SALT LAKE CITY — A U.S. Appeals Court on Friday struck down a important approval for a railroad venture that may have allowed oil companies in japanese Utah to considerably broaden fossil gas manufacturing and exports.
The ruling is the most recent improvement within the battle over the proposed Uinta Basin Railway, an 88-mile railroad line that may join oil and gasoline producers in rural Utah to the broader rail community, permitting them to entry bigger markets and in the end promote to refineries close to the Gulf of Mexico. The railroad would let producers, at present restricted to tanker vehicles, ship a further 350,000 barrels of crude every day on trains extending for as much as 2 miles.
The Washington, D.C.-based appeals courtroom dominated {that a} 2021 environmental influence assertion and organic opinion from the federal Surface Transportation Board had been rushed and violated federal legal guidelines. It sided with environmental teams and Colorado’s Eagle County, which had sued to problem the approval.
The courtroom mentioned the board had engaged in solely a “paltry discussion” of the environmental influence the venture may have on the communities and species who would dwell alongside the road and the “downline” communities who dwell alongside railroads the place oil trains would journey.
“The limited weighing of the other environmental policies the board did undertake fails to demonstrate any serious grappling with the significant potential for environmental harm stemming from the project,” the ruling acknowledged.
Surface Transportation Board spokesperson Michael Booth mentioned the company doesn’t touch upon pending litigation.
Though the Uinta Basin Railway proposal nonetheless should win further approvals and safe funding earlier than development can start, proponents noticed the 2021 environmental influence assertion from the board as among the many most important approvals thus far.
The assertion obtained pushback from environmentalists involved that setting up new infrastructure to move extra fossil fuels will permit extra oil to be extracted and burned, contributing to local weather change.
Additionally, communities in neighboring Colorado together with Eagle County and the town of Glenwood Springs – which filed a quick in assist of the lawsuit – are fearful about security and potential practice derailments. Oil trains would hyperlink from the proposed new Uinta Basin line to the frequent provider community all through the nation, together with by way of Colorado.
Proponents – oil companies, rural Utah officers and the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah & Ouray Reservation – have argued that the railroad could be a boon to struggling native economies and enhance home power manufacturing.
The courtroom in the end dominated that the Surface Transportation Board’s resolution to grant the venture an exemption from the standard evaluate course of and claims that it couldn’t study its full environmental influence violated the company’s mandate.
“The Board’s protestations at argument that it is just a ‘transportation agency’ and therefore cannot allow the reasonably foreseeable environmental impacts of a proposed rail line to influence its ultimate determination ignore Congress’s command that it make expert and reasoned judgments,” it mentioned.
The native company guiding the venture by way of the approval course of and the developer searching for funding for it mentioned in an announcement that they had been undeterred by the ruling and deliberate to proceed searching for approvals.
“We are ready, willing, and capable of working with the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to ensure additional reviews and the project’s next steps proceed without further delay. We look forward to bringing this railway to the basin,” the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition and DHIP Group mentioned in a joint assertion.
Deeda Seed of the Center for Biological Diversity characterised the choice as a victory and demanded that President Joe Biden’s administration cease the venture from searching for any additional approvals.
“The Uinta Basin Railway is a dangerous, polluting boondoggle that threatens people, wildlife and our hope for a livable planet,” she mentioned in a written assertion.
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