The Supreme Court recently issued a ruling regarding the scope of impacts a federal agency must evaluate under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Court held that, when conducting a NEPA analysis of the environmental effects of a project, agencies can focus only on the direct effects of that project in the area at issue and are not required to evaluate “effects from potential future projects or from geographically separate projects.”
The case involved a proposed train track in Utah to haul oil. The agency evaluated the direct impacts on the area around the train track. The agency, however, did not fully evaluate the potential environmental effects of increased upstream oil drilling and downstream refining of crude oil. The Court held that, because the agency reasonably “drew the line” of which impacts it focused on in its evaluation, courts must defer to that decision by the agency.
