A new ruling from the Supreme Court reduces the requirements for federal agencies that complete environmental assessments for projects under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
The court ruled 8-0 in favor of the plaintiffs, the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, a group of Utah counties that want to build a new rail line from the state’s oil-rich Uinta Basin. Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself over potential financial conflicts of interest.
If built, the line would connect to existing Union Pacific tracks, which run along the Colorado River through Colorado, and eventually take the crude oil to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.
Eagle County, Colorado, along with the Center for Biological Diversity sued over the environmental impact statement (EIS) completed by the Surface Transportation Board (STB). They claim that the EIS violated NEPA, because it didn’t adequately assess the downline impacts of the railway’s construction, like an increased risk of oil spills and wildfires due to more oil trains alongside the Colorado River, the impacts of pollution from oil refineries in communities in Texas and Louisiana, and how increased drilling might affect the Uinta Basin’s ecosystem.
A Washington D.C. circuit court ruled in favor of the Colorado communities and environmental group, saying that there were “significant deficiencies” with the STB’s environmental analysis.
“It omitted downline effects of projected increases in spills and accidents from additional oil trains traveling the existing Union Pacific rail line alongside the Colorado River—including effects on water, special status species or habitats, and recreation and land use,” Judge Robert Wilkins wrote in 2023. He also agreed with the plaintiffs’ arguments about the downline impacts on refineries and the upline impacts on the Uinta Basin.
Seven County Infrastructure appealed, and the case was heard by the Supreme Court in December.
In 2023, Congress amended NEPA using the language “reasonably foreseeable.” Essentially that means that if a potential environmental impact is “reasonably foreseeable,” then an agency must consider it as part of its environmental review process.
During oral arguments for the case, the plaintiffs asked the Court to consider a new test: whether the impacts were “remote in time and distance,” or, whether the impacts were very far in the future or geographically very far away. If that was the case, they argued, the impacts shouldn’t need to be considered.
What does this mean for federal environmental review in the U.S.?
Chris Winter is the director of the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment at CU Boulder’s School of Law. He and other environmental law scholars have been following the case closely.
He said there are two core findings at the heart of the court’s ruling. The first is on the role of federal courts in environmental review done by federal agencies.
“Federal courts should defer to the agencies’ exercise of discretion and professional judgment in deciding how broadly or narrowly to craft their environmental reviews,” he said.
The second is reducing the required scope of federal agencies doing an environmental review for any given project.
“Agencies don't have to look at the effects of other projects that might result from the approval of the discrete project the agency's looking at right now,” he said of the second.
“An example of another project would be the exploration and development of oil and gas in the Uinta Basin,” he said. “The court thought of that as a separate project. Or, the refining of oil and gas in Texas at the end of the rail line. That also—in the court's mind—was a separate project.”
Winter said this could have sweeping impacts on any federal agency that conducts environmental analysis for a project under NEPA, narrowing the scope of what any agency in the case would have to consider.
That’s bad news, he said, for transparency.
“Where the court says the agencies have to do less or they can constrain the scope of their environmental reviews, that's necessarily going to affect the amount of information the public has about these projects,” he said, adding that the public will have to do more work to get engaged with federal environmental reviews as NEPA requirements change.
Winter is especially concerned about what this will mean for the country as the impacts of human-caused climate change get more severe, driven by emissions from fossil fuels.
“As this administration works to expedite approval of new fossil fuel infrastructure projects, I'm very concerned, as a result of this decision, that it's gonna be more difficult for us, as the public, to know what the impacts are going to be for climate change over the long term,” he said.
In addition, he said that because this ruling says federal courts should defer to agencies, it means that the courts are less likely to be an avenue for the public to oppose projects it feels are harmful to the environment.
The Center for Biological Diversity—one of the plaintiffs in the case—decried the Court’s decision in a statement.
“This disastrous decision to undermine our nation’s bedrock environmental law means our air and water will be more polluted, the climate and extinction crises will intensify, and people will be less healthy,” wrote Wendy Park, an attorney for the Center. “It guarantees that bureaucrats can put their heads in the sand and ignore the harm federal projects will cause to ecosystems, wildlife and the climate.”
What comes next for the railway?
The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition intends to continue pursuing the project—with developers calling it “a generational investment in Utah’s rural communities.”
“This decision affirms the years of work and collaboration that have gone into making the Uinta Basin Railway a reality,” Keith Heaton, Director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition wrote in a statement. “It represents a turning point for rural Utah—bringing safer, sustainable, more efficient transportation options, and opening new doors for investment and economic stability. We look forward to continuing our work with all stakeholders to deliver this transformative project.”
As the case made its way through the courts, several permissions and permits were revoked from the rail line—like a special use authorization from the U.S. Forest Service (some of the proposed line passes through the Ashley National Forest in Utah). This was because agencies had based their approvals on the STB’s overturned environmental analysis.
According to its statement, the Coalition intends to work with the STB to reauthorize the railway, as well as with agencies like the USFS to get their right-of-way permits re-approved.
According to Winter, the Coalition did not appeal the entirety of the D.C. Court’s ruling—they only appealed the ruling on the more remote upline and downline impacts. The part of the ruling that states the impacts to the Colorado River were not adequately considered, was not part of the Coalition’s appeal, he said.
“The agency still has more work to do on the environmental analysis despite the Supreme Court's ruling today,” he said. “So this doesn't necessarily mean that the railroad will go forward or that it will be constructed, but I think it narrows the amount of work the agency needs to do now, in addressing the shortcomings in the EIS.”
The Center for Biological Diversity also said that it would continue to oppose any efforts to actually build the Uinta Basin Railway.
“What (the Court’s decision) doesn’t guarantee is the ill-conceived Uinta Basin Railway’s construction,” wrote attorney Wendy Park. “The last thing we need is another climate bomb on wheels that the communities along its proposed route say they don't want. We’ve been fighting this project for years, and we’ll keep fighting to make sure this railway is never built.”
Copyright 2025 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
