Center for Biological Diversity v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management

In a lawsuit concerning the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's (BLM’s) 2019 supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) and record of decision for the Resource Management Plan for the Bakersfield Field Office, which BLM prepared pursuant to a settlement of a lawsuit challenged a 2014 RMP and associated EIS, the federal defendants agreed to conduct additional analysis of environmental impacts. Plaintiffs’ arguments included that the 2019 supplemental EIS failed to take a hard look at impacts of hydraulic fracturing, including impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and the climate. The settlement agreement provided for voluntary remand without vacatur for the federal defendants to prepare supplemental environmental documents.

The environmental group plaintiffs notified the court that two of the environmental groups and a third organization had filed a <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/center-for-biological-diversity-v-us-bureau-of-land-management-4/">case</a> in the Eastern District of California that involved “a material part of the subject matter” pending in this case. While this case challenged the supplemental environmental impact statement prepared in the initial planning stage of the oil and gas management process, the lawsuit in the Eastern District challenged an environmental assessment and lease sale covering 4,133 acres in Kern County.

The judge who heard earlier cases challenging 2014 decisions declined the transfer of the case to his calendar.

Environmental groups filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the Central District of California challenging the supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) prepared by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for a resource management plan allowing hydraulic fracturing on 400,000 acres of public lands and 1.2 million acres of federal mineral estate in California. BLM prepared the SEIS to address issues identified by the court in earlier cases. The plaintiffs alleged that the SEIS’s consideration of climate change impacts was inadequate. The environmental groups contended that the SEIS relied on “arbitrary and unsupported” predictions of the number of wells that would be fracked and underestimated climate and other impacts.