Supreme Court unanimously rules the federal government’s regulatory overuse of environmental impact statements is wrong
In a ruling that will have wide-ranging impacts across multiple industries, including rocketry, the Supreme Court yesterday ruled 8-0 that the mission creep expansion of federal government’s regulatory use of environmental impact statements (EIS) to hinder all new construction projects is incorrect and must stop.
The case involved a planned railroad in Utah, that had gotten all its permits for construction, including approval of its environmental impact statement, but was then stymied by lawsuits by political activist groups that claimed the impact statement, issued under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), had not considered the impact of the industries the railroads would serve, including impacts far from the railroad’s location itself.
This is a perfect example of the broad expansion of NEPA that has been imposed in the last two decades by federal bureaucracy working hand-in-glove with these leftist political groups.
The Supreme Court, including all of the Democratic Party appointees, said enough!
In its majority opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court clarified that under NEPA the STB “did not need to evaluate potential environmental impacts of the separate upstream and downstream projects.” The Court concluded that the “proper judicial approach for NEPA cases is straightforward: Courts should review an agency’s EIS to check that it addresses the environmental effects of the project at hand. The EIS need not address the effects of separate projects.”
This statement “is particularly significant for infrastructure projects, such as pipelines or transmission lines, and should help reduce NEPA’s burdens (at least at the margins),” wrote Jonathan Adler, a law professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in The Volokh Conspiracy. “The opinion will also likely hamper any future efforts, perhaps by Democratic administrations, to expand or restore more fulsome (and burdensome) NEPA requirements.”
The article notes (and confirms) what I have been writing now for the past five years in connection with the FAA’s demand that rocket companies require new impact statements every time they revise their operations, even when those changes are relatively minor.
This point could reduce one of the largest delays caused by NEPA: litigation. Since its passage in 1969, NEPA has been weaponized by environmental groups to stunt disfavored projects—which has disproportionately impacted clean energy projects. On average, these challenges delay a permitted project’s start time by 4.2 years, according to The Breakthrough Institute.
The increased threat of litigation has forced federal agencies to better cover their bases, leading to longer and more expensive environmental reviews. With courts deferring more to agency decisions, litigation could be settled more quickly.
This ruling is an excellent move in the right direction, but no one should assume it will be followed honestly by the next Democrat who sits in the White House. Just as Biden expanded red tape by simple forcing the FAA to slow-walk its launch licensing process, future presidents could do the same.
Nor should be expect the lawsuits by these luddite leftists to cease. They will find other legal challenges and will push those instead.
The real solution is to reduce the bureaucracy’s size entirely, so there won’t be paper-pushers for these petty dictators to utilize for their authoritarian purposes. Eliminating or simplifying these environmental regulations would help as well, giving the activists fewer handles on which to hang their lawsuits.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
In a ruling that will have wide-ranging impacts across multiple industries, including rocketry, the Supreme Court yesterday ruled 8-0 that the mission creep expansion of federal government’s regulatory use of environmental impact statements (EIS) to hinder all new construction projects is incorrect and must stop.
The case involved a planned railroad in Utah, that had gotten all its permits for construction, including approval of its environmental impact statement, but was then stymied by lawsuits by political activist groups that claimed the impact statement, issued under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), had not considered the impact of the industries the railroads would serve, including impacts far from the railroad’s location itself.
This is a perfect example of the broad expansion of NEPA that has been imposed in the last two decades by federal bureaucracy working hand-in-glove with these leftist political groups.
The Supreme Court, including all of the Democratic Party appointees, said enough!
In its majority opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court clarified that under NEPA the STB “did not need to evaluate potential environmental impacts of the separate upstream and downstream projects.” The Court concluded that the “proper judicial approach for NEPA cases is straightforward: Courts should review an agency’s EIS to check that it addresses the environmental effects of the project at hand. The EIS need not address the effects of separate projects.”
This statement “is particularly significant for infrastructure projects, such as pipelines or transmission lines, and should help reduce NEPA’s burdens (at least at the margins),” wrote Jonathan Adler, a law professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in The Volokh Conspiracy. “The opinion will also likely hamper any future efforts, perhaps by Democratic administrations, to expand or restore more fulsome (and burdensome) NEPA requirements.”
The article notes (and confirms) what I have been writing now for the past five years in connection with the FAA’s demand that rocket companies require new impact statements every time they revise their operations, even when those changes are relatively minor.
This point could reduce one of the largest delays caused by NEPA: litigation. Since its passage in 1969, NEPA has been weaponized by environmental groups to stunt disfavored projects—which has disproportionately impacted clean energy projects. On average, these challenges delay a permitted project’s start time by 4.2 years, according to The Breakthrough Institute.
The increased threat of litigation has forced federal agencies to better cover their bases, leading to longer and more expensive environmental reviews. With courts deferring more to agency decisions, litigation could be settled more quickly.
This ruling is an excellent move in the right direction, but no one should assume it will be followed honestly by the next Democrat who sits in the White House. Just as Biden expanded red tape by simple forcing the FAA to slow-walk its launch licensing process, future presidents could do the same.
Nor should be expect the lawsuits by these luddite leftists to cease. They will find other legal challenges and will push those instead.
The real solution is to reduce the bureaucracy’s size entirely, so there won’t be paper-pushers for these petty dictators to utilize for their authoritarian purposes. Eliminating or simplifying these environmental regulations would help as well, giving the activists fewer handles on which to hang their lawsuits.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
The good news just keeps on coming.
Let us all fervently hope that there never is a “next Democrat who sits in the White House.” We still see a lot of conventional wisdom blather about the “pedulum swinging back,” but I think the Dems swung the pendulum so far to the left that its weight crashed through the side of the clock case, has become entangled in the splinters and is never swinging back.
Let’s hope that this decision will help reduce the building of new nuke plants by half, more in line with timelines seen in China.
” . . . which has disproportionately impacted clean energy projects.”
Disproportionate Impact: it’s everywhere! I anxiously anticipate heavy construction described as ‘historically marginalized’.
I recently wrote about a local utility project designed to upgrade the power grid to accept additional renewable energy sources. The project is currently on hold while the utility fights local activists.
Greens: they want an electric future; they just don’t want to, you know, actually build it.
The left uses all the tools at its disposal to stop progress or any project they can’t fully control or manipulate.
Unless it’s their project… Then it’s eminent domain without following proper procedures or rule of law.
In the mid west oil producers are using carbon dioxide to flush out oil to make oil wells more productive, and they’re using the lefts sustainable development build back better propaganda of taxpayer-funded carbon capture to do it… A caption from the title:
“Imagine waking up to the nightmare of seeing your family’s farm, land you’ve nurtured for generations, torn apart by strangers drilling test wells without your consent. This shocking reality is unfolding across the Midwest, as powerful corporations exploit eminent domain to seize land for unregulated and hazardous CO2 pipelines.“
https://standyourground.watch/
Talking about the waste of money, it takes 1/5 of a power plants output to liquefy CO2 exhaust. Once it’s pumped underground, it pushes the oil into more productive wells until the CO2 is released again as a waste product. Someone’s getting rich!
Biden signed executive orders, when he first got into office, to stop the pipeline from Canada, and numerous other projects that have already had their impact study completed. One in Arizona involving a mine with the deepest shaft ever built, costing billions of dollars was suddenly stopped. Without compensation or explanation.
Landman (Se 1, Ep 10)
“Tommy Explains the Farmout Fracking Deal”
https://youtu.be/6AVFoqiWCvA
3:52
“Our great grandparents built a world that runs on this stuff, until it starts running on something else, we gotta’ feed it, or the world stops.”
Now is the time to build several oil refineries!!
This should be a national priority.
Hear, Hear, Wayne! I recommend the series “Landman” – particularly episode #2! The dialogue is superb!