NAMED INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS OF THE SAN ANTONIO CONSERVATION SOCIETY v. TEXAS HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT ET AL.
No. 1101
Supreme Court of the United States
December 7, 1970
400 U.S. 968
MR. JUSTICE BLACK, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS and MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN join, dissenting.
This case disturbs me greatly. On December 7, 1970, this Court stayed the construction of two federally funded highways in order to save two public parks, ante, p. 939. One park serves the people of Memphis, Tennessee.1 The park in this case is for the rest and recreation of the people of San Antonio, Texas. Both cases involve important and timely problems of interpretation of
The San Antonio park has two golf courses, a zoo, a sunken garden, an open-air theater and many acres of open space, covered with trees, flowers, and running brooks. It is a lovely place for people to retreat from the frantic pace of bustling urban life to enjoy the simple pleasures of open space, quiet solitude, and clean air. It is a refuge for young and old alike the kind of a park where a family man can take his wife and children or lovers can while away a sunny Sunday afternoon to-
The San Antonio Conservation Society and its individual members filed suit to block federal approval and funding of this expressway. The United States District Court held that the Secretary of Transportation and state officials were free to proceed with federal funding and construction of two segments of the road coming into the park from north and south. It retained jurisdiction to review any later decision on the design and routing of the connecting middle section, which had not been formally approved by the Secretary.
In addition to substantial questions under the
“It is hereby declared to be the national policy that special effort should be made to preserve the natural beauty of the countryside and public park and recreation lands: . . . [T]he Secretary shall not approve any program or project which requires the use of any publicly owned land from a public park, recreation area, or wildlife and waterfowl refuge of national, State, or local significance as determined by the Federal, State, or local officials having jurisdiction thereof. . . as so determined by such officials unless (1) there is no feasible and prudent alternative to the use of such land, and (2) such program includes all possible planning to minimize harm to such park. . . .” (Emphasis added.)
Even the Secretary admits that he has failed to make formal findings about feasible and prudent alternative routes. Respondents have argued that formal findings are unnecessary. This seems an unlikely reading of the Act because without findings it will be difficult for courts to review the Secretary‘s determinations, and the intent of Congress to protect parklands is likely to be frustrated.2 Furthermore, it is simply not realistic to consider the construction of this expressway “section by section” as the District Court and the Secretary of
In the last several years, Congress has enacted coordinated legislation designed to protect our Nation‘s environment from destruction by water pollution, air pollution, and noise pollution. This legislation has come about in response to aroused citizens who have awakened to the importance of a decent environment for our Nation‘s well-being and our very survival.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, with whom MR. JUSTICE BLACK and MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN concur, dissenting.
This case is here on a stay presented to MR. JUSTICE BLACK and by him referred to the Court. We granted a stay pending consideration of a petition for certiorari before judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, ante, p. 939, which has now been filed. The Court dissolves the stay and denies certiorari, without any opinion. I dissent. This is an important case that involves the construction of 9.6 miles of an expressway through 250 acres of the Brackenridge-Olmos Basin parklands situated at the headwaters of the San Antonio River within the city of San Antonio. It involves the application of a new law--the
“major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment, a detailed statement by the responsible official on- (i) the environmental impact of the proposed action, (ii) any adverse environmental effects which cannot be avoided should the proposal be implemented, (iii) alternatives to the proposed action, (iv) the relationship between local short-term uses of man‘s environment and the maintenance and enhancement of long-term productivity, and (v) any irreversible and irretrievable commitments of resources which would be involved in the proposed action should it be implemented.”
§ 102 (2) (C) .
Many, including Senator Metcalf of Montana, had sounded the alarm over the devastation caused by federal highways: 1
“Today the land is being covered by four and six lane highways, supermarket parking lots, suburban
high rise apartment buildings and lost to itself and to the people alike.”
Parks-the breathing space of urban centers-were part of the concern of Congress, not only wilderness areas, rivers, lakes, and other aspects of the biosphere.2 The Senate Committee stated in its report:
“The inadequacy of present knowledge, policies, and institutions is reflected in our Nation‘s history, in our national attitudes, and in our contemporary life. We see increasing evidence of this inadequacy all around us: haphazard urban and suburban growth; crowding, congestion, and conditions within our central cities which result in civil unrest and detract from man‘s social and psychological well-being; the loss of valuable open spaces; inconsistent and, often, incoherent rural and urban land-use policies; critical air and water pollution problems; diminishing recreational opportunity; continuing soil erosion; the degradation of unique ecosystems; needless deforestation; the decline and extinction of fish and wildlife species; faltering and poorly de-
signed transportation systems; poor architectural design and ugliness in public and private structures; rising levels of noise; the continued proliferation of pesticides and chemicals without adequate consideration of the consequences; radiation hazards; thermal pollution; an increasingly ugly landscape cluttered with billboards, powerlines, and junk-yards; and many, many other environmental quality problems.” S. Rep. No. 91-296, p. 4. (Italics added.)
The report noted that environmental programs were administered by 63 federal agencies located within 10 of the 13 departments, as well as in 16 independent agencies. Id., at 6.
“[P]oor land-use policies and urban decay” can no longer be deferred, the report stated. Id., at 5.
“We no longer have the margins for error that we once enjoyed. The ultimate issue posed by shortsighted, conflicting, and often selfish demands and pressures upon the finite resources of the earth are clear.” Ibid.
And so the Act was drafted “to assure that all Federal agencies plan and work toward meeting the challenge of a better environment.” Id., at 9.
Yet in spite of this mandate embodied in
On August 4, 1970, the State, after revising its plans, agreed to the federal plan for the end segments of the projects. But we are advised that it was not until August 13, 1970, that the Secretary of Transportation approved the construction by Texas of the two end seg-
“The Secretary expressly reserved final approval on the middle section because there is much parkland contained in the middle section.
“As a matter of fact, one of the primary reasons the Secretary has not approved the middle section is due to the consideration of the views expressed by plaintiffs in opposition to the proposed route the middle section will take through the parklands.”
We were told on November 16, 1970, that there are “at least four (4) possible alternative routes on which the middle section could be constructed to connect the two ends which the District Court has approved.”
That is to say, 11 months after the
The Solicitor General contends that the two end segments were approved in 1969. But the facts are that while Secretary Volpe gave preliminary approval of these segments on December 23, 1969, he withheld authorization of federal funds pending an agreement by the State to study further the middle segment. As already stated, Texas agreed to the end segments on August 4, 1970, and the Secretary gave his “unqualified approval” and authorization of them on August 13, 1970, long after the new Act became effective. Yet no findings under the 1969 Act were made.
It seems obvious, moreover, that approval of the two end segments has some effect on the alternatives for the middle section. For, once the expressway is split into segments and each segment considered separately, the environmental impact of the entire project will turn, at least in part, on the fact that the two ends are already built.
Thus we have a fair indication that some of the park is going to be a freeway regardless. Yet as I read the Act a federal highway project “significantly affecting” even an acre of parkland cannot be launched without a finding on the environmental consequences.
The legal questions posed by
Should any piece of the park be destroyed to accommodate the freeway?
How can end segments of a highway aimed at the heart of a park be approved without appraising the dangers of drawing a dotted line between the two segments?
How important is the park to the people of San Antonio? How many use it? For what purposes? What wildlife does it embrace? To what extent will a massive eight- and six-lane highway decrease the value of the park as a place of solitude or recreation?
What are the alternatives that would save the park completely? Could a passage by way of tunnels be devised? Could the freeway be rerouted so as to avoid the parklands completely and leave it as a sanctuary?
Is not the ruination of a sanctuary created for urban people an “irreversible and irretrievable” loss within the meaning of
I do not think we will have a more important case this Term. Congress has been moving with alarm against the perils of the environment. One need not be an expert to realize how awful the consequences are when urban sanctuaries are filled with structures, paved with concrete or asphalt, and converted into thoroughfares of high-speed modern traffic.
No federal question would, of course, be presented if Texas or San Antonio decided to turn these parklands into a biological desert. But when Congress helps finance a project like this freeway,3 it becomes a federal project. See Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111, 131; Ivanhoe Irrig. Dist. v. McCracken, 357 U. S. 275, 295; Simkins v. Memorial Hosp., 323 F. 2d 959. And if one thing is clear from the legislative history of this 1969 Act, it is that Congress has resolved that it will not allow federal agencies or federal funds to be used in a predatory manner so far as the environment is concerned. Congress has, indeed, gone further and said that the Department of Transportation, like other federal agencies, may no longer act as engineers alone and design and construct freeways solely by engineering standards. Congress has said that ecology has become paramount and that nothing must be done by federal agencies which does ecological harm when there are alternative, albeit more expensive, ways of achieving the result.
I would continue the stay, grant the petition for certiorari before judgment,
APPENDIX TO OPINION OF DOUGLAS, J., DISSENTING
Much of the legislative history of the Act is a discussion of air pollution, water pollution, and solid waste disposal. But when specifics are mentioned highway problems are present. And the mention of highway problems at every stage in the legislative history leaves
At the Senate Hearing on the Act, the Department was represented by the Assistant Secretary for Urban Systems and Environment. He immediately recognized the reason he was present.
“I think that perhaps the reason that the Department of Transportation was asked to have a representative here before your committee was because within the purview of the Department of Transportation has lain in the past and will continue to lie in the future many of the activities that, at least, are most apparent to the people of the country in the field of environmental impact.”
He talked about the views of those people who live in metropolitan areas of the country. They have, he stated:
“a growing concern, though in most instances it is not a deep knowledge perhaps of scientific implications . . . as to what might happen to life itself in some of the areas of which we are destroying our environment, it is concerned with the things that they see about them in their daily lives. And in this area, I think, transportation and the activities of transportation organizations have been one of those which they have observed and which has created perhaps as much controversy and concern as any other area of the State and Federal operations.” Hearing on S. 1075, S. 237, and S. 1752, before the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 91st Cong., 1st Sess., 76
Included in the House Hearings is a letter from the Chairman of the House Subcommittee considering the 1969 Act to the Chairman of the President‘s Council on Environmental Quality which notes that neither the De-
The debates on the Act on the floors of both Houses were relatively short, attesting in some measure to the popularity of enacting an extensive environmental bill. Yet just as the Senate and House Hearings had demonstrated that the Department of Transportation was an integral part of the Federal Government‘s creation of environmental problems, so, too, did the debates alert one to the fact that highways caused environmental problems when not approached from an ecological perspective. In the House only a handful of speakers discussed the bill for any length of time and all spoke in broad generalities. Representative Pelly, a member of the subcommittee which considered the Act, provided the focus on the problems of highways.
“We have experts in the field of transportation coping with the problem of moving people from one city to another in the least possible time with the greatest degree of safety. We have constructed a vast system of interstate highways to accomplish this. Yet at the same time, we have created serious problems of soil erosion, stream pollution and urban displacement.
“. . . The experts have, by and large, done their job well, but we must remember that their job is
building highways, increasing our food production, preventing floods, and so on. Their primary concern is not the quality of our environment considered as a totality.” 115 Cong. Rec. 26573.
The Senate debates were also brief and again often dealt largely with the generalities of air and water pollution. Senator Allott, a member of the committee which considered the Act, recognized this and reminded his colleagues that more was involved.
“I think there is a little too much of a tendency, probably not in the committees involved here, but on the part of the public, to regard environment as involving only air pollution and water pollution. . . .
“. . . [T]he environment does not involve only water and air; . . . it involves noise-and we are all becoming acutely conscious of this factor. More and more as time goes on-environmental questions will also involve land distribution, land planning for the future, what kind of future cities we will plan, and what we will do about the ghettos-for the ghettos are a part of the environmental picture. . . .” Id., at 29061.
Senator Jackson, chairman of the committee which considered the Act, reviewed the legislative history of the Act for the benefit of the other Senators. He stated that concepts and ideas were drawn from the many other bills before Congress when the Senate Committee considered the Act. These bills
“were directly concerned with environmental issues, covering a broad area of interest-cleaning up the Nation‘s rivers and better approaches to smog control, improving the use of open space and prevention of disorderly encroachment by super-highways, factories and other developments . . . and the control
of urban sprawl, unsightly junkyards, billboards, and power facilities that lower the amenities of landscape.” Id., at 29068.
Thus there can be no doubt but that Congress intended the Act to apply to federally funded highways and the Department of Transportation.