The State of Alaska joined an amicus petition before the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a case that threatens the energy industry of States by how NEPA was applied. “The case is as much about federalism and State sovereignty as it is about environmental law,” the brief states.
NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of proposed actions and allow public input.
At issue is a proposed railroad in Utah that would transport crude oil to the interstate network. The Surface Transportation Board authorized the construction. But the U.S. District Court in D.C. vacated it, citing the need to consider potential downstream environmental effects of the line, some 1,536 miles away, including in states with already established and highly regulated oil industries such as Louisiana and Texas.
“There is an absurdity in a federal judge overturning a federal transportation agency’s decision to authorize a short rail line in Utah because the agency did not consider the environmental effects of crude oil production in Louisiana and Texas. This is NEPA run amok. Under this way of thinking, an agency’s purview would be unending,” said Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor. “That barrel of hypothetical Utah oil already goes through an assembly line of State and federal regulations. Weaponizing NEPA in this way harms any State that depends on the energy industry for its economy, which strikes a nerve in Alaska. That’s why we joined these states urging the Supreme Court to reverse the judge’s decision.”
Twenty-two other states with Alaska joined the friend of the court brief, led by Louisiana, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming in Louisiana’s friend of the court.
The brief argues that Congress did not intend NEPA to be so irrationally redundant, “there is zero reason to believe that Congress intended NEPA to be a super environmental law that tasks each federal agency with divining the propriety and effects of every hypothetical activity that could flow from its discrete regulatory action—no matter that the activity may be years and thousands of miles away; or that the agency has no regulatory authority over the activity; or that other actually knowledgeable federal and State agencies will regulate that activity if and when it occurs.”