U.S. Supreme Court paves way for controversial Uinta Basin rail project that would haul crude oil along Colorado River

A controversial proposal to haul up to 350,000 barrels of waxy crude oil daily along a stretch of the Colorado River can move forward following a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Thursday. 

The proposed 88-mile Uinta Basin Railway would connect remote oil fields in Utah to existing tracks running through Colorado’s Glenwood Canyon and the central mountains, eventually meeting up with refineries along the Gulf Coast.

The public-private partnership involving several Utah counties and a Texas-based rail company is seen as an economic boon for oil-rich northeastern Utah. Environmental groups, however, have raised concerns that it could increase the risk of wildfires and oil spills into the Colorado River, a resource for 40 million people in the West.

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.

The Supreme Court last year said it would take up the case. 

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. 

The 2023 appeals court, however, ruled the transportation board’s approval was rushed and failed to fully consider its impacts on wildlife, waterways and communities. The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling 8-0 that regulators had sufficiently followed the law. 

Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself from the case after facing pressure over his ties to Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz, who owns oil wells and could benefit from the railway project.

The case effectively became a debate over the scope of NEPA, with justices ruling that federal agencies need only to consider a project’s more “proximate effects” rather than wider-ranging potential future impacts. 

“Over time, some courts have assumed an aggressive role in policing agency compliance with NEPA,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Other courts have adopted a more restrained approach.”

He wrote that the transportation board’s review “did not need to address the environmental effects of upstream oil drilling or downstream oil refining. Rather, it needed to address only the effects of the 88-mile railroad line. And the board’s (study) did so.”

The court’s three liberal justices, who sided with the more conservative wing that includes Kavanaugh, said the transportation board has no purview over oil production and so did not need to consider it in their decision. 

“NEPA requires consideration of environmental impacts only if such consideration would result in information on which the agency could act,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Officials, interest groups react 

The Supreme Court ruling sends the case back to the lower appeals court for further action. The Surface Transportation Board must also still decide other environmental issues related to the project that weren’t part of the Supreme Court case. 

Eagle County Commissioner Matt Scherr said in a statement that the county is hopeful “that our interests in protecting our local environment can be advanced through other legal avenues” in the lower court. 

“Whatever happens in court, we as local elected officials and as a county government will continue to uphold our key strategic priority to protect our mountain ecosystem,” Scherr said.

The Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas interests across nine states, praised the decision. 

“Today’s unanimous ruling sends a powerful message to district courts who are solicited to hear cases because opposition groups know the judge’s proclivity to halt energy projects, even vacate them entirely,” Western Energy Alliance President Melissa Simpson said in a statement. 

Environmentalists lambasted the ruling.

Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups that joined Eagle County’s lawsuit, said the “disastrous decision” undermines NEPA, which she called “our nation’s bedrock environmental law.”

“The last thing we need is another climate bomb on wheels that the communities along its proposed route say they don’t want,” Park said in a statement. “We’ve been fighting this project for years, and we’ll keep fighting to make sure this railway is never built.”

Colorado Democrats also blasted the decision, with Attorney General Phil Weiser calling the railway project a “risky scheme” that threatens Western Slope communities. 

Weiser, in 2023, had pressured the former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to deny an application for the Uinta Basin project. He also filed an amicus brief on behalf of Colorado supporting the lawsuit led by Eagle County. 

Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, a Democratic state lawmaker whose district includes Glenwood Springs, said the ruling is “catastrophic news for communities,” adding, “We will continue fighting against this project to keep our communities safe.”

Train derailments through Glenwood Canyon aren’t unprecedented. In 1995, a Southern Pacific freight train derailed, with three cars carrying soybean meal spilling into the Colorado River. 

More recent incidents, such as a derailment in 2023 in southern Colorado that killed a truck driver and another in East Palestine, Ohio, where hazardous materials spilled and caught fire, have only fueled concerns around rail safety. 

In response, Velasco sponsored a bill that passed the statehouse this legislative session, bolstering Colorado’s oversight of railways by imposing a fee on rail companies to hire more state safety inspectors. 

The bill also creates new reporting requirements when train-related issues occur, ensures rail workers can coordinate with first responders, and collects more data to identify gaps in maintenance and emergency responses. It has yet to be signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis. 

Velasco said she hopes the measure can mitigate some of the safety concerns around the Uinta Basin project. But she said, “There’s going to be so much more that we have to do.”