## Facts

- Congress designated portions of Nebraska’s Niobrara River as the Niobrara National Scenic River and assigned its administration to the Department of the Interior through the National Park Service (NPS).
- The river corridor ran largely through private land, and Congress created a Niobrara Scenic River Advisory Commission to represent local interests in planning.
- NPS prepared a General Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement (GMP/EIS) evaluating management alternatives and selected “Alternative B.”
- Under Alternative B, NPS helped create the Niobrara Council through an interlocal agreement with local governments; the Council had 15 members, predominantly county officials, landowners, and business representatives, with one NPS and one U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service representative.
- The management structure vested day-to-day decisionmaking in the Council by majority vote and contemplated the Council obtaining independent funding to limit NPS influence.
- NPS also entered a cooperative agreement with the Council permitting NPS to terminate on 60 days’ notice and then implement a different management approach if the Council failed to follow the GMP/EIS.
- Plaintiffs (conservation organizations) challenged the plan under the Administrative Procedure Act, alleging NPS unlawfully delegated statutory management responsibility under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act; plaintiffs also raised NEPA challenges to the GMP/EIS.
- The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.

## Issues

1. Whether the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act permits NPS to transfer effective management of a designated national scenic river to a local council over which NPS retained virtually no operational control, aside from a termination right.
2. Whether statutory provisions authorizing cooperation and cooperative agreements with state and local governments allow NPS to relinquish final administrative responsibility assigned to the Department of the Interior.
3. Whether the challenged agreements were arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise not in accordance with law under the APA because they conflicted with the Act’s assignment of federal administration and protection of national river values.

## Decision

- The court granted summary judgment for plaintiffs on the unlawful-delegation theory and enjoined implementation of the Alternative B arrangement that vested primary management authority in the Niobrara Council.
- The court held the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act assigns administration of the Niobrara to the Department of the Interior and imposes a duty that requires meaningful federal control over management decisions.
- The court rejected the argument that a cooperative-agreement authorization allowed NPS to surrender core decisionmaking authority to a locally dominated body.
- The court found that retaining only a power to cancel the agreement on notice was insufficient to satisfy the statutory requirement that the federal agency administer the river.

## Legal Principles

- When Congress assigns administration of a Wild and Scenic River to the Department of the Interior, NPS must retain meaningful oversight and final decisionmaking authority consistent with that statutory responsibility.
- Statutory authorization to cooperate with state and local governments, including through cooperative agreements, permits collaboration but does not authorize abdication of core federal management functions.
- Under the APA, agency action is unlawful when it conflicts with an unambiguous statutory assignment of administrative responsibility and effectively transfers that responsibility to a non-federal entity without adequate federal control.
- A contractual termination right, standing alone, does not constitute sufficient federal administration where the non-federal body otherwise exercises complete operational control.

## Conclusion

The court enjoined NPS’s local-council management structure for the Niobrara National Scenic River because the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act required the federal agency to administer the river with meaningful control and could not be satisfied by an arrangement that effectively transferred management authority to a locally dominated council subject only to NPS’s power to terminate.


Nat'l Parks & Conservation Ass'n v. Stanton, 54 F. Supp. 2d 7 (D.D.C. 1999)