Our friends at the NRDC, along with several other environmental groups, have filed a lawsuit against the BLM alleging that its use of a 2006 Environmental Impact Statement to approve several new gas and oil drilling projects in Colorado were illegal. The groups are asserting that the BLM failed to take into account the effects the oil and gas drilling will have on the air quality around the Roan Plateau. Now, I know that an EIS is supposed to take a look at the effects a project will have on an area in a certain place and time, but their needs to be at least a little leeway here. EIS’s are expensive and time-consuming to put together. There is no reason the BLM shouldn’t be able to do one every ten years or so and use it unless something drastically changes in the area. These groups are once again using the legal system to stall projects they don’t like and costing this agency money it could be using to do some real good. Although I guess I shouldn’t complain, since as soon as hippies stop suing people for trying to be productive my future job prospects will be practically nil.
It's a good argument; academics have even lent their (questionable) credibility to such an argument through the use of "benefit transfer" methods. Usually used for valuation, the gist is that you borrow results from a bunch of other studies and apply it to the present case. It's done in legal cases all the time due to the low cost and short amount of time it takes to get some results. The real question is the applicability of old studies. Assuming they're comparable, though, it's perfectly reasonable to use the method in many circumstances.
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