On May 29, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision overhauling the National Environmental Protection Act. Here’s what the decision could mean for SC.
The U.S. Supreme Court has altered the standards for federal reviews of large-scale infrastructure projects, possibly weakening a rigorous review process that many environmentalists consider essential.
So what could the decision mean for projects across South Carolina? It’s complicated, but it helps to start with the basics.
The National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to create Environmental Impact Statements for certain large-scale infrastructure and construction projects.
The project at the center of Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado was a planned, roughly 88-mile rail line which would have tied oil wells in Utah to the interstate rail system, thus connecting them to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Plaintiffs in the case argued the project’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) failed to adequately consider the indirect effects of how increased oil production might impact areas in Louisiana — or how a new rail line might stimulate more oil production in Utah.
That argument was supported by a lower court. But in an 8-0 opinion (Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself) on May 29, justices reversed the decision of the lower court, endorsing the limited scope of the EIS that was conducted.
“Today’s ruling relieves federal agencies of the obligation to review all foreseeable environmental harms and grants them more leeway to decide what potential environmental harms to analyze, despite what communities may think is important,” the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, one of the parties in the case, wrote in a press release. “It tells agencies that they can ignore certain foreseeable impacts just because they are too remote in time or space. And even if the agency makes the wrong call about how to draw that line, the court has now said that the agency gets deference.”
The Center noted that this decision comes as President Donald Trump is rolling back NEPA protections, “setting the process for project approvals back half a century.”
Business and development groups praised the court’s decision. They contend that the NEPA review process was lengthy, expensive and a deterrent to critical infrastructure projects.
“Our broken permitting system has long been a national embarrassment,” Marty Durbin, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute, wrote in a statement about the decision. “A better permitting process will benefit the public by ensuring timely upgrades to essential infrastructure like roads, bridges, and energy systems, and will benefit businesses by reducing delays and uncertainties, allowing them to plan and invest with confidence.”
What does this decision mean for South Carolina?
“The facts of this case are very unique and specific to the situation in Utah,” said Faith Rivers James, executive director of the Coastal Conservation League and an attorney with expertise on administrative laws such as NEPA. “This case is just so unique that I think it is too early to tell if it really will turn into a narrowing of NEPA.”
Ben Cunningham, a senior managing attorney at the South Carolina Environmental Law Project, noted that the court’s majority held that environmental effects of a project could still fall within NEPA, even if those effects extend outside the geographical area of a project or might “materialize later in time.”
“For example, runoff into a river that flows many miles from the project and effects fish populations elsewhere, or emissions that travel downwind and predictably pollute other areas,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the court’s opinion.
Cunningham said there is one project in South Carolina that could be impacted by the decision: A factory expansion along the Savannah River in Aiken where the federal government plans to produce plutonium pit cores for nuclear bombs. The Law Project successfully argued in court that the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration didn’t adequately assess the environmental impacts of the Savannah River Site and a sister site in New Mexico that also would produce plutonium pits.
In September 2024, a judge ruled in the Law Project’s favor, and compelled the feds to conduct a new environmental assessment. Cunningham said the National Nuclear Security Administration likely will examine the Supreme Court’s recent decision to determine how the Savannah River Site project’s ongoing environmental reviews could be affected.
“The scope of that project is immense,” he said. “This involves facilities all over the country. This involves waste that gets transported all over the country. This involves radioactive, hazardous products that get transported all over the country.”
Source: Utah News