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Amicus Brief in Supreme Court Case on the Consideration of Downstream Costs in NEPA Analyses
The National Environmental Policy Act requires agencies to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of their decisions, prior to acting. In this case, the Surface Transportation Board, after conducting an environmental review, permitted a proposed railway that would transport oil in Utah’s Uinta Basin. The D.C. Circuit found that the Board’s environmental analysis failed to properly consider the indirect effects of the railway, including increased drilling and pollution impacts in the Gulf Coast, due to an influx of crude oil and increased refinery operations. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in June 2024 on the question “whether the National Environmental Policy Act requires an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority.” We argue the Court should affirm the D.C. Circuit’s ruling and interpret NEPA–in line with longstanding precedent–to require agencies to consider reasonably foreseeable effects.
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