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

cannot point to any IR-178 major action (or nonmajor IR-178 action which had a significantimpact on the environment), Defendants challenge Plaintiffs’ unsupported blanket assertion thatadditional NEPA analysis was required relevant to IR-178.Further, Defendants contend that Plaintiffs’ failure to identify particular actions whichoccurred within the applicable period of limitations, viz., from March 1995 to March 2001,demonstrates that Plaintiffs lack standing to claim, under the guise of “ongoing agency action,”deficiencies with regard to EAs conducted in 1985 and 1994. Defendants insist that, by allowingPlaintiffs to indirectly challenge final agency actions which occurred in the past by now claimingthat insufficiencies in the original analyses demonstrate an ongoing need to supplement,Plaintiffs are attempting to circumvent the prospective provisions embraced by NEPA.Defendants contend that Plaintiffs’ reactive arguments, applied retroactively, would, in essence,ensure that an agency was never able to complete the NEPA process. In any event, Defendantsnote that many of the changes to IR-178 of which Plaintiffs complain actually reduced theenvironmental impact of the MTR; i.e., many changes involved raising the floor and ceiling onsegments of IR-178 thereby reducing the adverse noise impacts to the underlying areas.Finally, Defendants argue that Plaintiffs’ insistence that a full chapter in the FEIS shouldhave been devoted to a description of the affected environments for each alternative ismisplaced. Defendants contend that NEPA requires nothing more than a succinct description, nolonger than necessary, of the areas under consideration. Because the FEIS contains acomprehensive description of the overall regional environment encompassed by all of thealternatives, as well as a summary description of the affected environment for each alternative,Defendants argue that they have fully satisfied NEPA’s requirements.57