The U.S. Supreme Court seemed to favor overturning a lower court decision to allow the construction of the Uinta Basin Railway to move forward during oral arguments on Dec. 10.
The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County case has the potential to be much bigger than just deciding the future of the approximately 90-mile length of track connecting the oil-rich Uinta Basin with the wider U.S. rail network. It could also have far-reaching consequences as it pertains to how the federal government oversees the environmental review process.
Justices wrangled over whether the National Environmental Policy Act requires a federal agency to study environmental impacts beyond its authority — something project opponents have argued for and supporters have opposed.
The Uinta Basin Railway started in 2019 as a way for oil producers in eastern Utah to more efficiently ship waxy crude to refineries on the Gulf Coast. It had the approval from the Surface Transportation Board and a right-of-way granted by the U.S. Forest Service.
The project ran into a roadblock in 2023 after a federal appeals court ruled that a critical environmental impact statement did not go far enough and violated the law. In their suit, environmental groups and Eagle County, Colorado, said regulators should have considered broader environmental impacts, like increased wildfire risk and a potential derailment that could dump oil into the Colorado River.
The Supreme Court agreed to reconsider the case in June. If built, the railway could transport an estimated 350,000 barrels of waxy crude oil a day.
Railway supporters want the court to limit the scope of environmental reviews. They argued that future impacts, like climate change due to an increase in the burning of fossil fuels at oil refineries, should not be taken into consideration.
Paul Clement, the lawyer for petitioner Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, called the current requirements a “recipe for turning a procedural statute into a substantive roadblock.”
“The [environmental impact statement] here addressed almost all of those issues, or at least identified them,” he said. “But in classic no good deed goes unpunished fashion, the D.C. Circuit held that because the agency identified the issue or flagged the issue, it was therefore foreseeable and they had to do more.”
The justices appeared skeptical of just how narrow petitioners wanted that scope to be.
“What I worry about with your test is that you're suggesting that the agency can't even look at the effects of the project outside of the very piece that it has sole responsibility for,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “And I don't know that NEPA was actually designed to be that narrow.”
Skepticism did not just come from the liberal side of the court, either.
Chief Justice John Roberts said he was having “trouble seeing how this is going to work out as a practical matter” and suggested that narrowing the scope of environmental reviews could present more problems in the future.
“Do you counsel your client to say, ‘Well, you better put it in because they might decide that it's not too far away,’” he asked about identifying issues for an environmental review. “Or do you counsel your client as saying, ‘Well, I think that's remote enough, so don't put it in?’”
Opponents of the railway also faced tough questions over whether NEPA has the authority to look beyond the scope of the railroad’s construction when weighing environmental impacts.
“Why is it within their purview to say or determine what the increase of refining will be and whether it will be damaging when there is another agency that has the power to control that?” asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
In response, the lawyer for respondent Eagle County, Colorado, William Jay, called that reasoning inconsistent with the spirit of the law.
“NEPA requires agencies to look at even harms that they cannot mitigate and harms that they do not regulate directly, precisely because they provide a springboard for public comment to the agency,” Jay said.
To him, having those concerns as part of the environmental process both allows public participation and pushes regulators to be aware of the downstream consequences.
Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself from the case on Dec. 4 after a letter from 13 members of Congress detailed his former work as a corporate lawyer for Colorado-based billionaire Philip F. Anschutz. According to the letter, Anschutz “has a direct financial interest in the outcome” of the case due to his ties to the oil and gas companies he owns. Anschutz Exploration Corporation has filed a brief in the case.
The court is expected to issue its opinion next summer.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
