Another court ruling against a West Virginia pipeline, then another effort to change the rules
Another court ruling against a West Virginia pipeline, then another effort to change the rules
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Time and again, opponents have tried to delay a natural gas pipeline that stretched from northern West Virginia to southern Virginia, using lawsuits to delay approvals or construction.
And again and again, state and federal regulators have stepped in to eliminate such obstacles, even if that meant rewriting their own rules.
Now, the process seems to repeat itself.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court. blocked a key permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 300-mile natural gas project known as MVP. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals of the United States. UU He ruled that the US Army Corps of Engineers. UU It wrongly approved a permit that allowed MVP to temporarily dam four of West Virginia's rivers so that the pipeline could be buried under the riverbeds.
But instead of pausing or rethinking the project, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has already been rewriting the state construction standards for river crossings that forced the appellate court to block the plan.
Once that happens, MVP will request a new permit from the Clean Water Act, which it hopes to obtain by early 2019, said Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for the pipeline's developers. The developers still expect the pipeline to be in service by the fourth quarter of 2019, he said.
"MVP is committed to the safety of its communities, to the preservation and protection of the environment and to the responsible and ongoing construction of this important natural gas infrastructure project that will serve homes and businesses in the Mid and Southeast Atlantic. U.S". Cox said in a statement.
The ruling against the pipeline and the effort to change the rules reflect a review by the Charleston Gazette-Mail, in collaboration with ProPublica, who discovered that, over the past two years, federal and state agencies charged with enforcing the nation's environmental laws have repeatedly moved to remove obstacles and accelerate the pipeline, including changing the rules sometimes To facilitate project approvals.
The stakes are high for the West Virginia natural gas industry, which is booming and needs pipelines to move its product to cities on the east and south coast. The problems are also important for state residents who fear that the West Virginia campaign to encourage the growth of natural gas is a threat to the environment and its communities.
Last month, the MVP developers He said the cost of the project increased from $ 3.7 billion to $ 4.6 billion, and they blamed half of that increase in the delays related to the litigation.
Projects like MVP require a variety of permits before they can be built. It is assumed that developers and regulators should study alternatives, articulate a clear need for the project and outline the steps to minimize damage to the environment. However, in many cases, officials have allowed the pipeline to move forward despite serious unanswered questions, found in Gazette-Mail and ProPublica after examining government documents and court records.
Tuesday's decision on the 4th Circuit focused on one of those regulators' moves, a change in the guidelines for river crossings needed for four major West Virginia rivers: Elk, Greenbrier, Meadow and Gauley.
River crossings involve each dam and excavation of each river, sometimes with blasting, so that the 42-inch-diameter pipe can be buried below the stream bed.
This work requires a "dredge and fill" permit from the Clean Water Act of the Engineering Corps. If the construction is not handled properly, the sediments may increase in the water, the oxygen may decrease and the aquatic habitat may be damaged.
Because of these concerns, state officials set a 72 hour limit to complete this type of current crossing when they approved the use of a simplified Corps review process that used MVP.
The MVP developers said that each current crossing would take between four and six weeks to complete. However, despite the 72-hour limit set by the state, the Corps approved the pipeline permit anyway, using the simplified process that saved developers time, money and scrutiny.
The Sierra Club, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and other groups filed a lawsuit and, in June, the 4th Circuit issued a suspension of the permit approved by the Corps. The stay prompts a night press release of Governor Jim Justice, who said that his Department of Environmental Protection "will continue to closely monitor these procedures to determine what role the state can play in accelerating the construction of this pipeline."
Then, in July, the Corps rewrote its approval of the pipeline to, essentially, waive the 72-hour limit imposed by the DEP on the construction of the river crossing. The agency's lawyers said the alternative of digging a trench for the pipeline, without diverting the flow of water, would cause further environmental damage. Citizen groups said agencies could push for MVP to use a more conventional method to drill under rivers, perhaps reducing the effects.
Last Friday, a panel of three judges from the appeals court heard the arguments in the case and then, on Tuesday, issued a ruling. The unanimous panel said that their reasons would be "more fully explained" in a forthcoming opinion, but in a three page order He offered some clues about his thinking.
The order said that the Corps "lacked the authority to substitute" a construction method for the 72-hour restriction issued by the DEP. But the DEP is pushing to exempt the stream crossing method proposed by the Mountain Valley Pipeline developers from its 72-hour limit, essentially modifying the conditions it had previously attached to the Clean Water Act permit. The agency is now reviewing public comments sent before the mid-September deadline.
Kelly Martin, director of the Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign in the Sierra Club, which opposes the pipeline, urged the DEP not to carry out those changes.
"This is not a moment of post-movement goal," said Martin. "[The] DEP needs to finish this game and do its job. Complete stop ".
MVP developers sent a letter In support of the changes. The West Virginia Rivers Coalition opposed the changes, and Appalachian Mountain Advocates, a nonprofit law firm representing citizen groups, argued that the decision of the DEP is illegal.
DEP spokesman Jake Glance said that although his agency is not a party to the appeals court, it is "evaluating the ruling and will review the court's opinion when it is published and will respond accordingly."
Corps spokesman Brian Maka declined to comment until the full opinion of the 4th Circuit is published.
As the judicial case has developed, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been acting to keep the construction of the MVP moving.
On July 27, a panel of judges in the Fourth Circuit vacated two building permits from the Federal Land Administration Office and the US Forest Service. In the US, he said that Americans "deserve more than silent compliance to the justification of a pipeline company for the extinction of large tracts of national forests." Environmental groups considered the decision a victory, and the FERC ordered that the construction stopped.
Next week, MVP developers requested and received permission from FERC to continue working on the first 77 miles in northern West Virginia, with the exception of a 7-mile stretch near Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike Trail.
By the end of August, FERC had granted permission to MVP to work on the rest of the pipeline, except for the vicinity of Weston and Gauley Bridge Turnpike and Jefferson National Forest, over objections from FERC Commissioners Cheryl LaFleur and Richard Glick .
"We have significant concerns with today's decision to allow construction to resume, while right-of-way and temporary use permits remain outstanding," Glick and LaFleur wrote in a joint statement on August 29.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail and ProPublica want to tell the story of landscape changes in West Virginia, and how coal and natural gas are impacting it. West Virginians: Tell us how your community is changing. Call us or send us a text message at 347-244-2134, or send us an email: [email protected].
SOURCE LINK ERESVIRAL.COM https://www.beviral.online
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