## Facts

- Antelope Coal LLC sought federal coal leases adjacent to its existing surface mine near Wright, Wyoming, in the Powder River Basin.
- The proposed “West Antelope II” area covered about 4,109 acres and was estimated to contain roughly 429.7 million tons of coal.
- In March 2010, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a Record of Decision dividing the area into two tracts and offering them for competitive lease sale.
- BLM supported the leasing decision with a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
- Environmental organizations challenged the FEIS and leasing decision, arguing the analysis inadequately addressed climate-change impacts from combustion of the coal and local air-quality impacts (including ozone).
- The district court held plaintiffs lacked standing for one aspect of the challenge and otherwise entered summary judgment for the government and intervenors.
- Plaintiffs appealed, disputing both the standing ruling and the rejection of their NEPA-based objections (and related statutory theories).

## Issues

1. Whether the plaintiffs had Article III standing, including procedural standing, to challenge the adequacy of BLM’s NEPA analysis for the coal leases.
2. Whether BLM’s FEIS satisfied NEPA’s “hard look” requirement regarding (a) global climate-change impacts from coal combustion and (b) local air-quality impacts, including the use of emissions estimates as a proxy for ozone analysis.
3. Whether plaintiffs could compel alternative analytical methods or more detailed modeling when such objections were not timely or specifically raised during the administrative process.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit reversed the district court’s standing determination, holding plaintiffs established procedural standing tied to members’ aesthetic and recreational interests affected by local pollution.
- The court affirmed summary judgment for the government and intervenors on the merits.
- The court held the FEIS took the requisite “hard look” and was not arbitrary or capricious in its discussion of climate change and local air impacts.
- The court declined to require more detailed global climate modeling and upheld BLM’s use of emissions projections as a reasonable approach to evaluating ozone-related concerns.
- Related challenges under land-management and leasing statutes failed in light of the court’s conclusion that the environmental review was adequate.

## Legal Principles

- NEPA procedural standing exists where plaintiffs allege a failure to follow NEPA procedures that threatens concrete interests (such as aesthetic or recreational use) and the injury is fairly traceable to the agency action and potentially redressable.
- NEPA requires a “hard look” at environmental consequences, but does not mandate any single analytic methodology; courts generally defer to reasonable agency choices.
- Climate-change effects may be treated as too attenuated or speculative to require detailed global modeling in a programmatic or leasing FEIS, depending on the showing made and the record.
- Parties must raise reasonably specific objections during the NEPA process to preserve demands for alternative methods or analyses in later litigation.

## Conclusion

The D.C. Circuit held that environmental groups had standing to pursue a NEPA procedural challenge to federal coal leasing, but it upheld BLM’s FEIS and leasing decision because the agency reasonably evaluated climate and local air impacts and was not required to perform the plaintiffs’ preferred modeling or adopt late-raised methodological demands.


WildEarth Guardians v. Jewell, 738 F.3d 298 (D.C. Cir. 2013)