analysis remains io-SeZ^^. J[t may be 'TjKaY the I m v a ^ though passing prescribed standards, are none-v. UNITED STATES A. E. COM'N H23 d 1109 (1971) . theless great^enough to outweigh the par­ticular economic and technical benefits involved in the planned action. JThe only agency in a position to make such a judg­ment is the agency with overall respon­sibility for the proposed federal action- the agency to which NEPA is specifically directed. The Atomic Energy Commission, ab­dicating entirely to other agencies' certi­fications, neglects the mandated balanc­ing analysis. Concerned members of the public are thereby precluded from rais­ing a wide range of environmental issues in order to affect particular Commission decisions. And the special purpose of NEPA is subverted. Arguing before this court, the Com­mission has made much of the special en­vironmental expertise of the agencies which set environmental standards. NEPA did not overlook this considera­tion. Indeed, the Act is quite explicit in describing the attention which is to be given to the views and standards of oth­er agencies. Section 102 (2) (C) pro­vides : "Prior to making any detailed state­ment, the responsible Federal official shall consult with and obtain the com­ments of any Federal agency which has jurisdiction by law or special ex­pertise with respect to any environ­mental impact involved. Copies of such statement and the comments and views of the appropriate Federal, State, and local agencies, which are authorized to develop and enforce en­vironmental standards, shall be made available to the President, the Council on Environmental Quality and to the public * * *." Thus the Congress was surely cognizant of federal, state and local agencies "au­thorized to develop and enforce environ­mental standards." But it provided, in Section 102(2) (C), only for full con­sultation. It most certainly did not au­thorize a total abdication to those agen­cies. Nor did it grant a license to disre­gard the main body of NEPA obliga­tions.