350 Montana v. Haaland

The federal district court for the District of Montana vacated the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s (OSMRE’s) approval of the expansion of an underground coal mine in central Montana. The district court issued its order on remand from the Ninth Circuit, which held in April 2022 that OSMRE violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to provide a “convincing statement of reasons” why the expansion’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions would be insignificant. In concluding that the federal defendants and the coal mine operator did not overcome the presumption in favor of vacatur and the equities that favor that remedy, the court first found that the NEPA violations were central to the environmental assessment and that OSMRE’s errors were therefore “sufficiently serious to warrant vacatur.” The court also stated that OSMRE’s subsequent independent decision to prepare an EIS “inherently demonstrates the seriousness of the agency’s errors.” The court then concluded that leaving the approval in place would potentially be more disruptive than vacatur. The court noted that the “disruptive consequences” of vacatur—which the coal mine operator alleged would include environmental (including increased greenhouse gas emissions), economic, and community impacts—were the product of reliance on approvals granted pursuant to invalid environmental analyses and that the “full impacts” of the expansion would not be known until the EIS was completed.

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The federal district court for the District of Montana largely rejected arguments that federal approval in 2018 of the expansion of an underground coal mine in south-central Montana violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act. The court previously enjoined approval of the expansion for failure to quantify the costs of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the action. The court concluded, however, that the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) subsequently provided sufficient support for its conclusion in its 2018 environmental assessment (EA) that the Social Cost of Carbon was “too uncertain and indeterminate to aid … decision-making.” The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that OSMRE failed to consider certain significance factors in the statement of reasons for its Finding of No Significant Impact, including factors related to climate change. In particular, the court found that the statement of reasons adequately considered the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on public health; that experts who commented on the Social Cost of Carbon and climate change did not raise a “substantial dispute” that would render the expansion “highly controversial”; that the presence of “some” uncertainty regarding long-term cumulative effects of greenhouse gases did not compel preparation of an environmental impact statement; and that a statement in the EA about greenhouse gases causing climate change did not raise “substantial questions” about the project’s cumulative effects. The court did conclude, however, that a failure to analyze the risk of train derailments violated NEPA. The court therefore vacated the 2018 EA and remanded to OSMRE.

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