Robertson v. Methow Valley Citizens Council

How later courts described this case

• concluding that NEPA “ensures that the agency, in reaching its decision, will have available, and will carefully consider, detailed information concerning significant environmental impacts; it also guarantees that the relevant information will be made available to the larger audience that may also play a role in both the decisionmaking process and the implementation of that decision.”
• stating that the “requirement that an EIS contain a detailed discussion of possible mitigation measures flows both from the language of [NEPA] and, more expressly, from CEQ’s implementing regulations” and that the “omission of a reasonably complete discussion of possible mitigation measures would undermine the ‘action-forcing’ function of NEPA.”
• holding that the National Forest Service's interpretation of the National Environmental Policy Act was entitled to deference and reversing the decision of the Court of Appeals because it failed to give adequate deference to the Forest Service's interpretation of its own regulation
• explaining that the mitigation discussion in an environmental impact statement need not contain a “complete mitigation plan,” especially where impacts “cannot be mitigated unless nonfederal government agencies [with jurisdiction over those effects] take appropriate action”

Written by the judges who cited it.