A railroad company and a coalition of seven Utah counties filed a petition for writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of the D.C. Circuit’s August 2023 opinion finding numerous NEPA violations in the Surface Transportation Board’s review of a rail line in Utah that would be used to transport waxy crude oil. The petition presented the question of whether NEPA “requires an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority.” The petitioners identified a circuit court split on this issue, with five circuits reading the Court’s 2004 decision in Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen to mean “that an agency’s environmental review can stop where its regulatory authority stops,” while two circuits require agencies to review “any impact that can be called reasonably foreseeable.”

Challenge to a Surface Transportation Board decision approving construction and operation of an 85-mile rail line in Utah.

Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County

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Supreme Court Review of NEPA Reviews’ Scope Sought in Utah Rail Line Case

Filed

United States of America

District of Columbia

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An aim to achieve a quantifiable outcome within a given time-frame, set by an institution such as a national government.

Policy instruments are techniques or tools used by governing authorities to promote certain policies in order to achieve predetermined goals. Put simply, instruments are how a government tries to achieve its goals, with this taxonomy being focused on national policy instruments.

Risk is the potential for adverse consequences resulting from the dynamic interplay between (climate-related) hazards, exposure, and vulnerability of affected human or ecological systems.

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Renewable energy means all forms of energy produced from renewable sources in a sustainable manner.

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Area of the economy in which actors engage in identical or related activities.

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The management and allocation of funds, assets and investments to meet various objectives

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A ban is a legal action that prevents the sale or supply of a product or service, or that recalls a product from the market. Examples are bans on SF6, greenwashing, fossil fuel advertisement or single-use plastics.

Either money or something of monetary value is transferred between two or more organisations, people or countries.

Conditions that enhance the feasibility of adaptation options. Enabling conditions include finance, technological innovation, strengthening policy instruments, institutional capacity, multi-level governance and changes in human behaviour and lifestyles.

Electricity generation from devices driven by the movement of salt water, differences in saltwater temperatures, or salinity gradients.

Oil is a combustible liquid fossil fuel composed mainly of hydrocarbons, occurring as crude oil and refined into petroleum products such as petrol, diesel and kerosene.

Fossil gas, commonly known as natural gas, is a fossil fuel consisting chiefly of methane with smaller amounts of other hydrocarbons and trace gases, found in underground deposits.

Coal is a combustible sedimentary rock formed from carbonised plant matter, rich in carbon and hydrocarbons, and occurring in several main types including hard coal and brown coal.

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Supreme Court Review of NEPA Reviews’ Scope Sought in Utah Rail Line Case

Policy instrument

Risk

Impacted group

Renewable energy

Fossil fuel

Economic sector

Adaptation/resilience

Finance