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

Accordingly, this Court finds that the analyses of alternatives were presented in sufficientdetail, were supported by the balance of the AR, and were adequately assessed by Defendants soas to comply with NEPA.Thus, consistent with the Court’s findings supra regarding the adequacy of Defendants’baseline, this Court finds that Plaintiffs’ claims that Defendants failed to incorporate anappropriate No Action and baseline for evaluation of the effects of the RBTI must fail.F. IR-178Plaintiffs claim that Defendants’ 1985 and 1994 EAs prepared for IR-178 are outdated,do not reflect current conditions or impacts, have not been adequately supplemented as requiredby law, and otherwise do not comply with NEPA’s requirements. Plaintiffs challenge theadequacy of the 1985 and 1994 NEPA analyses relied on by Defendants in making numeroussubsequent modifications to IR-178’s flying operations. Specifically, Plaintiffs complain thatDefendants did not adequately consider the impacts of the RBTI on civilian aviation or theeffects on underlying landowners and land uses in light of the significant changes to the RBTIstudy area since the time of the earlier NEPA assessments. Plaintiffs insist that Defendants beordered to supplement the earlier EAs with regard to modifications which have occurred toIR-178 since March 1995.Defendants argue that Plaintiffs have failed to identify any action taken by Defendants inconnection with IR-178 that would have caused environmental impacts sufficient to triggerNEPA analysis or supplementation. Defendants specifically rely on the AR’s supplementalsummary of changes made to IR-178 between March 1995 and March 2001, which indicates thatmany of the modifications to IR-178 were minor administrative changes. Because Plaintiffs56