Western Organization of Resource Councils v. Jewell

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal of a lawsuit seeking to compel an update of the programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) for the federal coal leasing program. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) completed the PEIS in 1979; plaintiffs argued that BLM was required to update the environmental review due to the availability of tens of thousands of scientific studies on climate change and coal combustion’s contributions to climate change. The D.C. Circuit held that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) did not require BLM to update the environmental review because the relevant “major Federal action” (establishment of the federal coal program) was completed in 1979 and no new action had been proposed. The D.C. Circuit said the plaintiffs raised “a compelling argument” that BLM “should now revisit the issue” of climate change and “adopt a new program or supplement its PEIS analysis,” but concluded that the plaintiffs would have to pursue other avenues to raise this claim—either via a rulemaking petition or through challenges to specific licensing decisions (which “might challenge any attempt by BLM to rely on (or tier to) the 1979 PEIS on the ground that it is too outdated to support new federal action”). The D.C. Circuit also rejected the plaintiffs’ contention that statements in the 1979 regulatory materials created an obligation for BLM to update the PEIS even if NEPA did not require it. The D.C. Circuit said that while the statements “might have created a binding duty … at one point,” BLM’s amendments to the coal leasing rules in 1982 freed it from any supplementation duty beyond that imposed by NEPA.

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