Dominion would rather ignore reality!

From an Article by Michael Martz, Richmond Times-Dispatch, February 26, 2019

Dominion Energy and its partners in the Atlantic Coast Pipeline are looking for new ways around the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, including a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Richmond-based energy company, the lead partner in the project, said Tuesday that it “expects an appeal” to the Supreme Court within 90 days to challenge a 4th Circuit decision. The court tossed out a critical federal permit for the 600-mile pipeline to cross beneath the Appalachian Trail in the Blue Ridge Mountains along the Augusta County and Nelson County line.

Dominion declared its intention after a 4th Circuit decision on Monday to dismiss the company’s request for the full appeals court to reconsider a December decision by a three-judge panel. That panel vacated the permits the U.S. Forest Service issued for the project to cross the Appalachian Trail near Wintergreen Resort and portions of two national forests.

The company — anticipating the possible rejection of its request for an “en banc” hearing by the Richmond-based 4th Circuit — estimated earlier this month that the Supreme Court appeal could add $250 million to the cost of the project by delaying completion of the final segment of the pipeline until the end of 2021.

The cost already has risen by $3 billion — to as much as $7.5 billion — since then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced it with Dominion officials in September 2014. The company already has spent $2.8 billion on the stalled project, Dominion officials said in an earnings conference call with investment analysts on February 1st.

“We are actively pursuing multiple paths to resolve all outstanding permit issues, including judicial, legislative and administrative avenues,” Dominion CEO Thomas F. Farrell II said on the conference call.

The company is preparing to split the project into two phases to allow it to first build the pipeline from Buckingham County — where it plans to build a hotly disputed natural gas compressor station at the intersection with an existing pipeline — to Lumberton, N.C.

Dominion also proposes to build a 70-mile spur to serve Hampton Roads, where natural gas supplies are limited for industrial customers and economic development prospects. The company proposes to begin work on the first phase by the end of this year and complete it by late 2020. “The partial construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will allow us to open up new pathways for the natural gas to reach customers who need it,” spokesman Karl Neddenien said Tuesday.

Environmental groups are filing legal challenges to every move by Dominion and its partners — Duke Energy and Southern Company Gas — to build the pipeline, including a state permit issued in December for the Buckingham compressor station at Union Hill, a historically black community that has been the focal point of protests.

“The 4th Circuit’s decision, now final, confirmed that this pipeline has to play by the same rules as everybody else,” said DJ Gerken, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represents the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations.

“The Forest Service has never approved a new pipeline across the Appalachian Trail — but, under intense political pressure, it did for Atlantic, while ignoring routes that would avoid the forest,” Gerken said in a statement Monday night. “Atlantic could reroute, but instead it should scrap this boondoggle and stop running up a bill it wants to stick to customers.”

Dominion acknowledged even before the 4th Circuit ruled against the Forest Service permits on December 12th that the company was pursuing legislation in pending appropriations bills to give the federal agency clear authority to permit the pipeline crossing beneath the Appalachian Trail.

Those efforts went nowhere, as nine federal departments shut down for 35 days for lack of funding in a political deadlock between Congress and President Donald Trump. They averted a second possible shutdown by reaching an agreement this month on funding bills that did not include new authority for the Forest Service to permit the pipeline to cross the national scenic trail.

However, the company said Tuesday that it is still pursuing legislative remedies, as well as administrative solutions that Farrell told analysts had been hampered by the partial government shutdown that began in late December. Among the agencies shut down were the Agriculture Department, which oversees the Forest Service, and the Interior Department, which includes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service.

Both of the Interior Department agencies also have been engaged in litigation in the 4th Circuit over permits they issued for the pipeline. The appeals court suspended a stay of the biological opinion by the Fish and Wildlife Service that determined the project would not pose an existential threat to endangered and threatened species.

The 4th Circuit first vacated the “incidental take” statement, part of the biological opinion, in May and confirmed its decision in August. The federal agency reissued the permit the next month, but in early December the court placed a stay on the biological opinion for the entire pipeline route.

Dominion suspended construction — then limited to tree clearing in Virginia — and asked for clarification of the order’s scope. It contends the stay should be limited to a 100-mile stretch that includes the habitat of four endangered or threatened animal species, but the court rejected its request for clarification or additional hearing. The case is scheduled for hearing in early May.

The park service voluntarily vacated the second permit it had issued for the project to cross beneath the Blue Ridge Parkway — which runs beside the Appalachian Trail in the Blue Ridge — after the 4th Circuit struck down the first one in August. “We’re confident the Park Service will review the facts and reissue the permit,” Neddenien, the pipeline spokesman, said Tuesday.

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See also: Dominion adds another natural gas fired power plant to Virginia fleet – Electric Light & Power, December 10, 2018

MVP in the Blue Ridge Mountains of VA

Excerpt from Article by Kate Mishkin and Ken Ward Jr., The Charleston Gazette-Mail, and Beena Raghavendran, ProPublica, August 10, 2018

Update, August 10, 9 p.m.: On Friday evening, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order halting all work on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. FERC cited an appeals court ruling that found the National Park Service and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service skirted environment rules when approving the $5.5 billion, 600-mile project.

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A week ago, the federal government halted work on the massive MVP pipeline project that runs from Northern West Virginia through Southern Virginia.

The government said it had no choice but to order work on the multibillion-dollar Mountain Valley Pipeline stopped after a federal appeals court ruled that two federal agencies had neglected to follow important environmental protections when they approved the project.

The court had found that the U.S. Forest Service had suddenly dropped — without any explanation — its longstanding concerns that soil erosion from the pipeline would harm rivers, streams and aquatic life. It also found that the Bureau of Land Management approved a new construction path through the Jefferson National Forest, ignoring rules that favor sticking to existing utility rights-of-way.

“American citizens understandably place their trust in the Forest Service to protect and preserve this country’s forests, and they deserve more than silent acquiescence to a pipeline company’s justification for upending large swaths of national forestlands,” Judge Stephanie Thacker wrote for a unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “Citizens also trust the Bureau of Land Management to prevent undue degradation to public lands by following the dictates” of federal law.

It turns out, those weren’t the only times state and federal regulators bent environmental standards for the project, which began construction in February.

A review by the Charleston Gazette-Mail, in collaboration with ProPublica, shows that, over the past two years, federal and state agencies tasked with enforcing the nation’s environmental laws have moved repeatedly to clear roadblocks and expedite the pipeline, even changing the rules at times to ease the project’s approvals.

Projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, known as MVP, require a variety of approvals before being built. Developers and regulators must study various alternatives, describe a clear need for the project, and show that steps will be taken to minimize damage to the environment and reduce negative effects on valuable resources like public lands and the water supply.

But in numerous instances, officials greenlit the pipeline despite serious unanswered questions, records show.

For example:

— After citizen groups brought a lawsuit challenging how West Virginia regulators concluded that the pipeline would not violate state water quality standards, the state Department of Environmental Protection dropped its review and instead waived its authority to decide if the project complied with its rules. This effectively ended the legal challenge and paved the way for construction to begin.

— Confronted with a similar lawsuit filed by the same citizen groups, the state and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved to rewrite their rules for how long pipeline construction could block the flow of rivers. Environmentalists fear that, under the plan approved by the Corps, four West Virginia rivers could be left dry for long periods of time, potentially harming aquatic life during construction.

— Developers persuaded judges to speed court proceedings and grant them access to private property along the route to cut down trees, saying they needed to do so before protected bats came out of hibernation. But then, despite guidelines saying no logging could take place after March 31, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission twice extended the company’s deadline.

Regulatory agencies waiving standards and rewriting rules to pave the way for economic projects isn’t new. West Virginians have watched it happen for decades with the coal industry, as mine operators used variances to avoid strict land reclamation standards or fill streams with waste rock and dirt. That pattern is continuing with the natural gas boom.

“I’ve seen this kind of behavior from agencies before,” said Pat Parenteau, who teaches environmental law at the Vermont Law School. “They start out being strong, but they roll over, especially for these big energy projects that have this national interest, energy security push behind them.”

In its “stop work” order last week, FERC said, “there is no reason to believe” that the federal agencies involved would not “ultimately issue” new permits that would withstand the court’s scrutiny. But until then, FERC ordered that “construction activity along all portions of the project and in all work areas must cease immediately.”

A news release from Mountain Valley Pipeline echoed FERC’s statement that the pipeline permits would be easily reissued. Developers said they would work closely with the agencies involved to resolve the challenges to their work and “we look forward to continuing the safe construction of this important infrastructure project.”

When it is built, the Mountain Valley Pipeline will transport natural gas from Wetzel County, near West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle, to Pittsylvania County, Virginia, crossing about 200 miles in West Virginia and 100 miles in Virginia. It is one of several large transmission pipelines in the works across the Appalachians, part of the ongoing rush to market natural gas from the boom in drilling and production in the sprawling Marcellus Shale formation.

In another ruling that exposed flaws in the government’s pipeline review process, the 4th Circuit earlier this week threw out two permits for a pipeline even bigger than the MVP: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a $5.5 billion effort to transport gas more than 600 miles, from central West Virginia to the eastern portions of Virginia and North Carolina.

Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrotethat the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved the project without setting any real limits on damage to endangered species, and the National Park Service granted permission for pipeline developers to drill under the Blue Ridge Parkway without determining if doing so was consistent with the road’s protection as a unit of the Park Service.

Jeffrey Olson, a spokesman for the Park Service, said the agency is reviewing the ruling.

Because different permits for pipelines cover different parts and types of construction work, it’s not entirely clear how one court ruling that overturns one permit ultimately affects other parts of the construction. Eventually, such decisions are made by FERC, which is the lead agency for gas infrastructure projects.

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This article was produced in partnership with the Charleston Gazette-Mail, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. See the full article here.