This Supreme Court Case Could Forever Change Environmental Reviews
HuffPost
The case of Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado could have huge climate and environmental implications.
A case before the Supreme Court could not only resurrect a controversial oil train project in Utah but forever narrow the scope of one of America’s most important environmental laws.
The conservative-led high court on Tuesday will hear arguments in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, in which developers of the $3 billion, 88-mile proposed Uinta Basin Railway petitioned the court to weigh in on whether federal agencies are required to consider adjacent, downstream environmental impacts when permitting projects.
The stalled rail line would connect Utah’s remote, oil-rich Uinta Basin to the national rail system, giving local producers an easier way to ship their waxy crude oil to Gulf Coast refineries. The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, an interlocal agency composed of seven mineral-rich counties in eastern Utah, and other project backers have argued the rail line would provide local communities a much-need economic boost. Opponents in neighboring Colorado and beyond say it is a disaster waiting to happen, as it would lead to a dramatic increase in oil trains running between Utah and the Gulf Coast, including along a 100-mile stretch of the Colorado River and its headwaters, the primary water source for about 40 million people.
The project has been on ice since August 2023, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated federal regulators’ approval of a key permit, ruling that the Surface Transportation Board violated the law by failing to properly consider climate and other environmental impacts. That decision stemmed from a lawsuit that Eagle County, Colorado, and several environmental organizations brought against the railroad in 2022.
While the lower court rejected a motion from railway developers to rehear the case late last year, the Supreme Court agreed to pick it up in June.
