Feds halt work on Atlantic Coast Pipeline

[TexasTowelie]

Source: Charleston Gazette Mail

One week after the federal government tapped the brakes on the Mountain Valley Pipeline, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission made the same decision about the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, ordering a stop-work order Friday evening.

In a letter to Dominion Energy, the company building the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, FERC ordered a halt to construction of the 600-mile-long, $5.5 billion project. When it’s built, the buried pipeline will run from West Virginia to an extension in Chesapeake, Virginia, and continue into eastern North Carolina. The project is being developed by Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas and Southern Company Gas, but Dominion Energy is leading the construction and operation of the project.

The letter cites the 4th U.S. Circuit Court’s decision issued earlier this week that found the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hadn’t followed environmental rules when they issued permits for the project.

“There is no reason to believe that the NPS, as the land managing agency, will not be able to comply with the Court’s instructions and to ultimately issue a new right-of-way grant that satisfies the Court’s requirements, or that FWS will not be able to issue an Incidental Take Statement that does likewise,” Terry Turpin, director of FERC’s office of energy projects, said in the letter.

Read more: https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/feds-halt-work-on-atlantic-coast-pipeline/article_df5870c9-020b-58cb-b956-94815ac5e75e.html

[appalachiablue]

1. This multi state monster project will disrupt and bring

enormous harm to humans, wildlife, communities and the environment. Can't believe it's going forward..

[Achilleaze]

2. Maximum Stupid, Inc. (R)

As the west coast burns, the east coast drowns, crops wither across Europe, and the poles melt, the fuggin Fossil-fuel Freaks, Inc. (R) are damned and determined to PLUNDER THE PLANET for every last moneybuck they can grab, while working systematically to thwart clean, renewable energy sources.

There's your REPUBLICAN WAY right there. And it sucks hugely.

[Hortensis]

3. Once again courts requiring adherence to the law.

And how wonderful that, in spite of corruption and the best (worst) intentions of those who've taken over the Republican Party, so much of law established during the New Deal era, and progressive law enacted after as well, has not been easy to dismantle.

Sigh about these pipelines, but I don't think we should get silly imagining enormous damage because those laws, when upheld, don't allow it. The worst thing isn't mostly temporary disruption of environments (by far most of the pipelines run under coastal plain and under existing powerline easments where they exist). I've watched pipeline laid under a river. They know how to do it.

To me the biggest problem is the delay natural gas is part of before moving to more sustainable energy. We're too spoiled by always having it to realize that everything necessary to sustain our lives depends on uninterrupted energy. Civilization MUST have energy or collapse. Hillary intended to have half a billion solar cells up across the nation by the end of her first term. We're still going to have to do that.

But the voters in their wisdom effectively decided not now. So, natural gas pipelines as a "bridge" to the future is to me something of a terrible, damaging waste and a comfort. Just in case our electorate, in our collective wisdom, decides to continue us farther down a bad and dangerous road.