Northwest Environmental Advocates v. National Marine Fisheries Service

Northwest Environmental Advocates (“NWEA”) challenges the adequacy of a 2003 Final Supplemental Integrated Feasibility Report and Environmental Impact Statement prepared by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in connection with a project to deepen the Columbia River navigation channel and to propose new sites for disposal of dredged materials. NWEA argues that the Corps violated the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”), 42 U.S.C. § 4321 et seq., because, it claims, the Final Supplemental Integrated Feasibility Report and Environmental Impact Statement fails to take a “hard look” at the channel deepening project’s various impacts. The district court saw otherwise, and held that the Corps had taken the requisite “hard look” at the particular environmental and economic factors at issue. Based on the Corps’ extensive examination of the project’s cumulative, direct, and economic impacts, we agree with the district court that the Corps has taken the required hard look. *1129 We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm.

I. Factual Background

A. The Channel Deepening and Dredged Material Disposal Project

The Columbia River represents a major cargo gateway…

dissenting:

The Columbia River stretches more than 1,200 miles from its headwaters in Canada to the Pacific Ocean. It drains an enormous swath of the northwestern United States (258,000 square miles). This great *1146 river empties more water into the Pacific Ocean than any other river in North or South America. Description: Columbia River Basin, United States Geological Survey at http://www.vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Vol-eanoes/ Washington/ColumbiaRiver/de-scription_cohimbiamdver.html (last visited June 26, 2006). Shipping and trade are just one dimension of the Columbia River’s importance to the Northwest. The Columbia River is central to the life of man, beast, and fish in the Northwest; it is a complex system defined by interdependen-cies.

Perhaps the most iconic of these inter-dependencies is that among the river, salmon, and fishermen. A healthy river is vital to endangered salmon and steelhead trout and to the fishermen who rely on these fish. Virtual World, Columbia River, The National Geographic Society at http://www.national geographic.com/earth-pulse/columbia/index_flash.html (last visited June 26, 2006). Salmon and steelhead are anadromous — they spend the first two years of…

I. Factual Background

A. The Channel Deepening and Dredged Material Disposal Project

The Columbia River represents a major cargo gateway to the Pacific Northwest. The current depth of the Columbia River navigation channel is 40 feet. Over the past twenty years, larger vessels with “design drafts” exceeding this 40- foot channel depth have carried an increasing share of Colum- bia River cargo tonnage. Because of the constraints of channel depth, these vessels must arrive “light-loaded.” According to the Corps, the current 40-foot channel constrains 70 percent of vessels involved in the transpacific container trade while a 43-foot depth would constrain only 30 percent.

In 1989, Congress directed the Corps to assess the feasibil- ity of deepening the Columbia River’s 40-foot navigation channel to a maximum of 43 feet in order to enhance shipping capacity. The current channel deepening project involves deepening the channel from Columbia River Mile 3 to Mile 106.5. The project also includes various ecosystem restoration actions.2 The “channel deepening project” also proposes three 1 NWEA also challenges a 1998 Dredged Material and Management Plan and Supplemental…