U.S. Park Service voluntarily withdraws permit for key pipeline crossing – By Michael Martz (Richmond Times-Dispatch) / Jan 21 2019
A host of trees were cleared in Nelson County earlier this year to make way for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The plan calls for the 604-mile natural gas pipeline to pass through three states.
Wintergreen Property Owners Association
Blocked by a federal appeals court panel from crossing the Appalachian Trail, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will have to wait for a federal agency to decide – for the third time – whether to allow the 600-mile natural gas pipeline to cross the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The scenic parkway and national trail lie side by side in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but they intersect in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which last month threw out a permit issued by the U.S. Forest Service to allow the 42-inch-wide natural gas pipeline to tunnel beneath the Appalachian Trail between Augusta and Nelson counties.
The ruling on Dec. 13 prompted the National Park Service to ask the court last week to allow the agency to vacate the permits it had issued twice before for the project to cross the 469-mile parkway near Reeds Gap.
The proposal would allow the park service to “consider whether issuance of a right-of-way permit for the pipeline to cross an adjacent segment of the parkway is appropriate,” the agency told the court in a motion made public on Friday.
The delay sets up a likely legal showdown with environmental groups in March, when the 4th Circuit also will hear arguments over a disputed permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that the panel stayed early last month.
Richmond-based Dominion Energy, lead developer of the $7 billion project, consented to the park service request to send the pending appeal of the permit back to the agency to review in light of “recent court decisions and other developments,” spokesman Karl Neddenien said.
“If the court grants the motion, we are confident that the NPS (National Park Service) will promptly reconsider the facts and reissue the permit,” Neddenien said.
The 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, has become the main battleground in a fight that could be delayed by the partial government shutdown, which affects the federal agencies involved in the legal disputes and the Department of Justice lawyers who represent them.
The shutdown further complicates an already complex set of legal disputes over the pipeline, approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in late 2017, but stalled by a series of federal court decisions and regulatory actions.
Last week, the court rejected an appeal by environmental groups of the water quality certification that Virginia issued for the project last year. The previous week, it declined Dominion’s request for clarification of the stay the court issued of a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the entire length of the pipeline.
Dominion also is preparing to ask the full 4th Circuit to reconsider the three-judge panel’s decision to vacate the Forest Service permit to cross the Appalachian Trail and parts of two national forests.
In the Park Service case, the appeals court threw out the initial permit for the project in August for failing to show whether it would be consistent with the parkway’s purpose. The agency issued a new permit in September that the Sierra Club and Virginia Wilderness Committee quickly challenged in the 4th Circuit.
However, the park service said both permits “were predicated in part on the existence of a valid Forest Service permit” for the project to cross beneath the Appalachian Trail on land in the George Washington National Forest.
After the 4th Circuit vacated the Forest Service permit, the Park Service asked the court to delay further legal proceedings so that the agency can decide how to proceed.
“That motion remains pending before the court,” the park service said last week. “Due to the lapse in appropriations to the Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior, briefing in this petition has been suspended pending further order of the court.”
The 4th Circuit is continuing to operate with limited funds despite the shutdown, relying, if necessary, on a federal law “which permits mission critical work during a lapse in appropriations,” it said on Friday.
The 4th Circuit “will continue to docket new cases, receive documents for filing, determine motions, hear oral argument, and decide cases on submission for the duration of the appropriations lapse,” the court said.
