City of Bridgeton v. FAA

• Decision Date: 15 September 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-3506,98-3925,98-3774,98-3506
• Citation: 212 F.3d 448
• Parties: (8th Cir. 2000) City of Bridgeton; City of St. Charles; St. Charles County, Petitioners, v. FAA; Rodney E. Slater, in his official capacity as Secretary of Transportation; Jane F. Garvey, in her official capacity as FAA Administrator; John E. Turner, in his official capacity as FAA Regional Administrator, Respondents. Submitted:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 448

212 F.3d 448 (8th Cir. 2000)

City of Bridgeton; City of St. Charles; St. Charles County, Petitioners, v. FAA; Rodney E. Slater, in his official capacity as Secretary of Transportation; Jane F. Garvey, in her official capacity as FAA Administrator; John E. Turner, in his official capacity as FAA Regional Administrator, Respondents.

No. 98-3506, 98-3774, 98-3925

United States Court of Appeals FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

Submitted: September 15, 1999

Filed: April 7, 2000

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc

Denied June 13, 2000^*

Petitions for Review of the Decision of the Federal Aviation Administration. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted]

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Before RICHARD S. ARNOLD, FLOYD R. GIBSON, and LOKEN, Circuit Judges.

LOKEN, Circuit Judge.

Two cities and a county located to the west of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport petition for review of a decision by the Federal Aviation Administration approving and authorizing federal funding for a proposed westward expansion of the Airport. Judicial review is authorized by the FAA Authorization Act of 1994, 49 U.S.C. 46110. Petitioners argue the decision violates the National Environmental Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. 4231 et seq. (NEPA); 4(f) of the Transportation Act, 49 U.S.C. 303(c); and the consistency and notice provisions of the Airport and Airway Improvement Act of 1982, 49 U.S.C. 47106(a)(1) and (c)(1). Having given the FAA's decision and the administrative record the thorough, probing, but deferential review required by Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402, 414-15 (1971), and other cases, we conclude the FAA's decision was not "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law." 5 U.S.C 706(2)(A). Accordingly, we deny the petitions for review.

I. Background

Located some twelve miles northwest of downtown St. Louis, Lambert is one of the nation's busiest and most delay-ridden airports. Lambert's importance to the National Airspace System is well-documented. In 1996, it ranked fourteenth nationally in terms of passengers enplaned and deplaned, and eighth in terms of aircraft operations. All of the nation's major commercial airlines serve Lambert, and Trans World Airlines uses Lambert as its primary connecting hub. Lambert is also important to the region's economy. Its proximity to St. Louis makes it accessible to the metropolitan area's 2,500,000 residents, and Lambert-related activity is estimated to provide $5 billion annually for the St. Louis region.

Local planners and the FAA have long explored alternatives for expanding Lambert's capacity and reducing air traffic delays. Lambert's delay problems stem primarily from its inadequate take-off and landing facilities. For decades, Lambert has relied on two parallel northwest/southeast runways, denominated 12L/30R and 12R/30L, to handle the bulk of its commercial traffic. Because only 1,300 feet separate the centerlines of the two runways, Lambert's air traffic controllers cannot. conduct independent simultaneous arrival operations in adverse weather conditions.¹ Consequently, when bad weather precludes the use of visual flight rules (about six percent of the year in St. Louis), Lambert becomes not much better than a one-runway arrival operation, causing average per-operation delays to exceed seventy minutes. Lambert's ineffective functioning during inclement weather often disrupts the flow of air traffic nationwide.

The City of St. Louis owns Lambert and is the sponsor of the project at issue. The airport operator, the St. Louis Airport Authority, has been exploring options to expand runway capacity for over ten years. Between 1989 and 1993, St. Louis sponsored a comprehensive study resulting in an airport development plan called Alternative F-4, which called for building four new parallel runways on the site of runways 12L/30R and 12R/30L. Subsequent analysis revealed, however, that construction of the new runways would jeopardize Lambert's ability to function as a hub and would cost significantly more than originally anticipated. Consequently, St. Louis again studied numerous options. From nine alternatives representative of this universe, St. Louis selected a proposal known as Alternative W-1W, which entails the construction of a new 9,200-foot runway parallel to and to the west of existing runways 12L/30R and 12R/30L. The negative impacts of this expansion -- primarily noise and the need to acquire property presently devoted to other uses -- will fall most heavily on the City Bridgeton, which lies immediately to the west of Lambert, and to a lesser extent on the City of St. Charles and St. Charles County.

St. Louis applied to the Department of Transportation for federal funding of Alternative W-1W. The FAA undertook an independent review of the project, announcing that it would prepare an environmental impact statement for the proposed Lambert expansion. The FAA spent more than two years analyzing the preferred expansion plan and several alternatives, holding public meetings and responding to thousands of public comments. After issuing a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) in December 1997, the FAA held meetings with various parties. The agency received both positive and negative comments about the project and its review process. On September 30, 1998, the FAA issued its Record of Decision approving federal assistance for the W-1W project. Bridgeton, St. Charles, and St. Charles County timely petitioned for judicial review of this final agency action.

II. The Record of Decision

The FAA's Record of Decision properly includes the findings required by the relevant federal statutes and regulations, and it concludes with a formal FAA Approval and Order. But the document also provides a detailed 125-page account of the process by which the FAA reviewed and ultimately approved the W-1W project. After recounting the history of Lambert airport and briefly summarizing the development process, the Record of Decision sets out the purpose and need for the Lambert expansion to provide "the primary foundation for the identification of reasonable alternatives and the evaluation of the impacts of the development." The articulated purposes of the expansion project are (1) "to effectively and safely accommodate projected levels of aviation activity at an acceptable level of delay" by increasing airfield capacity, improving visual flight rules capacity, allowing dual independent simultaneous arrivals in bad weather conditions, and decreasing delays; (2) to enhance the National Airspace System by increasing capacity and reducing delays; (3) to maintain Lambert's importance to the economic vitality of the St. Louis region; and (4) to facilitate an airline hub at St. Louis.

The Record of Decision next explains how the FAA selected and analyzed alternatives to the proposed action, noting that the FAA does not "control or direct the actions and decisions of St. Louis relative to planning," but has authority to withhold. funding for and federal approval of the project based upon its own independent review. Here, the FAA explored alternatives that ranged from "No Action," to investing in a high-speed rail line, to constructing a new airport at another location. The Record of Decision concludes that the "No Action" alternative would not achieve the purposes and needs of the proposed expansion and indeed would be less desirable than Alternative W-1W from the standpoint of certain environmental impacts such as air emissions. Building a new airport elsewhere or a high-speed rail line likewise would not achieve the project's purposes and needs.

The Record of Decision then turns to the task of selecting which runway expansion alternatives were appropriate for detailed environmental and operational evaluation in the FEIS. For this task, the FAA employed a three-tiered evaluation process based upon the aforementioned statement of purpose and need. The Record of Decision explains the three-tiered analysis (discussed in Part III.A. of this opinion) and briefly explains how this analysis resulted in detailed consideration of two expansion alternatives, S-1 and W-1W, and the No Action alternative, X-1.

The Record of Decision then summarizes the FAA's detailed consideration of alternatives W-1W and S-1, which proposed a new parallel runway to the south of the airport terminal and existing runways. Both alternatives would achieve substantial annual cost savings, though S-1 would cost more to build. S-1 would be "superior [to W-1W] from an [airport] operational standpoint," but the FAA concluded that S-1's more severe environmental and socio-economic impacts tilt the balance in favor of W-1W. S-1 would require the relocation of 9,725 people; W-1W only 5,680 people (concentrated in the City of Bridgeton). S-1 would force the relocation of 210 businesses; W-1W only 75. S-1 would directly affect fifty-seven acres of parkland; W-1W only twenty-six acres. After carefully weighing these many factors, the FAA decided to approve the operationally less desirable W-1W because the agency agreed with St. Louis it was "the least impacting alternative overall."

Next, the Record of Decision summarizes the twenty-two distinct impacts associated with implementing the W-1W runway project, and their planned mitigation. This section discusses the expansion's impacts on noise levels, air emissions, water quality, historical and archaeologically significant properties, parks, wetlands, in addition to various social impacts. Mitigation measures adopted include sound insulation or sales assistance for homeowners adversely affected by increased noise; relocation assistance to residents who must move; collection and recycling of aircraft deicing fluids to prevent runoff into local waterways; and identification of land suitable for replacing parks and wetlands affected by the project. St. Louis has primary responsibility for these...