Memorandum Opinion and Order - US District Court - Northern ...

Applying the above criteria and the rule of reason to Plaintiffs’ claims that Defendantsconsidered an insufficient range of alternatives, as well as to the oral arguments presented bycounsel regarding alternate basing, this Court first looked to the intended purpose of the RBTI.See Colo. Envtl. Coalition, 185 F.3d at 1174-75. The primary purpose of the RBTI is toestablish linked training assets which maximize the realistic training time of combat bomberaircrews.The FEIS specifically discusses the training criteria against which each alternative wasevaluated and also explains that Alternatives A, C, and D were eliminated from further detailedconsideration because those alternatives did not best satisfy the RBTI’s integrated trainingrequirements, i.e., the very purpose of the RBTI. For those alternatives which Defendantseliminated, the EIS need only briefly discuss the reasons for the alternative having beeneliminated. 40 C.F.R. § 1502.14(a). “[A]gencies must be free to make reasonable limitations onthe scope of their discussions of such alternatives.” Slater, 40 F. Supp. 2d at 833.Here, the FEIS demonstrates that Defendants compared the impacts of Alternative B withthe impacts of continuing to fly in the existing, unchanged MTRs and MOAs, i.e., the No Actionalternative. This Court also finds that the AR sets forth reasonable training criteria for the RBTIand that the AR demonstrates that Defendants sufficiently (1) defined the objectives of theRBTI; (2) identified alternatives that would accomplish those objectives; and (3) took a hard,comparative look at the environmental impacts associated with each reasonable alternative,including the No Action alternative. This is all the law requires. 40 C.F.R. § 1502.14.55