Federal court strikes down Fish and Wildlife permit for Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Dominion Energy’s hopes for resuming construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline have run into a new obstacle erected by a federal appeals court panel in Richmond that threw out a federal permit on Friday because it failed to adequately protect endangered or threatened species in the path of the 605-mile project.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a permit that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued last year just 19 days after the same court blocked the agency’s previous finding that the massive natural gas pipeline would not jeopardize the viability of four endangered or threatened species.
A three-judge panel, in a 50-page opinion written by Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory, took note of the federal agency’s quick action and warned, “In fast-tracking its decisions, the agency appears to have lost sight of its mandate under the [Endangered Species Act]: ‘to protect and conserve endangered and threatened species and their habitats.’?”
Gregory ruled that the agency’s biological opinion and accompanying incidental take statement — a reference to species killed or harmed as a result of construction — were “arbitrary and capricious” by failing to show how the pipeline would not jeopardize the survival of an endangered bumblebee population in Bath County or freshwater mussels in three West Virginia rivers and their tributaries.
Read more: https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/government-politics/federal-court-strikes-down-fish-and-wildlife-permit-for-atlantic/article_c5c40622-f38c-59a3-a248-f16d1c50ed44.html
