Supreme Court greenlights Mountain Valley gas pipeline

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for construction to resume on the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline, which will funnel natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia.

Just three miles remain unfinished of the 300-mile-long pipeline, but they bisect Jefferson National Forest. Environmental groups have been fighting the project, claiming it will hinder efforts to preserve endangered species, curb erosion and reduce harmful levels of stream sedimentation.

While the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the pipeline in 2017, it had been challenged by the Wilderness Society and a coalition of 10 environmental groups in two separate disputes that came before the Supreme Court.

The groups sued to stop the project on grounds that the agencies approving the segment — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service — had violated several environmental statutes in doing so.

A federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., had blocked that last piece of the pipeline despite a congressional order for the project’s approval that was part of the bipartisan debt-ceiling-increase bill, which President Biden signed into law in June. Those opposing the pipeline also argue that the law’s provision enabling Congress to have a say in overriding environmental concerns was unconstitutional.

The Biden administration had supported putting the matter before the Supreme Court, which ruled even as arguments were under way before a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Those in favor hailed the Supreme Court ruling as a win, while the Wilderness Society and other plaintiffs said the fight was not over. The project is slated to be completed by the end of this year.

“All necessary permits have been issued and approved, we passed bipartisan legislation in Congress, the president signed that legislation into law, and now the Supreme Court has spoken: Construction on the Mountain Valley Pipeline can finally resume, which is a major win for American energy and American jobs,” West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Wilderness Society president Jamie Williams released his own statement, saying, “Allowing construction of this destructive and unnecessary fracked-gas pipeline to proceed puts the profits of a few corporations ahead of the health and safety of Appalachian communities. We will continue to argue that Congress’s greenlight of this dangerous pipeline was unconstitutional, and will exhaust every effort to stop it.”

With News Wire Services