Save Strawberry Canyon v. Steven Chu

MEMORANDUM

Save Strawberry Canyon appeals the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the Department of Energy on Save Strawberry Canyon’s challenge to the adequacy of the Department of Energy’s Environmental Assessment (“EA”) and the Department’s subsequent Finding of No Significant Impact (“FONSI”) for a proposed plasma accelerator project (the “BELLA project”) at a Department of Energy Laboratory in Berkeley, California. We affirm.

We conclude that the Department took the necessary “hard look” at the potential impacts of the plasma accelerator project in the EA and that the FONSI was not arbitrary or capricious. See Native Ecosystems Council v. U.S. Forest Serv., 428 F.3d 1233, 1239 (9th Cir.2005). The EA sufficiently analyzed in context the possibility of radiation exposure to the public, and it was not arbitrary or capricious to determine that any radiation exposure would not be significant. The Department described the system and procedures to minimize any possible radiation to a level far below regulatory limits. The EA discussed the Lab’s specialized expertise, to which we defer, in controlling and pre venting radiation exposure as a result of operating…