Citizens for a Healthy Community v. Bureau of Land Management

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) (defendant) was authorized to lease public lands containing oil and gas reserves to private industry for development. BLM used a three-step process for making land-management decisions. First, BLM created a resource-management plan (RMP) that was based in part on an environmental-impact statement (EIS) prepared pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Second, BLM identified parcels of land to lease and conducted lease-sale auctions for the identified parcels. Finally, BLM decided whether to grant permits for specific development projects on the leased land. Beginning in 2008, BLM considered a master development plan (the plan) for natural-gas wells and related facilities on 2,300 acres of land within a BLM-administered area in Colorado. BLM published an EIS that considered four alternatives for the land. Alternative A involved taking no action, while alternatives B, C, and D involved developing 146 new natural-gas wells and four new water-disposal wells over a 50-year project life with either 36 (alternative B), 35 (alternative C), or 33 (alternative D) new well pads. BLM ultimately selected alternative D and approved the plan. BLM also approved an application for permit to drill (APD) by SG Interests I and SG Interests VII (SG) (defendants). BLM and the United States Forest Service (USFS) also approved APDs submitted by SG and another entity for the construction of 25 natural-gas wells (the 25-well project). Citizens for a Healthy Community and other environmental-interest groups (collectively, the groups) (plaintiffs) petitioned for review, challenging the environmental-review process performed by BLM and USFS (collectively, the agencies) regarding the plan and the 25-well project. The groups asserted, among other things, that the agencies had failed to take a hard look at the foreseeable indirect impacts of oil and gas production, namely, the emissions that would result from the eventual combustion of the oil and gas. Although the agencies had relied on oil-and-gas-production estimates in conducting economic analyses of the proposed development, the agencies asserted that they could not accurately calculate the effects of oil-and-gas combustion on emissions and climate change because it was unknown how and where the resources would be used.