close
close
  • February 14, 2025
The Supreme Court can sharply limit environmental impact statements

The Supreme Court can sharply limit environmental impact statements

The Supreme Court may be on the verge of sharply limiting the scope of so-called environmental impact statements, which map out the potential harm from new developments and can often block or scale back major projects.

For more than 50 years, federal law has required agencies to take a hard and broad look at the “reasonably anticipated environmental impacts” of a construction or development project before approving it.

The justices sounded ready to reconsider that on Tuesday approach in a case which would involve a proposed 90-mile rail line in Utah that would allow crude oil to be shipped to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

“Focus on the project,” argued Paul Clement, a Washington attorney representing county governments in support of the project. He urged the judges to consider only the direct consequences of the railway’s construction, and not potential secondary consequences that lie “distant in time and space.”

In their comments and questions, the judges seemed to agree.

If so, their ruling could limit the scope of environmental impact statements, an outcome that would be welcomed by developers and condemned by environmentalists.

Three years ago, the Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency that regulates freight railroads, approved construction of the Utah rail project

But no consideration was given to the environmental impact of drilling new oil wells in northeastern Utah, the added air pollution at Gulf refineries or the danger of sending an additional nine trains a day along the Colorado River and through the Rockies.

Environmentalists, along with Eagle County, Colo., sued and won a ruling from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals last year that said the board had failed to consider “upstream and downstream” environmental impacts.

Utah’s seven counties appealed, arguing that the DC court had gone too far.

Eight justices appeared to agree that the decision should be reversed.

Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, a Colorado native and a friend of billionaire Philip Anschutz, said last week that he would not participate in the decision. Anschutz is not a party to the case, but the Anschutz Exploration Group, which produces oil and gas in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, has filed a friend-of-the-court brief calling on the court to limit the law’s focus to environmental impacts which are under the direct control of an agency.

Clement, who represented Utah’s seven counties, said the court should curb “inflated and anti-developmental” impact statements that reach too broadly.

He said it made sense for the federal government to consider the railroad’s potential impact on the area’s bighorn sheep, but not “imponderables” such as a possible railroad accident hundreds of miles away or additional air pollution on the Gulf Coast.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which filed a lawsuit challenging the Utah railroad, said environmental impact statements have been critical to protecting the environment since the early 1970s. It said agencies have been notified “to consider whether their actions will have long-term and potentially irreversible impacts on the environment.”

These impact statements allow government and the public to weigh both the harms and benefits of a new development.

Wendy Park, an attorney with the center, said that “communities in the Uinta Basin and the Gulf Coast will suffer the most from this oil railroad, as oil companies enrich themselves at the expense of the environment and people’s health. It is shameful that the railroad’s backers want federal agencies to turn a blind eye to this damage.”