November 2022 - Parks & Recreation - 31

According to the court: " Federal law does
not require agencies to waste time and
resources evaluating environmental effects
that those agencies neither caused
nor have the authority to change. "
partment of Transportation thoroughly
studied the project through
the lens of the required regulatory
factors before reaching their decision
that no environmental impact
statement was required.
Accordingly, since the joint
EA/FONSI by the agencies implicated
" substantial agency expertise, "
the court acknowledged
appropriate judicial review would
find agency conclusions were
" entitled to deference. "
Reasonable Alternatives
Protect Our Parks also had argued
" the Park Service and Department
of
Transportation
sidestepped
NEPA's reasonable-alternatives requirement
by treating the City's decision
to locate the Center in Jackson
Park as a given. " In particular,
Protect Our Parks argued, " NEPA
required the agencies to evaluate
alternative locations for the Center
throughout Chicago. "
According
to Protect Our Parks, a " proper assessment "
would have also " examined
a site in nearby Washington
Park, about two miles to the west
of Jackson Park. "
Protect Our Parks further
claimed the decision not to question
the Jackson Park site was an
illegal form of " piecemealing or
segmentation " of the required
environmental review process.
As a result, Protect Our Parks
claimed the Park Service and the
Department of Transportation
had improperly " segmented " two
aspects of the overall project by
separating the federal decisions to
approve the UPARR conversion
to " expand roads, bike lanes, and
pedestrian paths " and " the City's
earlier decision to build the Center
in Jackson Park. "
In conducting an environmental
review, the federal appeals court
acknowledged that an agency effectively
" dodges its NEPA obligations
by breaking up an overall plan
into smaller parts involving action
with less significant environmental
effects. " Further, the court found
NEPA requires agencies to " study,
develop and describe appropriate
alternatives " to major federal projects.
42 U.S.C. § 4332(2)(E). That
being said, the court noted, " NEPA
reaches only major federal actions,
not actions of non-federal actors, "
defining " major Federal actions "
as those " potentially subject to
Federal control and responsibility. "
Citing Supreme Court
precedent,
the federal appeals court acknowledged:
" where an agency has
no ability to prevent a certain effect
due to its limited statutory authority
over the relevant actions, the
agency cannot be considered a legally
relevant 'cause' of the effect. "
Similarly, the court acknowledged
the federal government had " no
obligation to examine the effects of
state and local government action
that lies beyond the federal government's
control. "
Since " NEPA requires agencies
to consider only environmental
harms that are both factually and
proximately caused by a relevant
federal action, " the federal appeals
court
then
NPS's approval of the project had
effectively caused the Obama Center's
placement in Jackson Park. In
this particular instance, the court
found the City, not the federal
government,
had selected
Jackson
Park as the site of the Obama
Presidential Center. As a result, the
court held the Obama Center " was
not a federal project, and no federal
agency had the authority to dictate
to the Obama Foundation where
the Center would be located. "
As a result, the federal appeals
court held there was " no federal
action " under NEPA, which was
the alleged " proximate cause of
any environmental harms resulting
from the choice of Jackson Park. "
Accordingly, in the opinion of the
federal appeals court, " it was proper
for the Park Service and the Department
to confine their analysis
to the portions of the project that
are subject to federal review. "
Section 4(f) Review
As described by the court, the plans
for
the Obama Center required
the closure of portions of three
PARK S ANDRECRE AT ION . OR G | NOVEMBER 2 0 22 | Parks & Recreation
31
determined whether
November 2022 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of November 2022 - Parks & Recreation
