Supreme Court Poised to Gut Bedrock Environmental Law in Oil-Train Case
UPHE is proud to be part of the coalition fighting to stop the Uinta Basin Railway, a proposed oil train project that threatens public health, environmental safety, and climate stability. Recently highlighted in Rolling Stone, this case has reached the U.S. Supreme Court and could reshape the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a cornerstone of environmental protection.
If completed, the railway would transport an additional 350,000 barrels of oil daily from Utah through Colorado to Gulf Coast refineries in Texas and Louisiana. Along its 100-mile stretch near the Colorado River, the railway poses risks of derailments and oil spills, endangering the drinking water of 40 million people, including 30 Native American tribes. Downstream, the oil would be refined in environmental justice communities already plagued by pollution, such as Texas’s Cancer Alley, where rates of cancer and other illnesses are alarmingly high.
The broader climate implications are staggering. Burning the additional oil would generate 53 million tons of CO2 annually, equivalent to the emissions of six coal-fired power plants. This project serves primarily to benefit major fossil fuel companies, including ExxonMobil and Shell, at the expense of public health, water security, and the planet.
UPHE’s Dr. Brian Moench told Rolling Stone that up to 8,000 people die every year as a result of the state’s air pollution. And any effort to expand the refineries would be met with stiff resistance from the local community and federal regulators.
“Dr. Moench prefers to speak citing statistics and technical analyses. But when describing the public health emergency enveloping his state, he becomes uniquely animated. “We already have a pollution nightmare, and these people are proposing that we make that nightmare 500 percent worse. It just boggles the mind!” he says. “If the Ebola virus or Covid was killing 8,000 people a year, you’d consider it an emergency. They’re just as dead from air pollution as they are from other causes.”
The Rolling Stones article addressed concerns some have expressed over members of the Courts connections to the fossil fuel industry. Justice Gorsuch recused himself from the case without explanation but after concerns about his ties to oil executives who stand to benefit from the proposed railway.
In 2023, a lower court ruled against the railway, citing NEPA violations for failing to adequately consider its full environmental and climate impacts. Now, project backers hope to use the Supreme Court to weaken NEPA protections altogether.
Communities along the route, from Utah to Louisiana, are standing together to demand a transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy.
The Rolling Stones reported, “A 2014 study identified the amount of air pollution in the Uinta Basin tied to oil and gas production reaching at times the equivalent to the annual emissions of approximately 100 million cars. In 2015, Rolling Stone detailed a spike in stillborn deaths in the basin following the onset of the fracking boom. Since that time, numerous studies from across the U.S. have documented the links between fossil fuel operations and increased incidents and rates of stillbirths, miscarriages, and pre-term and low-weight births.”