Save the Colorado v. U.S. Department of the Interior

The federal district court for the District of Arizona rejected arguments that the environmental review of the development and implementation of a new management plan for the Glen Canyon Dam failed to sufficiently address the impacts of climate change. First, the court was not persuaded that the federal defendants failed to take a hard look at the impacts of climate change on the Colorado River and Glen Canyon Dam. The court agreed with the federal defendants that reviewing the effects of climate change on the total amounts of water released from the dam each year was beyond the scope of the proposed action but nonetheless also found that the federal defendants had taken the requisite hard look. Second, the court found that the plaintiffs did not show that the purpose and need statement was “unduly narrow” and that the federal defendants were required to use a broader statement that incorporated climate change conditions. Third, the court found that the federal defendants’ consideration of alternatives satisfied “the rule of reason,” rejecting arguments that the seven alternatives were nearly identical and that no alternative contemplated dam operations in light of climate change. Fourth, the court upheld the defendants’ decision that it was not necessary to prepare a supplemental EIS to consider new climate change studies. The court also denied the plaintiffs’ motion to supplement the record with the Bureau of Reclamation’s October 2022 notice of intent to prepare a supplemental EIS for 2007 guidelines for operation of the Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams to address drought and low runoff conditions in the Colorado River Basin. The plaintiffs argued that the notice of intent bore on their claim that a supplemental EIS should have been prepared. The court found that no exception applied in this case to the general rule that judicial review was limited to the administrative record in existence at the time of the agency’s decision.

The federal district court for the District of Arizona denied plaintiffs’ motion to complete the record in their challenge to the Glen Canyon Dam Long-Term Experimental Management Plan, a 20-year plan for releases from the dam that the plaintiffs alleged did not consider climate change impacts. The court found that the Department of the Interior properly excluded deliberative documents from the record. The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ contention that the Interior Department should have included articles on climate change impacts on future Colorado River basin water supplies that were referenced in two foundational studies of the Colorado River basin that were in the record. The court concluded that such underlying documents did not belong in the record and further found that the plaintiffs did not meet its burden of demonstrating that a Department of the Interior subordinate relied on the referenced materials.

In a case seeking greater consideration of climate change impacts in the management of the Glen Canyon Dam, the federal district court for the District of Arizona determined that six states as well as an association of not-for profit entities, including municipalities, that provide electricity must be permitted to intervene as defendants. With respect to the states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming), the court noted that the disposition of the case could impede their hydropower and water allocation interests and that the states’ interests overlapped with but were “more parochial” than the federal defendants. With respect to the association, the court noted that many of its members had contracts for hydropower from the Glen Canyon Dam or from downstream dams and that the case could affect dams other than those that concerned a similar association that had already intervened.

Three conservation groups filed a lawsuit in federal court in Arizona asserting that the U.S. Department of the Interior’s December 2016 plan for managing the Glen Canyon Dam violated NEPA due to the Department’s “illegal and willful omission of Colorado River climate change impact projections from the required environmental impacts analysis.” The plaintiffs said the Department failed to analyze the environmental consequences of the proposed action on the affected environment, including the cumulative and indirect impacts caused by climate change; improperly drafted the project’s purpose and need statement to exclude climate change adaption; failed to consider a reasonable range of alternatives, including numerous reasonable alternatives that would adapt the Dam’s operations to climate change impacts; and failed to explain the relationship between relevant land use policies, controls, and guidance documents in regard to the examined alternatives and rejected alternatives and climate change impacts. The plaintiffs also contended that even if the 2016 environmental impact statement was adequate at that time, a supplemental EIS was required because of recently published scientific research on climate change impacts on the Colorado River.