Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management

The federal district court for the District of Utah found that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) failed to adequately consider greenhouse gas and climate change impacts of a proposed coal lease authorizing the expansion of a coal mine. Although the court rejected the plaintiffs’ claim that BLM performed only a “bare arithmetic emissions calculation” of greenhouse gas emissions, the court agreed with the plaintiffs that BLM could not set forth the project’s potential economic benefits in the socioeconomics section of the environmental impact statement (EIS) without analyzing the socioeconomic costs of greenhouse gas emissions together with climate change. The court did not, however, direct BLM to use the social cost of carbon in this analysis, finding that BLM was “owed some deference on the tools it uses.” The court also said it was not adopting a “categorical test that if economic benefits are quantified then economic costs always must be too, because, among other things, some costs may not accurately be reduced to numbers.” In addition, the court found that BLM failed to take a sufficiently hard look at cumulative impacts of greenhouse gas emissions because it did not substantively analyze present and reasonably foreseeable future sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The court declined, however, to impose a requirement that all federal or Department of Interior mining approvals be included in the cumulative impact analysis, leaving the determination of the scope to the agency’s discretion. The court rejected the argument that BLM did not take a hard look at mercury emissions. The court remanded to BLM but did not vacate the EIS or record of decision.

Six environmental and conservation organizations filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the District of Utah challenging a federal coal lease sale on public land in Utah. The complaint alleged that the lease would allow an existing coal mine on private lands located approximately 10 miles from Bryce Canyon National Park to expand to include federal lands. The complaint—which asserted claims under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—included allegations that the federal defendants failed to assess direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts from greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, the complaint asserted that although the defendants quantified economic benefits associated with expansion of the mine, they failed to use available tools to quantify the direct or indirect impacts of greenhouse gas emissions associated with the mine. The complaint also alleged that the defendants failed to consider the project’s cumulative greenhouse gas impacts together with other coal mining projects considered and approved by the defendants.