SCOTUS Rules 8-0 that NEPA Reviews Be Limited, Reasonable, and Timely: Uinta Basin Oil-By-Rail Project Now More Likely to Go Forward

     In a unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the scope of federally required National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews be narrowed. This is a good decision, as the act has long been abused by activists to unfairly delay important infrastructure and energy projects. Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself, possibly as a result of his past work for a client that owns leases in the Uinta Basin.

     The case involves the building of 88 miles of railroad tracks, mainly to facilitate the transport of waxy crude (crude oil with a high paraffin content) from the Uinta Basin in Northeast Utah to refineries along the Gulf Coast. The high paraffin content makes Uinta oil difficult to transport via pipeline. It requires heating to do so, which makes it prohibitively expensive. Thus, rail transport is the best option for Uinta Basin crude.

     Below is a section from the SCOTUS Syllabus:

“In sum, when assessing significant environmental effects and feasible alternatives for purposes of NEPA, an agency will invariably make a series of fact-dependent, context-specific, and policy-laden choices about the depth and breadth of its inquiry—and also about the length, content, and level of detail of the resulting EIS. Courts should afford substantial deference and should not micromanage those agency choices so long as they fall within a broad zone of reasonableness. Even a deficient EIS does not necessarily require vacating an agency’s project approval, absent reason to believe that the agency might disapprove the project if it added more to the EIS.  Cf. 5 U. S. C. §706.  Pp. 6–15.”

 “(b) Contrary to the D. C. Circuit’s NEPA analysis, the Board’s determination that its EIS need not evaluate possible environmental effects from upstream and downstream projects separate from the Uinta Basin Railway complied with NEPA’s procedural requirements, particularly NEPA’s textually mandated focus on the “proposed action” under agency review.  While indirect environmental effects of the project itself may fall within NEPA’s scope even if they might extend outside the geographical territory of the project or materialize later in time, the fact that the project might foreseeably lead to the construction or increased use of a separate project does not mean the agency must consider that separate project’s environmental effects.  See Public Citizen, 541 U. S., at 767.  This is particularly true where, as here, those separate projects fall outside the agency’s regulatory authority.  Pp. 15–21.”

“(c) NEPA does not allow courts, “under the guise of judicial review” of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects based on the environmental effects of other projects separate from the project at hand. Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 435 U. S. 519, 558.  Pp. 21–22.”

     Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion, part of which is reproduced below:

“NEPA is a purely procedural statute that, as relevant here, simply requires an agency to prepare an EIS—in essence, a report. Importantly, NEPA does not require the agency to weigh environmental consequences in any particular way.”

2 SEVEN COUNTY INFRASTRUCTURE COALITION v. EAGLE COUNTY Opinion of the Court

“Rather, an agency may weigh environmental consequences as the agency reasonably sees fit under its governing statute and any relevant substantive environmental laws.

     Simply stated, NEPA is a procedural cross-check, not a substantive roadblock. The goal of the law is to inform agency decisionmaking, not to paralyze it.

      In this case, the U. S. Surface Transportation Board considered a proposal by a group of seven Utah counties for the construction and operation of an approximately 88-mile railroad line in northeastern Utah.  Under federal law, the Board determines whether to approve construction of new railroad lines.  The railroad line here would connect Utah’s oil-rich Uinta Basin—a rural territory roughly the size of the State of Maryland—to the national rail network. By doing so, the new railroad line would facilitate the transportation of crude oil from Utah to refineries in Louisiana, Texas, and elsewhere.  And the project would bring significant economic development and jobs to the isolated Uinta Basin by better connecting the Basin to the national economy.

 For that proposed 88-mile Utah railroad line, the Board prepared an extraordinarily lengthy EIS, spanning more than 3,600 pages of environmental analysis.  The Board’s EIS addressed the environmental effects of the railroad line.  But the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit nonetheless faulted the EIS for not sufficiently considering the environmental effects of projects separate from the railroad line itself—primarily, the environmental effects that could ensue from (i) increased oil drilling upstream in the Uinta Basin and (ii) increased oil refining downstream along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Texas.

     On that basis, the D. C. Circuit vacated the Board’s EIS and the Board’s approval of the 88-mile railroad line. As a result, construction still has not begun even though the Board approved the project back in December 2021.”

     This decision has been widely expected. As expected, environmental groups like Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity, and climate groups condemned the decision. It is a commonsense decision that limits the massive overreach of environmental groups to sue over and over again and delay projects for years, even decades, making it very difficult and very expensive, often prohibitively expensive, for project developers to pursue important projects.

     According to Nick Smith, a spokesman for the American Forest Resource Council, who has decried the weaponization of NEPA:

“These lawsuits mistakenly demand exhaustive analysis of every hypothetical alternative and remote impact, stretching NEPA documents into the thousands of pages and dragging reviews on for five or more years — even then facing renewed legal challenges,” Smith said in an email. “We are hopeful this ruling sets a clear precedent for restoring common sense to environmental reviews.”

     Kudos to SCOTUS for getting this right, unanimously.

      Below is a map I got from HeatMap that shows the route of the proposed rail project.

    

References:

 

Supreme Court narrows scope of environmental reviews. Justin Jouvenal and Maxine Joselow. Washington Post. May 29, 2025. Supreme Court narrows scope of environmental reviews

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. Syllabus. SEVEN COUNTY INFRASTRUCTURE COALITION ET AL. v. EAGLE COUNTY, COLORADO, ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT. No. 23–975. Argued December 10, 2024—Decided May 29, 2025. 23-975 Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County (05/29/25)