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NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ACT (NEPA)

Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP litigates National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) cases and provides advice on NEPA matters. Firm members have taught NEPA courses at law schools and planning seminars.

• The firm, together with other counsel, represented Committee to Bridge the Gap in a legal action under NEPA and the Federal Land Policy Management Act challenging the proposed transfer of land from the federal to the state government in the Ward Valley region of San Bernardino County, California. The land transfer would have allowed the construction of a low-level radioactive waste facility in Ward Valley, which would have destroyed critical habitat for the endangered desert tortoise and could have contaminated the Colorado River aquifer with radioactive pollution.

• On behalf of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, the firm sought and obtained an injunction against construction of a residential project along the shore of the Colorado River in California. The court found that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had violated NEPA by failing to prepare an environmental impact statement and failed to consider the indirect and cumulative environmental impacts of its decision to grant a permit for the residential project. (Colorado River Indian Tribes v. Marsh, 605 F.Supp. 1425 (1985).)

• On behalf of the City of Carmel and interested community groups, the firm successfully challenged the United States Department of Transportation’s plan to develop a bypass to Highway One through a biologically important area of Hatton Canyon based on its noncompliance with both NEPA and CEQA. In City of Carmel-by-the-Sea v. United Stated Department of Transportation, 123 F.3d 1142 (1997), the Ninth Circuit found that the Department of Transportation had not adequately analyzed the project’s cumulative impacts as required by NEPA and CEQA. On remand, the trial court set aside the agencies’ approval of the Hatton Canyon Freeway and enjoined them from undertaking any construction pending full compliance with NEPA and CEQA. The firm prepared comments on the agencies’ supplemental environmental review and, working with organizations it represented, successfully lobbied state and federal resource agencies to reconsider their prior project approvals. Subsequently, the local transportation agency voted to withdraw funding from the project and the Hatton Canyon Freeway was effectively halted.