El Puente v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s ruling that federal defendants did not act arbitrarily or capriciously when they reviewed the potential impacts of a proposal to dredge San Juan Harbor in Puerto Rico. The D.C. Circuit found that the petitioners had failed to argue to the U.S. Corps of Engineers that consideration of the environmental impacts of potential construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal was required and therefore forfeited these LNG arguments. The court also found that the Corps’s analysis of cumulative impacts and environmental justice was adequate and rejected arguments that the Corps and the National Marine Fisheries Service did not properly consider the project’s effects on threatened coral species.