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Calvert Cliffs' Coordinating Committee, Inc. v. United States Atomic Energy Commission is a 1971 United States court decision which provided the first important court interpretation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). [1]
In 1966, the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BG&E) purchased property in Calvert County, Maryland along Chesapeake Bay. The company bought the property with the intention of building a nuclear power plant along the shoreline and applied for a nuclear power plant license. The utility began construction on the plant in 1968. [2]
Concerned about the impacts to the Chesapeake Bay's blue crab population, scientists from Johns Hopkins University analyzed the plant's potential impacts on the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem.[ citation needed ] The scientists' apprehension about the potential adverse impacts of the plant's radioactive emissions as well as the discharge of heated cooling water into the bay led to the formation of the Calvert Cliffs' Coordinating Committee. The committee challenged in court the decision by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to license the power plant.
After the passage of NEPA in 1970, the AEC revised its licensing rules to comply with the new law. The newly revised rules stated that while a utility company must provide an environmental report for each proposed plant, the AEC hearing board did not have a mandate to consider the environmental impacts of each new plant unless a challenge was issued to a specific plant.[ citation needed ] Calvert Cliffs' Coordinating Committee argued that the AEC rules were inadequate and a direct violation of NEPA's Environmental impact statement requirement. [2]
In 1971 Judge J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that the AEC was required to consider the environmental impacts of licensing a nuclear power plant, regardless of whether a challenge was raised or not. The Court took the ruling a step further and made NEPA judicially enforceable by establishing procedural and substantive provisions for how federal agencies should comply with NEPA. Judge Wright ruled that the Atomic Energy Commission's rules were deficient and required revision. [2]
The court made several key decisions regarding how federal agencies comply with NEPA:
As a result of the decision, the AEC halted the licensing of all nuclear plants for eighteen months in order to modify its licensing rules to comply with NEPA. BG&E decided to pursue the operation of the Calvert Cliffs plant and released an Environmental Impact Statement. The final environmental report determined that the proposed operation of the nuclear plant would have no major adverse effect to the environment.[ citation needed ] The AEC granted BG&E an operating license for its first reactor in 1974 and the plant began producing energy in 1975. [2]
The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by the U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S. Truman signed the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective on January 1, 1947. This shift gave the members of the AEC complete control of the plants, laboratories, equipment, and personnel assembled during the war to produce the atomic bomb.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a United States-based 501(c)(3) non-profit international environmental advocacy group, with its headquarters in New York City and offices in Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Bozeman, India, and Beijing. The group was founded in 1970 in opposition to a hydro-electric power power plant in New York.
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The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is a United States environmental law designed to promote the enhancement of the environment. It created new laws requiring U.S. federal government agencies to evaluate the environmental impacts of their actions and decisions, and it established the President's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The Act was passed by the U.S. Congress in December 1969 and signed into law by President Richard Nixon on January 1, 1970. To date, more than 100 nations around the world have enacted national environmental policies modeled after NEPA.
An environmental impact statement (EIS), under United States environmental law, is a document required by the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for certain actions "significantly affecting the quality of the human environment". An EIS is a tool for decision making. It describes the positive and negative environmental effects of a proposed action, and it usually also lists one or more alternative actions that may be chosen instead of the action described in the EIS. One of the primary authors of the act is Lynton K. Caldwell.
The Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant (CCNPP) is a nuclear power plant located on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay near Lusby, Calvert County, Maryland in the Mid-Atlantic United States. It is the only nuclear power plant in the state of Maryland.
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