Everything will depend on the ruling, of course, but a freight rail public-private partnership in Utah could lead to significant reforms of the federal permitting process for large infrastructure projects. In late June, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the petition of the Uinta Basin Rail Public-Private Partnership (P3), which is currently under an injunction from a federal appellate court due to an environmental lawsuit.
The question before the Supreme Court will be an important point of clarification in federal case law for the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). That question is: “Whether the National Environmental Policy Act requires an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority.”
