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The U.S. Supreme Court will decide how federal agencies assess the environmental implications of projects that need their permission after a court battle over an 88-mile proposed railway in Utah. This judgment could significantly alter how projects are approved across the country.
On Tuesday, December 10, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County case. It’s the most recent development after a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling last year that reversed a federal agency’s approval of the railway following a lawsuit filed by a Colorado county and environmental groups along the project’s course. The appeals court concluded that the evaluation did not assess the project’s downstream effects.
The Supreme Court will now consider whether federal agencies can assess a project’s effects under the National Environmental Policy Act to the immediate area of an 88-mile railway or beyond after a group of seven Utah counties appealed that ruling.
As it travels more than 100 miles straight beside the Colorado River to refineries on the Gulf Coast, the Uinta Basin Railway would link the oil fields of northern Utah to the national rail system. The production of waxy crude oil in the area might be quadrupled if the new railway is constructed. Opponents claim it will aggravate the already bad air quality in the area, impacting residents and others downstream, especially in neighboring Colorado and along the Gulf Coast, where the crude oil will be refined. Proponents claim it would boost the region’s economy.
According to Dr. Brian Moench, president of the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, one of the organizations opposed to the project, the main beneficiaries of the railway would be a small number of oil company CEOs who have already persuaded Utah lawmakers to grant them public subsidies. Their goal is to deplete this special oil resource as quickly as possible in order to maximize their profits. Future generations and everyone else would bear the actual and symbolic burden.
The railway’s ultimate destiny will not be decided by the Supreme Court’s ruling. According to the appeals court’s decision, the federal Surface Transportation Board violated both the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act and the Endangered Species Act when it permitted the project. But for years to come, the high court’s ruling will probably determine the parameters of NEPA analyses. A growing chorus of advocacy groups, state attorneys general, industry groups, and legal experts are weighing in to try to influence that opinion.
The nation’s foundational environmental law, NEPA, was signed into law in 1970 and mandates that federal agencies use every reasonable method and measure to establish and preserve conditions that allow humans and nature to coexist in productive harmony and meet the social, economic, and other needs of current and future generations of Americans. NEPA established the guidelines for assessing a project’s environmental effects using environmental impact statements.
However, the statute has been the subject of discussion for many years, particularly when it comes to congressional reform. Every large project that the federal government regulates or oversees has to go through a NEPA review, which can take years and frequently exposes projects to legal action. Opponents of the law contend that its criteria are excessively onerous, particularly in light of the country’s energy transition, while supporters contend that it is essential for halting bad projects and reducing issues that other projects may cause. Although they disagree on how to achieve it, many on both sides feel that change is necessary.
According to John Ruple, a law professor and program director of the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment at the University of Utah, seven counties are crucial to environmental impact evaluations. Although nobody enjoys lengthy and costly environmental studies, they are necessary to preserve the quality of the water and air we drink. They reduce the likelihood of catastrophes like Love Canal. NEPA may be improved in many ways without sacrificing protection in the name of efficiency.
He compared the situation to a car stopping at a crosswalk. According to him, everyone agrees that the driver should halt, glance to the left, and then look to the right before determining whether to continue. How far and how closely the motorist needs to look is the question.
An interview request was not answered by the Uinta Basin Railway. However, in interviews with Inside Climate News, representatives of the organizations supporting the project, including Utah counties, have previously downplayed the worries of opponents, claiming that the environmental concerns were exaggerated and that the economic benefits were significant for the rural region.
We have faith in the comprehensive environmental evaluations carried out by the STB and are hopeful about the Supreme Court’s reconsideration. According to a press release, Keith Heaton is the director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition. We are dedicated to completing this project because it is essential to the Uinta Basin region’s connectivity and economic development.
Like the court’s ruling earlier this year to overturn the Chevron Doctrine, which gave agencies some deference when converting laws into regulations, opponents view it as the most recent instance of the Supreme Court weighing in on cases that should be decided by Congress and one that could have significant environmental repercussions.
Following demands to resign because of his personal relationship with billionaire Philip F. Anschutz, who stands to gain financially from the project, Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch withdrew from the railway case this week. One of his oil and gas exploration businesses filed a friend-of-the-court brief encouraging the justices to limit NEPA, even though his companies are not directly parties to the dispute.
According to Sam Sankar, senior vice president of programs at Earthjustice, a U.S.-based nonprofit that handles environmental lawsuits, “it’s a perfect example of the court doing the dirty work for all of these industries that are interested in changing our environmental laws, reducing community input, limiting transparency into government decision making, and making sure that the government puts blinders on before it actually makes big decisions like improving this railway.”
Opponents: Railway would worsen Uinta Basin s poor air quality
Since the establishment of Utah’s Seven County Infrastructure Coalition in 2014, the railroad has been under development in collaboration with Drexel Hamilton Infrastructure Partners and Rio Grande Pacific Corp.
Local environmental organizations have long opposed it, citing concerns about the potential for a derailment and spill into the Colorado River as well as the rise in greenhouse gas emissions brought on by burning the oil. After approving the project, the Surface Transportation Board was sued by five organizations and Eagle County, Colorado. The oil tankers would sail through Eagle County, which has garnered backing for its struggle from other Colorado counties and state elected figures, including U.S. Representative Joe Neguse and U.S. Senator Michael Bennet.
Colorado communities have already experienced the devastating effects of climate change, such as wildfires and flooding. Environmentalists and Eagle County officials have stated that more oil production will only make the situation worse. As the oil flows alongside the Colorado River, they are also concerned about possible leaks. There has been a drought in that river for 20 years, and it provides water to 40 million people.
According to Deeda Seed, a public lands senior campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, “we’re sitting here in the western United States watching increased wildfire activity, aridification, drought, and all sorts of enormous environmental challenges that have huge human health consequences.” It is necessary to thoroughly examine the effects of a project like the Uinta Basin Railway, but this was not done.
Located in northern Utah, the Uinta Basin already has some of the worst air pollution in the state. Opponents of railroads contend that an increase in oil output would further exacerbate that.
According to a 2014 study, the annual VOC emissions from 100 million cars during the previous winter were equal to the Uinta Basin’s emissions of these harmful substances, which can lead to major health issues like cancer. Additionally, methane leaks from oil and gas wells in the area have been significantly more common than the national norm. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that has a far greater immediate warming effect than carbon dioxide.
When a nurse midwife in Vernal, the basin’s main town, contacted Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment in the 2010s over the increasing incidence of newborn fatalities, the air pollution came under close study. The Uinta Basin had more of these deaths in 2013 than the national average, according to a state assessment of health department statistics, but the study concluded that the difference was not statistically significant.
Imagine if the FDA solely took into account the implications of a drug’s production for public health, rather than the positive or negative effects on the millions of people who use it. According to Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, any court would find that such a decision would be a disgrace to the FDA’s mission. Any court could understand the absurdity and farce of the Clean Air Act and wonder about the EPA’s entire goal if it only took into account the environmental effects of building a coal-fired power station and not the long-term health effects of the pollutants from running the facility.
It is similarly ludicrous, nonsensical, against the public interest, legally indefensible, and a manipulation of the system by special interests for the Surface Transportation Board to have failed to take into account any of the downstream effects of constructing this railway. The purpose of laws is to create sense. Instead of protecting special interests, the public has a right to believe that they are protecting the general interest.
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