Following the suspension of a federal permit allowing the continuation of construction on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) last week, the project’s purveyor, Dominion Energy, has petitioned the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to “clarify or reconsider” their decision. The Richmond-based energy company voluntarily suspended its work on the $7 billion project in Virginia, North Carolina, and West Virginia after the federal court stayed the biological opinion issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to allow construction of the pipeline through habitat for endangered or threatened animals and plants.
Environmental groups requested that the court issue a stay against the entire federal permit after the USFWS reissued permits in September after the circuit court dismissed the “incidental take statement” after the supposed failure to document the 600-mile-long pipeline’s potential effects on threatened species.
Dominion Energy contends the Fourth Circuit order “grants significantly broader relief than necessary” to protect potential effects on four threatened animal species in a roughly 100-mile portion of the pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia, and asked the court to limit the stay to those four species while allowing construction to proceed in other areas, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
Nevertheless, the court stated that it had clarified its position on the pipeline’s effects regarding endangered or threatened species among three states when it vacated the original incidental take statement, but not the full biological opinion issued by the USFWS. Environmental advocates against the project claimed the action by the federal court invalidated the entire permit, whereas Dominion insisted it applied only to a limited area of construction that has since been halted.
The delays on construction and subsequent court stays have resulted in the timeline of the project’s completion to be pushed back until at least the end of 2019 pending the results of future court decisions.