Supreme Court to Hear Air Force Guam Detonation Case

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on Wednesday in a battle over the U.S. Air Force’s efforts to continue disposing of munitions by detonating them on a beach in northern Guam. The legal questions in Department of the Air Force v. Prutehi Guåhan are highly technical and center on the interaction (or lack thereof) between two federal environmental laws. The Air Force has asked the justices to reverse the decision against it by a federal appeals court, arguing the circuit court’s “sweeping” ruling “‘will have massive implications beyond this case.’” But the Guam-based group challenging the Air Force’s actions counters that it is simply asking the Air Force to “meaningfully consider the impacts of and alternatives to the[] open-detonation operations, including less sensitive locations,” and to do so “before the agency decides to move forward.”A 1976 law, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, gives the federal Environmental Protection Agency the power to regulate hazardous waste. The law, often known as RCRA, also allows the EPA to authorize states (and territories like Guam) to administer their own hazardous-waste programs.A separate law, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, or NEPA, outlines the process to assess the environmental impact of a federal agency’s action, including the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement before the agency takes “major Federal action[] significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.”At Tarague Beach,