Appeals court reverses STB's approval of Uinta Basin oil train

A federal court earlier this month sent regulators back to the drawing board on their approval of a new short-line railroad in the oil fields of Eastern Utah, finding major flaws in how the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB) analyzed the risks of increased oil-train traffic through western and central Colorado.

The ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is a victory for Colorado local governments and environmental groups who oppose the construction of the Uinta Basin Railway, an 88-mile rail extension that would allow drillers in Utah to ship large volumes of crude oil to Gulf Coast refineries. An estimated 90 percent of the resulting traffic — as many as five fully loaded, two-mile-long trains of oil tankers per day — would be routed through Colorado.

The Uinta Basin Railway would let producers, currently limited to tanker trucks, ship an additional 350,000 barrels of crude daily on trains. Backers say it would buoy the local economy and lessen American dependence on oil imports.

“We still have a huge need for fuel and we’re not creating more capacity in the Gulf or anywhere in the United States,” said Duchesne County Commissioner Greg Miles, who co-chairs a seven-county board spearheading the project.

The ruling, issued by Judge Robert Wilkins, grants in part a petition filed by Eagle County against the STB’s 2021 approval of the railway’s construction and the environmental impact statement (EIS) supporting the approval. Eagle County was joined by five environmental groups in suing to block the project, which is backed by a public-private partnership between Utah county governments and industry.

“The deficiencies here are significant,” the Court of Appeals ruling states. “We have found numerous (National Environmental Policy Act) violations arising from the EIS, including the failures to: (1) quantify reasonably foreseeable upstream and downstream impacts on vegetation and special-status species of increased drilling in the Uinta Basin and increased oil-train traffic along the Union Pacific Line, as well as the effects of oil refining on environmental justice communities the Gulf Coast; (2) take a hard look at wildfire risk as well as impacts on water resources downline; and (3) explain the lack of available information on local accident risk.”

The ruling vacates key sections in the EIS relating to those risk factors, as well as a so-called biological opinion prepared with the help of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to evaluate “downline” risks to endangered species and critical habitats along the Colorado River. It also faults the STB for failing to scrutinize what critics have alleged is the Uinta Basin Railway project’s shaky financing.

“The Board failed to weigh the Project’s uncertain financial viability and the full potential for environmental harm against the transportation benefits it identified,” the ruling concludes.

The ruling remands the project’s application for approval back to the STB “for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.”

This article was originally published by Colorado Newsline (https://coloradonewsline.com/). Republished with permission.