A new Supreme Court case is seeking to limit federal environmental reviews for energy infrastructure projects — throwing the spotlight on conservative justices who have sought to restrict agency powers.
The case the justices Monday agreed to hear next term, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, may allow the court to set boundaries for how much agencies can consider under the National Environmental Policy Act. With America’s environmental movement in full swing, then-President Richard Nixon signed NEPA into law in 1970 to ensure federal project permits were granted only after in-depth reviews of environmental impacts.
This latest case comes after the court’s 6-3 conservative majority has curtailed agency powers to take broad steps to protect air and water — including a 2022 decision that limited the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change.
From railways to power lines to natural gas terminals, agencies are required to look at how every major transportation or energy project could disrupt habitat, pollute streams and contribute to poor air quality. The review is a key determination before granting a federal permit to build.
Developers have long complained about the resources and time needed to complete environmental reviews. In Washington, that’s turned into a roiling debate about how to balance infrastructure needs with environmental priorities. Republicans are pushing for speedier reviews, and environmental groups are pressing permitting agencies to assess the way oil and natural gas projects contribute to climate change.
“NEPA is a very big burden on a lot of projects,” said Jay Johnson, a partner at the law firm Venable, which represents the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition of Utah in the case to come before the high court.
The group is challenging a court-ordered NEPA review of the Uinta Basin Railway, a project designed to carry oil out of the region to coastal ports or refineries. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled last August that a permit from the Surface Transportation Board for the 88-mile rail line failed to fully analyze the effects on wildlife that can result from increased oil drilling. Further, the court found the board failed to look at the potential harm of oil spills and accidents along the Colorado River and the impact that more crude oil refining would have on Gulf Coast communities.
The parties to the Utah court challenge say the the Surface Transportation Board was correct not to include those impacts in its environmental review — noting that they’re too far outside the regulatory scope of the agency.
“The further out you have to study impacts,” Johnson said, “the harder it is to get a grasp on them and to even understand which impacts are really impacts of the project you’re dealing with and which impacts are actually things that are happening for other…
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