WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday will weigh the fate of an 88-mile railroad project that would transport crude oil in Utah as the justices consider a dispute over whether federal officials conducted a stringent enough environmental review before approving it.
The railroad proposed by the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, a group of local counties, would help bring oil from the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah by connecting the area to the national rail network.
It is opposed by Eagle County, Colorado, which claims that it will suffer from downstream effects of the railroad, as well as environmental groups.
The federal entity overseeing approval of the project, the Surface Transportation Board (STB), conducted an environmental review and subsequently gave it the green light to commence.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found flaws in the analysis, as well as other parts of the approval process, and in a 2023 ruling sent it back to the agency for further review.
In relation to the environmental study, the court said the board failed to consider broader impacts on vegetation and endangered species, risk of wildfires or effects on water quality under a federal law called the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
The coalition appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that NEPA does not require such a broad array of “imponderables” to be considered far beyond the location of the project itself.
Under the appeals court decision, the agency would have to consider the potential impact of increased crude oil refining on communities as far afield as Louisiana and Texas, the coalition’s lawyers say in court papers.
Legislation aimed at streamlining the process that was passed by Congress last year and signed into law by President Joe Biden made it clear that NEPA review only requires the agencies to weigh “reasonably foreseeable” environmental impacts.
The Biden administration has backed the coalition at the Supreme Court in arguing that the STB’s review was sufficient.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in court papers that the board was not required to consider the broader impact the railroad could have on oil and gas development.
“The board authorizes railroad construction and operation, not the development and use of the commodities that travel over those lines,” she added.
Lawyers for Eagle County said in court papers that the appeals court correctly concluded that the STB had not done a full analysis.
Eagle County itself will be directly affected, with 9 out of every 10 trains that use the new railroad eventually passing through it via an existing line that runs along the Colorado River, the lawyers wrote.
They also argue that the court should dismiss the case in part because the recent change in the law makes the court’s intervention unnecessary.
The challengers also pointed out that even if the coalition wins on the NEPA issue, there are other elements of the STB’s approval the appeals court faulted, meaning that the project would still need to undergo more review before it can move forward.
The entity constructing the railroad is a public-private partnership between the counties and two companies, infrastructure firm DHIP Group and railroad operator Rio Grande Pacific Corp.
Justice Neil Gorsuch will not participate in the case after stepping aside last week, citing the court’s ethics rules. Liberal groups and more than a dozen members of Congress had urged him to recuse himself over his previous links to billionaire Philip Anschutz. One of Anschutz’s companies, Anschutz Exploration Corp., which drills for oil and gas, filed a brief in the case backing the coalition.
