We will hear argument this morning in case 23-975, 7-county infrastructure coalition versus Eagle County, Colorado.

Mr. Clement.

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court, NEPA is a self-described procedural statute.

It is designed to inform government decision-making, not paralyze it.

Nonetheless, it has become the single most litigated environmental statute.

The decision below helps explain why.

Despite an environmental impact statement spanning 3,600 pages, including 20 appendices,

that addressed major impacts, minor impacts, downline impacts, and cumulative impacts,

the D.C. Circuit demanded more. It insisted that the Board study, the future project

developments in the entire basin, the prospect of accidents and train lines hundreds of

miles away, and the effect on refineries in Gulf communities

thousands of miles away. All of that is not just remote in time and space, but falls

well outside the STB's limited remit, and it falls within the jurisdiction of other agencies

that can address those issues comprehensively and

concretely if and when they arise.

And the EIS here addressed almost all of those issues, or at least identified them.

But in classic no-good deed goes unpunished fashion, the D.C. Circuit held that because

the agency identified the issue or flagged the issue,

it was therefore foreseeable and they had to do more.

That's a recipe for turning a procedural statute into a substantive roadblock.

After all, infrastructure requires investment, and for investors, time is money.

Project opponents, by contrast, know that time is on their side, and a remand just for a little

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