San Juan Citizens Alliance v. United States Bureau of Land Management

The federal district court for the District of New Mexico held that BLM failed to take a hard look at the greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts of leases issued in 2015 for 13 parcels of federal mineral estate in the Santa Fe National Forest covering almost 20,000 acres. The court set aside the leases and remanded for additional review. The court rejected BLM’s argument that it was not required to consider downstream greenhouse gas emissions that would result from combustion of oil and gas produced from development of wells on the leased areas and the downstream emissions’ impact on climate change. The court said such impacts were required to be assessed as indirect impacts of the leases. In addition, the court said BLM must conduct a new cumulative impact analysis of greenhouse gas emissions due to the failure to consider downstream greenhouse gas emissions. The court also noted that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had updated its reports since BLM conducted its review as had the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The court said that on remand BLM should not rely on outdated scientific tools and analyses. Although the court was not persuaded by the plaintiffs’ attacks on BLM’s mitigation measure analysis, the court indicated that BLM might need to conduct a new mitigation analysis once it had calculated downstream greenhouse gas emissions and analyzed their impact. The court also found that BLM did not adequately address impacts of water use.