Federal Court Halts Stehekin Road Project

Wednesday, October 7, 2026

• On September 28, 2026, a Seattle federal court in North Cascades Conservation Council v. National Park Service issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) halting construction of a road segment within the channel of the Stehekin River in the North Cascades National Park Complex, after finding a strong likelihood that the National Park Service (NPS) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by relying on a categorical exclusion that did not adequately consider impacts to aquatic habitat and ecology.
• The TRO is preliminary and does not decide whether NPS ultimately violated NEPA. Nevertheless, it underscores that agencies using categorical exclusions must adequately consider extraordinary circumstances and important environmental effects before authorizing work.
• For project sponsors, particularly those pursuing emergency or accelerated projects in the Pacific Northwest, the decision highlights the value of developing the administrative record contemporaneously and documenting why a categorical exclusion remains appropriate as project designs and resource information change.

The dispute arose after severe flooding in December 2025 shifted the Stehekin River and damaged Company Creek Road, cutting vehicle access to properties farther up the road. NPS initially planned reconstruction outside the river channel, but after a landowner declined to give it temporary access, NPS issued a categorical exclusion and special use permit allowing Chelan County to construct approximately 300–350 feet of road within the river channel. Categorical exclusions allow agencies to approve categories of actions that normally do not have significant environmental effects without preparing a more detailed environmental assessment or environmental impact statement. However, agencies typically still must consider whether extraordinary circumstances indicate that a particular project may have significant effects.

That requirement became central after a site visit, when the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife identified spawning kokanee salmon and habitat within the project footprint. Ten days later, NPS issued a revised categorical exclusion addressing the new information. In granting the TRO, the court found that the plaintiff environmental group had shown a strong likelihood that the August analysis failed to consider an important aspect of the problem—effects on aquatic life and ecology—and, on the preliminary record, that the September revision did not cure that earlier failure.

The court also noted that NPS’s asserted need for emergency access was expressed more fully in its litigation briefing than in the revised categorical exclusion. Although the court described the plaintiff’s showing of irreparable harm as “not particularly strong,” it found the plaintiff’s likelihood of success sufficiently strong, together with the remaining equitable factors, to warrant issuance of the TRO under the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s sliding-scale approach.

The TRO does not establish a new NEPA rule or resolve the merits, and the case is in early stages. It nevertheless illustrates a recurring risk for projects proceeding under categorical exclusions: the factual basis for the exclusion must keep pace with changes in project design and newly identified resource impacts. When substantial new information emerges before construction, agencies and project sponsors should evaluate whether the existing NEPA record squarely addresses that information and any potentially applicable extraordinary circumstances.

The TRO also reinforces the importance of the contemporaneous administrative record. Project urgency, emergency conditions, and practical constraints may be relevant to agency decision-making, but those considerations are most useful on judicial review when the agency documents them as part of the decision itself rather than relying principally on later litigation explanations.