Protect Our Communities Foundation v. Jewell

The federal district court for the Southern District of California rejected a challenge to BLM actions authorizing the Tule Wind Project, a utility-scale wind energy facility on public lands in San Diego County. The court was not persuaded that BLM violated NEPA, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, or the Bald and Golden Eagles Protection Act. Among other things, the court rejected plaintiffs’ claims that BLM had failed to take a hard look at climate change impacts, finding that BLM did not have to indicate the number of megawatt-hours of energy the project would generate each year to support its conclusion that the project would “potentially” decrease overall emissions associated with electrical generation in California. Nor did BLM have to assess the project’s “life-cycle” emissions impacts by taking into account emissions from off-site equipment manufacture and transportation—the court deemed such an assessment “largely speculative.” The court also agreed with the defendants that BLM had sufficiently addressed a distributed generation alternative favored by plaintiffs that would have relied on widespread development of “rooftop solar” systems on residential and commercial structures in San Diego County, as well as development of other small-scale renewable energy sources.