FERC Approves Atlantic Coast Pipeline

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Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 45

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has given the green light to the construction of the contentious Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a multi-billion dollar energy project designed to transport fracked natural gas from the shale-rich Marcellus basin in West Virginia to Virginia and North Carolina.

This comes less than a month after North Carolina governor Roy Cooper and the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality rejected the ACP’s environmental plan submitted by regional energy companies Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas and Southern Company Gas on the grounds that it did not meet the state’s erosion and sediment control requirements.

Under the Clean Water Act, states have the right to deny permits to large-scale projects if they deem them a threat to their water quality, though FERC has the authority to override the states’ decision. The energy partners have 15 days after receiving the letter of disapproval to resubmit the plan with additional information required by the N.C. DEQ, or 60 days to challenge the agency’s decision and request a court hearing.

The FERC’s decision, while consistent with its past record of approving the majority of pipeline proposals it reviews, was not unanimous. In a surprise dissenting vote, Obama-appointed commission member Cheryl LaFleur, who had never voted against any proposal in her previous seven years of working on the commission, determined that the ACP developers had not provided sufficient evidence that the pipeline “as proposed is in the public interest.”

The proposed 600 mile pipeline is set to pass through thousands of streams and creeks, many of which feed into the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and into North Carolina’s coastal wetlands. The proposed route also passes through West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest and Virginia’s George Washington National Forest in addition to 2,900 private properties in all three states.

Dominion energy and their partners argue that the ACP will “support 17,240 jobs during construction and 2,200 operation jobs” in the economically depressed areas that the project will pass through, and highlight that the project is necessary to support the growing natural gas demand from public utilities, small businesses and a growing population in Virginia and North Carolina.

Yet many prominent environmental groups and companies say that the economic benefits of the pipeline are exaggerated; the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that only 39 permanent local jobs will be created by the project’s construction, and PJM, the company charged with managing the mid-Atlantic region’s electric grid, projects that demand for natural gas will remain flat for the coming decade as sources of renewable energy become cheaper.

Of particular concern to landowners in the path of the ACP, many of whom are minorities who rely upon agriculture for a living, is the potential for Dominion Energy to exercise eminent domain over their lands now that the FERC has deemed the pipeline “in the interest of the public.” Dr. Ryan Emanuel, a member of the Lumbee Tribe in North Carolina and professor of forestry and environmental resources at North Carolina State University, highlights the issue in a letter to Science magazine, writing that “the Atlantic Coast Pipeline developer’s preferred route disproportionately affects indigenous peoples in North Carolina. The nearly 30,000 Native Americans who live within 1.6 km of the proposed pipeline make up 13.2% of the impacted population in North Carolina, where only 1.2% of the population is Native American.”

As of now, due to the permitting set backs from the N.C. DEQ, Dominion Energy and partners have pushed back the Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s starting date from late 2018 to late 2019. Unless the FERC eventually decides to override North Carolina’s decision, however, the future of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline remains unclear.

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