City of Auburn v. United States Government

These appeals arise out of three separate but related decisions of the Surface Transportation Board (“STB”), concerning the reopening of the Stampede Pass railroad line in western Washington state. The City of Auburn 1 challenges the STB’s finding of federal preemption of state and local environmental review laws in approval of the reopening of the Stampede Pass line, and objects to the lack of a full Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”). The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway (“Burlington”) has intervened and filed briefs in all three cases.

1. Factual and Procedural Background

The Stampede Pass route is a 229-mile rail line running east-west through the Cascade Mountains of Washington state. The City of Auburn (population 37,000) lies at the line’s western terminus, at the junction with the north-south Pacific Coast rail line which connects the ports of Seattle and Tacoma.

In the early 1980s, Stampede Pass was one of three main lines serving the Seattle-Tacoma area that were owned and operated by Burlington. In 1986, Burlington sold a 151-mile portion of the Stampede Pass line— between the towns of Cle Elum and Pasco— to the Washington Central Railroad (“Washington…