The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has been asked to rehear its decision last month to authorize construction in West Virginia of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. In a motion filed with the agency on July 24 by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) on behalf of Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Virginia Wilderness Committee, FERC was requested to grant a rehearing and to immediately revoke the West Virginia Notice to Proceed. The motion notes that “on May 15, 2018 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Incidental Take Statement for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Therefore, Atlantic and Dominion are not in compliance with two mandatory conditions of the project’s Certificate Order: Environmental Condition 54 and Environmental Condition 10. Certificate Order, Appendix A, ¶¶ 10, 54. Both of these conditions require a valid incidental take statement before pipeline construction proceeds.”
The FERC request follows a motion filed by SELC for the same client group on July 5 with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals asking that construction activity on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) be halted until the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) complies with the Court’s May 15 order vacating the FWS’s Incidental Take Statement for the ACP. Details of that motion were discussed in the July 12 issue of ABRA Update.