US court blocks forest route for Atlantic pipeline

A federal appeals court has dealt another setback to the Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline by throwing out permits that authorized the $7bn project to cut through two national forests and a major hiking trail.

The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals said the US Forest Service ignored "serious environmental concerns" about how the 1.4 Bcf/d pipeline would harm forests in an apparent effort to help the project's developers meet its desired construction timeline.

"A thorough review of the record leads to the necessary conclusion that the Forest Service abdicated its responsibility to preserve national forest resources," the court said.

The appeals court had already suspended the permits in September, halting construction on a small portion of its route from West Virginia to North Carolina. But the decision today appears to remove the potential for a quick resolution by spelling out multiple issues the Forest Service will have to resolve before issuing new permits.

Dominion Energy, which is building the project, on 7 December said it was halting construction along the entire 600-mile project because of a ruling from the same court staying its permits related to endangered species. The court has separately suspended permits allowing the pipeline to cross waterways and thrown out a right-of-way on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia.

Dominion said it was reviewing the ruling. The company last month said it would delay the in-service date to mid-2020 from the end of 2019 because of regulatory setbacks and construction delays.

Environmentalists have filed a series of lawsuits in hopes of blocking the pipeline from cutting a route through the George Washington national forest, the Monongahela national forest and the Appalachian trail. The ruling, they say, offers a rebuke to President Donald Trump's attempts to expedite the pipeline without considering the effect on national forests and hiking areas.

"The administration was far too eager to trade them away for a pipeline conceived to deliver profit to its developers, not gas to consumers," Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Patrick Hunter said.

The court in its ruling documented multiple cases in which Forest Service staff flagged concerns with the pipeline and recommended stronger protections, only to abruptly drop the requests without explanation. It appeared the agency decided to approve the project and then "reverse-engineered" its record to justify the decision, the court said.

Among the problems the court found were "grave concerns" staff raised with how the pipeline would affect forest habitat and sensitive species, along with doubts about the effectiveness of an erosion control plan created by Dominion. The court also said regulators arbitrarily exempted the project from forest preservation plans and failed to analyze the potential for the project to avoid national forests.

The Forest Service did not respond for comment.