The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to dismiss a challenge by environmentalists to the U.S. Air Force’s practice of detonating hazardous waste explosives on a beach in Guam.
According to Reuters, the justices agreed to hear the Justice Department’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling allowing a lawsuit pursued by the environmental groups Prutehi Guahan and Earthjustice accusing the Air Force of ignoring a requirement under federal law to assess the environmental impact of a practice like this one.
Since 1982, the Air Force has disposed of hazardous munitions such as tear gas and propellants on Tarague Beach, a restricted-access location in Guam, a U.S. territory roughly 3,800 miles (6,100 km) from Hawaii that acts as an anchor for military operations in the Western Pacific.
Tarague Beach serves as a nesting habitat for the endangered turtles and sits above an aquifer that provides more than 80% of the island’s population with drinking water.
The U.S. government, under both Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden, has sought to have the lawsuit thrown out. After a federal trial judge dismissed the lawsuit, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it last year.
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