NEPA Does Not Require An Agency To Guarantee Project Compliance With Environmental Laws

In an interesting decision last week, the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected challenges to BLM's decision to issue a right-of-way permit for Tule Wind's plan for a wind farm southeast of San Diego. It's not exactly earthshattering, but it is a helpful decision both for decisionmakers reviewing wind farm applications and for wind farm developers. Here are some of the highlights:

• BLM's inclusion of DOI's goal under the 2005 Energy Policy Act to increase nonhydropower renewable energy on federal lands as part of the "purpose and need" statement under NEPA was appropriate.
• Exclusion of a distributed generation alternative was appropriate, at least in part because use of rooftop solar to generate the same amount of power would have required 100,000 new rooftop solar units and BLM reasonably concluded that such a massive expansion of rooftop solar would be "speculative."