## Facts

- The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved a right-of-way and plan amendment for the Ocotillo Wind Energy Facility, a utility-scale wind project in Imperial County, California, via a May 11, 2012 Record of Decision (ROD).
- The project area is within the California Desert Conservation Area and was managed under a land-use plan designating the area as Multiple-Use Class L (Limited Use), intended to protect sensitive natural and cultural values while allowing certain uses, including wind energy, subject to constraints.
- The Quechan Tribe alleged the area contains culturally and spiritually significant sites, including burial-related and archaeological resources, and challenged the approvals as insufficiently protective of those resources.
- BLM prepared a proposed plan amendment and final environmental impact statement analyzing environmental and cultural impacts, mitigation, and alternatives, and concluded impacts would not significantly diminish or degrade sensitive resource values.
- BLM conducted National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) Section 106 efforts, including archaeological surveys and attempted government-to-government consultation beginning in 2010, with Native American monitors participating in fieldwork; the Tribe accepted consultation late in the process.
- The Tribe sought preliminary injunctive relief to stop construction; the request was denied without prejudice, and the case proceeded on an expedited merits schedule.
- The Tribe moved for summary judgment under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA); the federal defendants and the developer (as intervenor) filed cross-motions for summary judgment, with the intervenor also seeking dismissal.

## Issues

1. Whether BLM’s NHPA Section 106 efforts (consultation, identification, and consideration of historic properties) were unlawful under the APA.
2. Whether BLM violated the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) and the governing land-use plan by approving a project that would significantly diminish protected Class L values or cause unnecessary or undue degradation.
3. Whether the environmental impact statement satisfied NEPA’s requirements for environmental analysis and consideration of reasonable alternatives.
4. Whether the approvals and construction framework violated protections for archaeological resources or Native American graves under ARPA and NAGPRA.

## Decision

- The court denied the Tribe’s motion for summary judgment.
- The court granted summary judgment for the federal defendants.
- The court granted the intervenor’s motion to dismiss and for summary judgment.
- The court upheld the ROD, right-of-way grant, and related approvals, finding no APA violation.

## Legal Principles

- Under APA review, agency action is upheld unless arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law; the standard is highly deferential and requires a reasonable basis in the record.
- NHPA Section 106 requires reasonable, good-faith efforts to consult and to identify and consider effects on historic properties; it does not require agreement with consulting parties or a particular substantive result.
- NEPA is procedural: it requires a “hard look” at environmental consequences and reasonable alternatives, not selection of the least harmful option; disagreement with agency balancing of costs and benefits is insufficient absent a material analytic failure.
- FLPMA requires conformity with applicable land-use plans and authorizes BLM to balance multiple uses; determinations about plan consistency and whether impacts constitute unnecessary or undue degradation are reviewed for rational support in the record.
- Reliance on monitoring, avoidance, mitigation, and stop-work/treatment measures can support agency conclusions about protecting cultural resources and responding to inadvertent discoveries, absent a showing the approach is unlawful or irrational.

## Conclusion

The court sustained BLM’s approval of a utility-scale wind project on public lands, holding that the Tribe did not show the agency’s NHPA consultation, NEPA analysis, FLPMA plan-consistency determinations, or reliance on mitigation and monitoring measures were arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to law.


Quechan Tribe of the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation v. U.S. Dep’t of the Interior, 927 F. Supp. 2d 921 (S.D. Cal. 2013)