Friends of Richards-Gebaur Airport v. Federal Aviation Admin.
| Decision Date | 13 June 2000 |
| Docket Number | RICHARDS-GEBAUR,00-1974,Nos. 00-1050,s. 00-1050 |
| Citation | 251 F.3d 1178 |
| Parties | (8th Cir. 2001) FRIENDS OFAIRPORT; CITY OF GRANDVIEW, MISSOURI, A MUNICIPAL CORPORATION, PETITIONERS, v. FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, JANE GARVEY, ADMINISTRATOR, RESPONDENT. CITY OF KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI; THE KANSAS SOUTHERN RAILWAY COMPANY, INTERVENORS ON APPEAL. AIRCRAFT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASSOCIATION, AMICUS ON BEHALF OF PETITIONER. AIRCRAFT OWNERS AND PILOTS ASSOCIATION, PETITIONER, v. FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, JANE GARVEY, ADMINISTRATOR; UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, RODNEY E. SLATER, SECRETARY, RESPONDENTS. THE KANSAS CITY SOUTHERN RAILWAY COMPANY; CITY OF KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, INTERVENORS ON APPEAL. Submitted: |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Petitions for Review of an Order of the Federal Aviation Administration. [Copyrighted Material Omitted]
[Copyrighted Material Omitted]
Before Loken, Bright, and Hansen, Circuit Judges.
The Friends of Richards-Gebaur Airport (Friends) and the City of Grandview, Missouri (Grandview), filed a petition for judicial review of an order of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) releasing airport property, challenging the order on environmental grounds. Consolidated with their petition is the separate petition of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, challenging the FAA's statutory authority to make the release. After carefully considering the administrative record we deny both petitions for review and affirm the order of the FAA.
The Richards-Gebaur Airport was built in 1941 on land owned by the City of Kansas City, Missouri (city). In 1955, the city deeded the property free of charge to the United States Air Force for use as a permanent military base. The Air Force deactivated the base in 1976, declaring approximately 1,362 acres as surplus property. Since then, it has been a public use general aviation airport primarily serving small privately owned aircraft. In August 1985, the United States conveyed the property back to Kansas City, pursuant to the Surplus Property Act, see 49 U.S.C. 47151 (1994). This conveyance required the city to use the property as a public use airport. Between 1986 and 1994, the city had accepted approximately $12.2 million in federal Airport Improvement Program funds for airport development, and each grant required the city to give written assurances that the airport would be available to the public for aeronautical use.
For several years, the Richards-Gebaur Airport had consistently lost money. Between 1983 and 1997, losses exceeded $18 million and were subsidized by the city's two commercial airports. The airport's losses were projected to continue at more than $1.5 million annually. In 1997, in an effort to pursue an opportunity to redevelop the land into a new intermodal rail-truck freight distribution center, 1 Kansas City submitted an application to the FAA requesting permission to close the airport and seeking to be released from its federal obligations and assurances to maintain the property for public aeronautical use under the Surplus Property Act and the Airport Improvement Program.
The FAA and Kansas City negotiated a memorandum agreement dated July 1998, in which the FAA concluded that the terms it attached to the release and closure of the airport would result in a net benefit to aviation. The FAA found that although the facility was maintaining operation as a general aviation airport, it was able to do so only at substantial losses which were heavily subsidized by Kansas City's other commercial airports, draining funds otherwise available to those facilities. The FAA found that this financial burden was not necessary in a metropolitan area served by several other airports that remain available to general aviation. The memorandum agreement required Kansas City to deposit $5 million into an escrow account to be dispersed by the FAA for federally eligible aviation improvement projects in the Kansas City area. 2 The city also agreed that for 20 years, it would deposit all net proceeds from the projected lease of the property into its aviation account for use solely for specified and general aviation projects. It agreed to notify the FAA of each disbursement from the net proceeds account and to permit the FAA to audit the account.
On February 22, 1999, the Kansas City City Council by ordinance approved a 50-year lease for development of the facility by the Kansas City Southern Railway Company (KCSR). The voters of Kansas City approved the ordinance in a referendum vote on August 3, 1999. On October 22, 1999, Kansas City submitted an Environmental Documentation Report, supported by exhibits, demonstrating that the development does not present any extraordinary circumstances that would require further environmental assessment.
In a letter dated December 23, 1999, the FAA released Kansas City from its federal obligations to maintain the property as an airport, allowing the city to close the airport and maintain the property as nonaeronautical, revenue-producing property of the Kansas City Aviation Department consistent with the memorandum of agreement. The FAA prepared no formal environmental analysis of this proposed action but considered several pertinent environmental factors before concluding that the closure was categorically excluded from the requirement of preparing an environmental assessment. The FAA issued its categorical exclusion evaluation on the same date as the letter releasing the airport property.
The record indicates that the public had an opportunity to participate in and comment on the proposed redevelopment throughout the more than two years in which the application was pending before the FAA. Thirty-five public meetings were held in a variety of locations in addition to open public meetings before the Kansas City City Council. Four of the public meetings were held in the neighboring City of Grandview, and there was substantial media coverage of the proposed redevelopment. A small number of citizens wrote letters opposing the project on a variety of grounds, and a group of pilots formed the opposition group known as the Friends of Richards-Gebaur Airport. On the very afternoon that the FAA issued its release, the FAA received a faxed letter from the Mayor of Grandview expressing opposition to the release on environmental grounds, but this was the only opposition from any governmental agency throughout the two-year application process.
Pursuant to 49 U.S.C. 46110 (1994), the Friends and Grandview filed in this court a petition for judicial review of the FAA's action, challenging the FAA's decision to categorically exclude the closure of this airport from the requirement of preparing an environmental assessment. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association also petitioned for judicial review, asserting that the FAA failed to satisfy the standards of the Surplus Property Act and lacked authority to release Kansas City from its federal obligations. We consolidated these petitions for purposes of briefing and argument, and permitted Kansas City and the Kansas City Southern Railway Company to intervene in support of the FAA's decision.
A court of appeals reviewing a petition for judicial review of an order of the FAA "has exclusive jurisdiction to affirm, amend, modify, or set aside any part of the order." 49 U.S.C. 46110(c). In reviewing an order under this section, the court may consider only those objections made in the agency proceeding, unless there was a reasonable basis for not making the objection earlier. See id. 46110(d). The statute mandates that the agency's findings of fact are conclusive as long as they are supported by substantial evidence. See id. 46110(c). Because 46110 does not specifically enunciate a standard for reviewing the FAA's nonfactual determinations, we turn to the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) for the appropriate standard. See 5 U.S.C. 706. The APA prescribes that an agency action is unlawful and may be set aside if it was "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law." Id. 706(2)(A). In sum, while our factual inquiry on the record must be "searching and careful," our scope of review is quite narrow; we are "not empowered to substitute [our own] judgment for that of the agency." Citizens to Preserve Overton Park, Inc. v. Volpe, 401 U.S. 402, 416 (1971). We determine merely "'whether the decision was based on a consideration of the relevant factors and whether there has been a clear error of judgment.'" Downer v. U.S. by and Through U.S. Dep't of Agric. and Soil Conservation, 97 F.3d 999, 1002 (8th Cir. 1996) (quoting Marsh v. Oregon Natural Res. Council, 490 U.S. 360, 378 (1989)).
The petitioners essentially challenge two agency decisions. First, they challenge the FAA's decision to categorically exclude the proposal to close the airport from the requirement of preparing an environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. 4321-4370d (1994). Second, they challenge the FAA's decision to grant Kansas City a release from its federal obligations to maintain the property as an airport.
We begin with the environmental challenge. The Friends and Grandview contend that the FAA abused its discretion by not taking a hard look at the environmental impact of its decision as required by NEPA. See 42 U.S.C. 4332(2). NEPA requires federal agencies taking major federal actions that significantly affect the quality of the human environment to prepare a detailed environmental impact statement considering the effects of and alternatives to the proposed action. See id. 4332(2)(C). The environmental impact statement requirement ensures that agencies "take a 'hard look' at the environmental consequences of a project before taking a major action." Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness v. Dombeck, 164...
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