Environmental and Public Health Groups File Brief Opposing Utah Oil Train’s U.S. Supreme Court Appeal

October 18, 2024

Environmental and Public Health Groups File Brief Opposing Utah Oil Train's U.S. Supreme Court Appeal

Environmental and public health groups defending the nation's landmark environmental law

Contacts

Jackson Chiappinelli, Earthjustice, (585) 402-2005, [email protected]

Wendy Park, Center for Biological Diversity, (510) 844-7138, [email protected]

Brian Moench, Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, (801) 243-9089, [email protected]

Kelly Fuller, WildEarth Guardians, (505) 501-8125, [email protected]

John Weisheit, Living Rivers, (435) 260-2590, [email protected]

Legal document

Washington, D.C.-

Environmental and public health groups defended the nation's landmark environmental law in a brief filed today with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case challenging the law's scope.

Utah's Seven County Infrastructure Coalition and a Utah railway company are asking the Supreme Court to overturn a federal appeals court decision tossing out the approval of an 88-mile railway through the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah. The case considers the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act.

The railway's sole purpose is to transport waxy crude oil from the Uinta Basin through the Colorado Rockies to Gulf Coast refineries. If completed, the railway would quintuple oil production in the Uinta Basin, up to an additional 350,000 barrels per day, by linking the Utah oil fields to national rail networks.

"Communities in the Uinta Basin and Gulf Coast will suffer the most from this oil railroad, while oil companies enrich themselves at the expense of the environment and people's health," said Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "It's disgraceful that the railroad's backers want federal agencies to turn a blind eye to those harms. A robust environmental review that takes a hard look at all the train's threats is crucial for protecting communities near and far from this railway."

In August 2023 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the U.S. Surface Transportation Board - the federal agency tasked with reviewing the proposed railway's potential environmental harms - violated numerous environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to consider the risks of increased oil extraction in the Uinta Basin and the potential harm from refining to Gulf Coast communities in Texas and Louisiana. The agency also failed to address the railway's downline threats, such as derailments and wildfires, to wildlife, the Colorado River, and public health and safety.

The National Environmental Policy Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970, requires the government to engage with communities, analyze a project's potential environmental harms, and disclose those potential harms to the public before approving a project.

The railway's backers are asking the court to narrow what environmental impacts federal agencies can review and disclose to the public. That would mean federal agencies could ignore and hide from the public damage to clean air, water, and wildlife habitats that destructive projects could cause.

The groups defending NEPA include the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, Living Rivers, WildEarth Guardians, and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment.

"The oil and gas industry in the Uinta Basin already produces an enormous amount of regional air pollution," said Dr. Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. "A University of Colorado study from 10 years ago found levels of highly toxic volatile organic compounds in the Basin '200-300 times background levels.' The authors said it was as much as you would expect from '100 million cars.' The whole purpose of this railway is to quintuple oil production in the area. The amount of air pollution would be staggering, a true public health nightmare. The petitioners are even trying to do away with this type of robust impact analysis, leaving communities like ours in the dark about the consequences of these projects."

"Sending billions of gallons of oil for hundreds of miles along the Colorado River would be a disaster waiting to happen for the communities and wildlife that rely on that critical water source," said John Weisheit, conservation director of Moab-based Living Rivers.

"The Uinta Basin Railway will harm the public's quiet enjoyment of the Colorado River for rafting and watching wildlife," said Kelly Fuller, climate and energy program director at WildEarth Guardians. "It's hard to spot beavers and bighorn sheep when heavy oil trains are roaring past the Colorado River, much less if the oil trains overturn and spill oil into the river, contaminating everything in sight."

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the case on Tuesday, Dec. 10.

So many oil and gas wells have been developed in the Uinta Basin that air pollution levels rival those of big cities. (WildEarth Guardians / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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