The US Supreme Court supported Thursday a Millions of dollars railways The expansion of Utah, with the support of a rear explanation for a main environmental law can pave the way for the fastest fossil fuel.
In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court judges canceled the minimum court decision that suspended the fossil fuel project on the basis that the evaluation of the environmental impact by a federal agency was very limited in the scope.
On Thursday, the ruling is heading five decades of legal precedents by reducing the scope National Environmental Policy Law (NEPA) – The country’s brown environmental legislation was approved by Congress and signed by Richard Nixon in 1970.
“This ruler is the hands of fossil developers, a pass hall pass to continue destroying our climate. The Supreme Court’s decision presents local communities, and many of them are indigenous and rural, in favor of the dirty situation in the current energy. It weakens the ability of societies to threaten, ignore water threats, ignore late threats, and give up water threats. Oxfam America.
“After the most famous record, when the United States must improve environmental guarantees and enable front -line societies, this decision is a giant step.”
The case focuses on Uinta railwaysThe proposal of 88 miles (142 km) expanded in Northeast of Utah This would link oil and gas producers to the broader rail network and allow them to reach larger markets.
The proposed railway will move up to 350,000 barrels of wax crude oil daily from the population Uinta basin via Colorado Rocky to refineries on the Gulf coast. If completed, the railway will increase the production of quadruple oil in the Uinta basin, by linking the oil fields to national railway networks and a handful of refineries in Texas and Louisiana.
The project is supported by seven coalition Utah The provinces and the infrastructure investment group, but Thursday’s ruling will be seen as a great victory for the fossil fuel industry on a larger scale, which has been pressured for decades against NEPA.
“Our environmental laws, such as NEPA, aim to ensure that people protect from companies pollutants. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has registered one for oil companies that do not want you to look closely to harm their products, will help Sara Club, Sara Club, Sara Club.
The case tested the scope of environmental impact studies that the federal agencies must run under an American law called the National Environmental Policy Law, which was enact in 1970 to prevent environmental damage that may result from major projects. The law requires that agencies examine the “expected” effective archeology of the project.
The Supreme Court listened to arguments on December 10 in the case, which companies and environmental groups closely witnessed on how to judge a wide range of infrastructure and energy projects.
Environmental reviews that are very wide in the range can add years to the organizational schedule, which risk its fitness to the project development and the development of future infrastructure, according to companies and business groups.
The surface transport board, which has organizational authority on new railways, issued an environmental impact and approved the railway proposal in 2021.
The Biodiversity Center and other environmental groups filed a lawsuit against approval, as did the Igel province in Colorado, which indicated that the project will increase the movement of the train in its area and the double traffic on a railway line along the Colorado River.
The American Court of Appeal of the Colombia County Department ruled in favor of competitors in 2023, and concluded that the environmental review is not benefiting from the effects of increasing oil production in the sink as well as the estuary, where the oil will be improved.
The Joe Biden administration has supported the railway alliance in the case, as did Utah State.
Fifteen countries supported competitors. Colorado said that its economy depends on the outdoor entertainment, and that the project raises the risk of leaks, spills or car accidents near the Colorado River installations.
The conservative judge, Neil Gorsche, retracted himself from the case after some democratic legislators urged his withdrawal because businessman Philip Antozzi, his former legal agent, had a financial interest in its results.
