On May 29^th the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition vs Eagle County case in which the adequacy of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was challenged. The case involved the proposed Uinta railway to connect oil fields along the Utah – Colorado border with the national railway network and facilitate shipment of oil to refineries along the Gulf Coast.

In 2020 project proponents submitted an application to the Surface Transportation Board requesting approval of the 85-mile rail line. A year and half later, after reviewing the EIS and more than 1,900 comments from the public, the Board approved construction and operation of the rail line. That decision was challenged by project opponents. A D.C Circuit Court ruled the EIS, which ran to 3,600 pages, didn’t comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because it didn’t encompass potential environmental effects, such as climate change, that go beyond the direct impacts of the proposal.

In reversing that lower court, the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision held that “The D.C. Circuit failed to afford the Board the substantial judicial deference in NEPA cases and incorrectly interpreted NEPA to require the Board to consider the environmental effects of upstream and downstream projects that are separate in time or place from the Uinta Basin Railway.” The court further explained that “NEPA does not allow courts, under the guise of judicial review of agency compliance with NEPA, to delay or block agency projects based on environmental effects of other projects separate from the project at hand.”

Amidst all of last week’s headlines and political turmoil this decision received barely a mention in the national media, but it is expected to have far-reaching implications. Narrowing the scope of impacts that need to be addressed in environmental documents will significantly shorten the time required to advance major projects from conception to implementation as well as reducing costs.

The precedent set by this decision will make it much more difficult to challenge individual transportation and energy projects based on climate change or other potential impacts that can’t reasonably be attributed to the project in question. The decision also makes it more difficult to use the NEPA process as a back-door way to expand national environmental policy through litigation rather than through legislation.

Environmental advocacy organizations will no doubt see the court’s narrowly circumscribed interpretation of NEPA as a serious set-back. The decision will limit the tactics that have been used to challenge specific projects and raise larger policy issues through the environmental review process.  

Consultants and some law firms will also be dismayed the very lengthy planning and permitting processes that has provided a reliable source of hourly billings will now be somewhat shorter, in some cases years shorter, and require far fewer hours of consultant time. For example, WSDOT and ODOT have spent $200 million on planning for replacement of the I-5 bridge over the Columbia River. A Record of Decision for that project may be issued in 2026 after more than a decade of study and planning.

Meanwhile, critics of the environmental review process see the decision as a long overdue victory for common sense that will expedite much needed infrastructure projects.They may be less thrilled if the precedent is used to advance coslty boondoggles.  

Interested parties on all sides of the issue would be well advised to think a little more deeply about the environmental review process, both in terms of its intended purpose and the important aspects of project planning and development that NEPA was never intended to address (and that are still very imperfectly handled).

NEPA is fundamentally about disclosure of impacts and identification of mitigation. The intent is to inform decisions, not to make them. The court’s ruling emphasizes this point in saying, “As a purely procedural statute, NEPA does not mandate particular results, but simply prescribes the necessary process for an agency’s environmental review of a project”. Therefore, it is asking too much to expect an EIS to decide what projects should be constructed, much less establish national environmental policy. That being so, lawmakers at both the state and federal level should now turn their attention to the unresolved problems of prioritization and project development. The court’s decision will have the beneficial effect of expediting project planning and implementation, but that only helps achieve a positive outcome if the projects are worthwhile.