Wilderness Watch v. Mainella

• Decision Date: 28 June 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-15346.,03-15346.
• Parties: WILDERNESS WATCH and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Fran P. MAINELLA, Director, National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior, Arthur Frederick, Superintendent, Cumberland Island National Seashore, Greyfield Inn Corp., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

375 F.3d 1085

WILDERNESS WATCH and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. Fran P. MAINELLA, Director, National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior, Arthur Frederick, Superintendent, Cumberland Island National Seashore, Greyfield Inn Corp., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 03-15346.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

June 28, 2004.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Anne E. Mahle, Jonathan W. Dettmann, Richard A. Duncan, Brian B. O'Neill, Faegre & Benson, LLP, Minneapolis, MN, Donald D. Stack, Stack & Associates, PC, Atlanta, GA, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Michael T. Gray, David Shilton, Washington, DC, Ralph R. Morrison, Robert Matthew Martin, Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, Atlanta, GA, Lawrence B. Lee, Savannah, GA, for Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia.

Before BARKETT and KRAVITCH, Circuit Judges, and FORRESTER^*, District Judge.

BARKETT, Circuit Judge:

Wilderness Watch appeals the grant of summary judgment to the National Park Service on its complaint seeking to enjoin the Park Service's practice of using motor vehicles to transport visitors across the designated wilderness area on Cumberland Island, Georgia. Wilderness Watch asserts that this practice violates the Wilderness Act, 16 U.S.C. §§ 1131-36, and also that the Park Service made the decision to transport tourists without conducting the investigation and analysis of potential environmental impact required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 4331-35. Finally, Wilderness Watch claims that the Park Service established an advisory committee without the public notice and participation required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act, 5 U.S.C.App. 2, rendering the agreement signed following those meetings invalid and unenforceable.¹

We review de novo a grant of summary judgment, applying the same legal standards used by the district court. Shotz v. City of Plantation, 344 F.3d 1161, 1165 (11th Cir.2003). The Administrative Procedure Act, which governs review of agency action, permits courts to set aside agency action when it is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law." 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A).

I. The Wilderness Act

A.

Mindful of our "increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization," Congress passed the 1964 Wilderness Act in order to preserve and protect certain lands "in their natural condition" and thus "secure for present and future generations the benefits of wilderness." 11 U.S.C. § 1131(a). The Act recognized the value of preserving "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Id. at § 1131(c). Congress therefore directed that designated wilderness areas "shall be administered for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness, and so as to provide for the protection of these areas, the preservation of their wilderness character, and for the gathering and dissemination of information regarding their use and enjoyment as wilderness." Id. at 1131(a).

Cumberland Island, which features some of the last remaining undeveloped land on the barrier islands along the Atlantic coast of the United States, was declared by Congress to be a National Seashore in 1972. Ten years later, Congress designated as wilderness or potential wilderness² some 19,000 acres, including most of the northern three-fifths of the island. See P.L. 97-250, 96 Stat. 709 (Sept. 8, 1982). Under the aegis of the Secretary of the Interior, the Park Service thus became responsible for administering the wilderness area "in accordance with the applicable provisions of the Wilderness Act." Id. at § 2(c). Today, visitors to Cumberland Island must leave their vehicles on the mainland and travel to the island by boat.

In addition to wilderness area, Park Service land includes several buildings and facilities on the southern end of the island as well as two historical areas on the northern and western coasts: Plum Orchard, just outside the wilderness boundary, and the Settlement, located in potential wilderness area.³ Historically, these two locations have been reached via the "Main Road," a one-lane dirt road that has also been designated as part of the wilderness and potential wilderness areas.

Once federal land has been designated as wilderness, the Wilderness Act places severe restrictions on commercial activities, roads, motorized vehicles, motorized transport, and structures within the area, subject to very narrow exceptions and existing private rights. Specifically, the relevant section provides:

Except as specifically provided for in this chapter, and subject to existing private rights, there shall be no commercial enterprise and no permanent road within any wilderness area designated by this chapter and, except as necessary to meet minimum requirements for the administration of the area for the purpose of this chapter (including measures required in emergencies involving the health and safety of persons within the area), there shall be no temporary road, no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, no landing of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and no structure or installation within any such area.

16 U.S.C. § 1133(c). Thus, aside from exceptions not relevant here,⁴ the statute permits the use of motor vehicles and transport only "as necessary to meet minimum requirements for the administration of the area for the purpose of this chapter." Id.

Following the wilderness designation, the Park Service continued to use the existing one-lane dirt road to access the historical areas.⁵ Motorized transportation on Cumberland Island became a controversial issue in the 1990s, as the federal government sought to obtain remaining private tracts on the island and various groups called for greater public access to and support of the historical sites. An informal group of environmental organizations, historical societies, and local residents met several times in an attempt to discuss and ultimately to influence Park Service policy. Jack Kingston, the representative to Congress from the district including Cumberland, introduced legislation that would have removed the wilderness designation from the roads leading to the historical sites. This bill died in committee in 1998, but later that year the Park Service convened the first of two meetings with many of the same interested parties in an attempt to negotiate a solution to the conflict over its policies. In February 1999 the Park Service agreed to provide regular public access to Plum Orchard and the Settlement via Park Service motor vehicles until boat service could be established.

The Park Service claimed that it needed motorized access to the historical areas in order to "meet[ ] its obligations to restore, maintain, preserve and curate the historic resources ... and permit visitor access and interpretation." R. at 4-46-559, 562. The Service also claimed that permitting tourists to "piggyback" along on Park Service personnel trips to these locations would yield "no net increase in impact," — that is, the number of trips and overall impact on the area would be no greater than if the Park Service were simply meeting its statutory obligations. Id. For the first two months, the Park Service used vehicles that held four passengers, but the agency soon acquired a fifteen-person van in order to accommodate larger numbers of visitors. The Park Service offered trips to Plum Orchard three times per week and to the Settlement once per month. Although the Park Service had not previously visited the sites on a regular schedule, the agency decided to establish a regular schedule in order to accommodate the transportation of visitors.⁶

Wilderness Watch objects to this arrangement, arguing that the Wilderness Act restricts motorized vehicle use within wilderness areas to the minimum necessary for an agency to meet its administrative needs for the purpose of the Wilderness Act and not for any other purpose. Thus, Wilderness Watch argues, the statute prohibits the Park Service from offering these "piggybacked" tours to visitors.

The Park Service, on the other hand, reads the statute to allow visitors to ride along with its employees as they travel to Plum Orchard and the Settlement to perform what they claim is administrative and maintenance work on those properties. The Service claims that the Act allows land designated as wilderness to be devoted to multiple purposes, citing as authority 16 U.S.C. § 1133(b), which provides that "wilderness areas shall be devoted to the public purposes of recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation, and historical use." Thus, the Park Service argues, because it has a separate duty to preserve the historical structures at the Settlement, the "preservation of historic structures in wilderness (or, as here, potential wilderness) is in fact administration to further the purposes of the Wilderness Act." Appellees' Br. at 32.

This dispute thus requires us to interpret the limitations imposed on motor vehicle use under the Wilderness Act, in particular the requirement that motor vehicle use be restricted to the level "necessary to meet minimum requirements for the administration of the area," 16 U.S.C. § 1133(c). We must also determine the effect of the Act upon the Park Service's obligations to maintain the historical structures on Cumberland Island and whether the Act can accommodate the Park Service's decision to transport tourists for the purpose of visiting those structures.

We analyze the Park Service's interpretation of the statutory phrase "except as necessary to meet minimum requirements for the administration of the area" under the two-step analysis described in Chevr...