US Supreme Court paves way for controversial Uinta Basin rail project that would haul crude oil along #ColoradoRiver: Unanimous ruling narrows the scope of a decades-old environmental review law — The Sky-Hi News #COriver

Click the link to read the article on the Sky-Hi News website (Robert Tann). Here’s an excerpt:

May 30, 2025

In a 36-page ruling, Supreme Court justices said the Surface Transportation Board, a federal agency that oversees rail transit, had sufficiently considered the proposal’s environmental impacts when it approved the plan in 2021. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing the opinion for the other justices, said the board “identified and analyzed numerous ‘significant and adverse impacts that could occur as a result’ of the railroad line’s construction and operation — including disruptions to local wetlands, land use, and recreation.”

[…]

The plan had been on hold after a lower appeals court in 2023 ruled in favor of a lawsuit brought by Eagle County and five environmental groups that claimed the transportation board’s review had underestimated the railway’s environmental impact.  The lawsuit garnered support from a coalition of local governments, including Pitkin, Routt, Grand and Boulder counties, the cities of Basalt, Avon, Minturn, Red Cliff, Crested Butte, Glenwood Springs and Grand Junction, and the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments…

At the heart of the lawsuit and the question before the Supreme Court was whether the transportation board had sufficiently followed the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA,  when it approved the railway…The 55-year-old law requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their decisions, and the transportation board issued a 3,600-page environmental analysis as part of that review.