As the largest and most effective nonprofit environmental organization working on behalf of California’s North Coast, EPIC is currently involved in seven active lawsuits, 17 coalitions and collaboratives, and countless other environmental advocacy efforts – all of which require skilled, dedicated staff time for legal research, project monitoring, comment writing, relationship building, strategization, public education, and so much more. We expect our work to be increasingly cut out for us, including even more advocacy fronts and court cases, during the next four years of federal environmental protection rollbacks.
We need your support to prepare for the challenges of the future, and follow through on our ongoing litigation (Richardson Grove Project, R5 Project, Shasta River Safe Harbor Agreement, South Fork Sacramento Project, Sierra Pacific Industries Habitat Conservation Plan, NEPA Regulations, and Gray Wolf Delisting) with the best chance of success.
Richardson Grove Project
In May 2008, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) proposed the Richardson Grove “Improvement” Project, which would widen 1.1 miles of Highway 101 through Richardson Grove State Park to accommodate federal industry standard-sized trucks conforming to the Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA), increasing the accommodation of trucks from 75 feet to 78 feet in length by removing, as well cutting into and paving over the root systems of, dozens of adjacent redwood trees, including old-growth redwoods.
Caltrans released the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the proposed project on December 4, 2008, and published the final EIR on May 18, 2010, concluding that “[n]o significant environmental impacts are expected as a result of this project with the implementation of the stated special construction techniques” and mitigation measures. In response, EPIC and allies began a multi-prong legal defense of the grove, filing lawsuits in both federal and state courts.
In September 2010, EPIC and allies filed Bess Bair, et al. v. California Department of Transportation, et al. (Bair) in federal court. On July 6, 2011, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. Northern District Court of California issued a preliminary injunction against Caltrans, and in 2012 Judge Alsup found that Caltrans’ finding of no significant impact was arbitrary and capricious.
On June 17, 2010, EPIC and allies filed Trisha Lee Lotus, et al. v. California Department of Transportation, et al. (Lotus) in state court, challenging the project on the basis that the EIR violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by failing to properly evaluate the proposed project’s impacts on adjacent old-growth redwood trees.
On August 11, 2010, the trial court ruled in favor of Caltrans on the basis that the agency Caltrans did not violate CEQA by “taking into account its mitigation measures when making its significance determination” because it had “adopted a sufficient mitigation monitoring program.”
On January 30, 2014, California’s 1st District Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s decision and struck down Caltrans’ EIR on the basis that it “had failed to properly evaluate the project’s impacts on the roots of old growth redwoods along the highway alignment” and therefore “subvert[ed] the purposes of CEQA by omitting material necessary to informed decision-making and informed public participation.”
To purportedly fix the issues identified in Bair and Lotus, in 2014, Caltrans released new analysis, including an arborist report, that supported their initial determination that the project would not impair old-growth. After a new round of public comment, Caltrans again approved the project. And again, on July 28, 2014, EPIC and allies filed suit in the U.S. Northern District Court of California. Before the federal court could issue a ruling, however, Caltrans and EPIC settled, with Caltrans removing their approval of the project, on December 4, 2014.
On May 1, 2017, Caltrans returned with a new project approval and new “addendum” to its environmental analysis. This addendum was again meant to correct deficiencies in their earlier analysis, but instead largely repeated the same failings as before: overly conclusory analysis that failed to take meaningfully the potential impacts of its acts. While the addendum incorporated new information, Caltrans failed to provide a new public comment period. Again, EPIC and allies filed cases in both state and federal courts.
On June 5, 2017, EPIC and allies filed Bess Bair, et al. v. California Department of Transportation, et al. (Bair I) in state court, questioning whether Caltrans “complied in a manner consistent with the requirements of CEQA in their efforts to comply with” the court’s ruling in Lotus.
On June 5, 2019, Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Kelly Neel ruled against Caltrans in Bair I and “enjoined Caltrans from continuing the project until it finalized an appropriate EIS,” meaning “Caltrans [was] not allowed to physically alter the proposed project area and…would need to get court approval before moving forward…In her decision Judge Neel found that Caltrans avoided public scrutiny by failing to solicit public comment on a significant piece of new information, a report from an arborist hired by Caltrans. In doing so she highlighted that the public and other agencies were deprived of their right to provide comment and feedback, something essential to the law.”
On November 2, 2017, EPIC and allies filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. Northern District Court of California. On June 27, 2019, Judge Alsup again ruled in EPIC’s favor, finding the new analysis was arbitrary and capricious. Caltrans appealed this decision, and unfortunately on December 2, 2020, judges in the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the District Court’s judgment, finding that although the analysis was not without fault, it was functionally good enough. This decision effectively closed EPIC’s ability to challenge the proposed Richardson Grove Project in federal court.
In response to Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Neel’s decision, from October 5 to November 19, 2021, Caltrans circulated the 2017 Addendum for public comment. EPIC and allies introduced substantial evidence, including new peer-reviewed research, concerning the impacts of the project. On March 23, 2022, EPIC and allies sent Caltrans a letter putting the agency “on notice that failure to consider this significant new information would violate the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).”
On January 24, 2023, after several years of advocacy by EPIC and allies toward this end, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors removed support for the proposed Richardson Grove Project from its Legislative Agenda – an annual goal-setting document used to set the County’s lobbying agenda in Washington D.C. and Sacramento – which marked the first time this proposed project lacked local legislative support since its initial inception in 2008.
On January 26, 2023, Caltrans released its response to public comments from 2021 on its FEIR Addendum from 2017, and – predictably – rejected science, denied potential harm to adjacent old-growth redwoods, and again approved the proposed project.On March 7, 2023, the attorneys representing EPIC and allies – Stu Gross and Ross Middlemiss – were quick to respond, and filed a new State lawsuit, Bess Bair, et al. v. California Department of Transportation, et al. (Bair II), challenging Caltrans’ fourth attempt to approve the proposed Richardson Grove project without proper environmental review under CEQA. Similar to past lawsuits, we again claim in this new lawsuit that Caltrans has failed to consider the true environmental impacts of its proposed project on old-growth redwoods because the agency has still never meaningfully updated its environmental analysis since our first legal challenge; instead, the agency continues to plow forward, obstinately asserting – in the face of hard science – that cutting the root systems of redwoods will not impact neighboring trees.
On June 26, 2023, attorneys appeared before Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Timothy Canning, and Caltrans attempted to throw out Bair II, as well as lift the injunction blocking the proposed project by arguing that it had met the conditions required by Judge Neely in 2019. EPIC’s attorney Ross Middlemiss delivered arguments in opposition to lifting the injunction.On August 20, 2024, attorneys delivered their opening statements in Bair II before Judge Canning. Caltrans contended that any arguments regarding the substantive adequacy of the FEIR Addendum were barred from being heard because the Court previously ruled on the proposed project’s EIR in Lotus. Initially, we were hopeful because Judge Canning rejected this argument, and allowed our attorneys to argue this issue both in briefing and oral argument. But it appears that Judge Canning changed his mind and decided the substantive adequacy arguments were indeed barred; therefore, his decision was limited to the procedural issues of whether Caltrans adequately responded to the public comments to the FEIR Addendum, and whether Caltrans’ project approval complies with CEQA.
On November 13, 2024, Judge Canning ruled in favor of Caltrans, finding that the substance of the FEIR Addendum could not be reconsidered, nothing in the public comments required Caltrans to change its EIR’s finding of no significant impact, and the project would purportedly benefit the public by providing for the transportation of goods and materials in and out of Humboldt County, and thus on balance EPIC and allies did not make a significant showing of irreparable injury to the public interest, a finding necessary for us to succeed with the injunction. The scant five-page decision provides little rationale for its findings, such as whether the standards that Caltrans used to determine harm to trees were adequate enough to show the public how this decision was made. This decision has also proven to be particularly frustrating because Caltrans just has not done the proper environmental review it needs to do; the agency legally needs to be forthcoming with the potential harm to redwood tree roots and use a reliable method of determining that harm.
EPIC and allies are preparing to appeal this decision in state appeals court.
R5 Project
In 2021 the U.S. Forest Service proposed the Region 5 “Post-Disturbance Hazard Tree Management” Project, which would log more than 417,000 acres along almost 6,000 miles of roads across nine of the 18 national forests within the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region (Region 5, or R5). The proposed R5 project, the largest proposed timber sale in modern California history, is so expansive that the Forest Service split it into three zones – North, Central Sierra and Southern Sierra – with each zone including multiple national forests. As currently proposed, the R5 project would permit logging of both snags and living trees within 300 feet (the length of an American football field) on either side of a road or trail. Even green trees that have now survived multiple years post-fire and have retained 40% or more of live canopy would be targeted by this “salvage logging”. The Forest Service asserts that this aggressive logging is necessary to maintain its road and trail network, and we agree that removing trees that pose an imminent hazard to road and trail users is appropriate, but while a focused and narrowly tailored project would be more suitable to meet this need, the Forest Service has instead proposed almost limitless logging that would enable long snaking clearcuts across many remote areas of our public lands.
As EPIC told the Forest Service many months previously, when this proposed project was still just a glimmer in their eye, the agency should focus hazard tree removal efforts on high-use and other critical roads, coupled with a review of the existing road network to determine which roads are no longer necessary to maintain. In this way we could have found common ground to better protect both the ecosystems and communities of the remarkable North Coast, but instead we have a gigantic timber sale proposed in fire-affected watersheds that most certainly would include environmental impacts to our national forests and important wildlife habitats, as well as exacerbate wildfire risks to communities.
In May 2022, EPIC published an action alert encouraging EPIC members to urge the Forest Service to conduct a more thorough environmental review of the proposed project to produce a robust Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), instead of a skimpy Environmental Analysis (EA). We also submitted comments urging the Forest Service to reduce the environmental impact by retaining living trees, focusing on high-severity burn areas, and limiting the proposed project to roads that are needed by the public. In addition, we advocated for reducing the extent of logging on either side of the road and fully protecting riparian reserves. We believe these are reasonable constraints on a project that otherwise looks more like massive timber sale than a safety measure.
Throughout 2022, the Forest Service released two of three EAs and Draft Decision Notices for the proposed R5 Project. On December 12, 2022, EPIC and allies filed an objection to the proposed project focused on the lack of environmental review, and particularly site-specific environmental review, as well as numerous factual errors and inconsistencies within documents, which are understandable results of the proposed project’s massive scope, but nonetheless unacceptable.
On July 20, 2023, EPIC and allies, represented by the Crag Law Center, sued the Forest Service challenging the proposed R5 Project in the U.S. District Court of Northern California. On August 23, 2024, the District Court ruled in favor of the Forest Service, and we are currently preparing to bring the case in front of the 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals.
Shasta River Safe Harbor Agreement
On August 10, 2021, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) issued 20-year, transferable Incidental Take Permits for coho salmon to 14 private landowners on the Shasta River in exchange for their compliance with “stewardship activities” to support the federally threatened species.
On February 24, 2022, EPIC and Friends of the Shasta River gave formal notice of intent to sue NMFS for violating the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by imperiling coho salmon in the Shasta River through its authorization of the Shasta River safe harbor program. On June 15, 2022, we sued NMFS in the U.S. District Court of Northern California.
On July 11, 2023, the District Court granted our motion “vacating the Biological Opinion (BiOp) and Environmental Assessment (EA), and found that the NMFS applied the Safe Harbor Policy lawfully but violated the ESA by improperly restricting the action area in its BiOp and its decision not to issue an [Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)] was arbitrary and capricious.”
In 2024, EPIC and Friends of the Shasta River filed a motion to amend this judgment by imposing a deadline for NMFS to complete the new BiOp and EIS, as well as vacating the Incidental Take Permits (ITPs), which were predicated on the remanded documents. The court ruled that it would set deadlines for NMFS to complete the new studies, but did not set aside the ITPs.
EPIC and Friends of the Shasta River appealed this decision, which will be heard by a panel of judges on February 7, 2025.
South Fork Sacramento Project
In August 2023, the U.S. Forest Service proposed the South Fork Sacramento “Public Safety & Forest Restoration” Project on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, which would log over 8,000 acres of critical spotted owl habitat near Lake Siskiyou, “take” 12 endangered northern spotted owls including the region’s only two reproductive pairs, as well as remove and degrade 1,366 acres of mature and old-growth forest that serves as nesting and roosting habitat for owls and remove at least 1,600 acres of suitable owl foraging habitat, all under the guise of fuels reduction.
On August 18, 2023, EPIC published an action alert addressed to Supervisor Birkey and Ranger Napper of the Shasta-McCloud Management Unit through which 831 EPIC members urged the Forest Service to improve the proposed South Fork Sacramento Project and reduce its negative impacts.
In June 2024, EPIC and allies gave formal notice of intent to sue the Forest Service and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) for violations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) from the proposed South Fork Sacramento Project, after which agencies had 60 days to correct aggrieved actions before EPIC and allies would file suit.
On August 28, 2024, EPIC and allies sued the Forest Service and USFWS in the U.S. District Court of Eastern California over the proposed project. The USFWS has an obligation to intervene where a government action may “jeopardize the continued existence” of a listed species, and we allege that the agency violated the ESA by issuing an incidental take permit and “no jeopardy” opinion, and authorizing the Forest Service to complete the project. Through our litigation, we aim to challenge that no jeopardy opinion. As of January 2025, the District Court is considering the case, and we will continue to publish updates.
Sierra Pacific Industries Habitat Conservation Plan
On September 30, 2020, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) issued an Incidental Take Permit (ITP) for spotted owls in exchange for “stewardship activities” on the species’ behalf as part of a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) with the logging company Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), the largest landowner in California. Among other violations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), the HCP would allow SPI to decrease the amount of spotted owl habitat on their timberlands and fail to require owl surveys prior to salvage logging. The Biological Opinion in the HCP also fails to consider climate change impacts on spotted owl populations and other species.
On May 18, 2023 EPIC and allies gave formal notice of intent to sue USFWS. On November 9, 2023 EPIC and allies sued USFWS for violating ESA and NEPA with the SPI HCP and ITP. As of January 2025, the lawsuit is ongoing and EPIC will publish updates as they occur.
NEPA Regulations
On May 21, 2024, 21 Republican State Attorneys General sued the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) challenging National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations that were set to go into effect July 31, 2024. These regulations would have restored environmental protections that were taken away under the previous Trump administration. They also would have required lead agencies to consider environmental justice impacts in their NEPA analyses and to consider traditional indigenous knowledge as a form of expertise in analysis. On June 27, 2024 EPIC joined a coalition of environmental organizations intervening in this NEPA lawsuit.
Shockingly, on November 12, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that the CEQ does not have authority to issue implementing regulations for NEPA in Marin Audubon Society v. Federal Aviation Administration. The ruling was unexpected as neither party in the case had challenged the CEQ’s authority to issue such regulations, which it had exercised for decades. This decision leaves all lawsuits involving NEPA in a precarious situation. If the logic of Marin Audubon is applied in the State Attorneys General’s NEPA case, the court could hold that the CEQ never had the authority to issue NEPA regulations in the first place. EPIC and the other plaintiffs in this case are now awaiting a decision from the District Court for North Dakota.
Gray Wolf Delisting
In the waning days of his first term, on October 29, 2020, President Trump delisted the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act, functionally removing all federal protections for the imperiled species in the contiguous 48 U.S. states. As a result, states hostile to wolf recovery quickly reopened wolf hunting, substantially impairing existing populations in many regions.
On November 6, 2020, EPIC and allies filed a formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) for violating the Endangered Species Act by prematurely stripping gray wolves of federal protections, and on January 14, 2021, our coalition sued the USFWS challenging the delisting. On February 10, 2022, we won and the U.S. District Court of Northern California restored federal protections for wolves in the lower 48. The federal court’s decision was appealed, and today EPIC is before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to ensure that wolves in the contiguous United States remain protected.
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If you have any questions about our work, please do not hesitate to contact the EPIC team at epic@wildcalifornia.org or 707-822-7711. Your generosity has a real impact on our ability to continue fighting the good fight for Northwest California’s ecosystems, communities, and climate. Please give to EPIC today for the sake of tomorrow at www.wildcalifornia.org/donate.
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