Administrative Watch: DEQ Delays Pipeline Decision

The NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) last week quietly told the company proposing to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline that more information was needed for DEQ to judge the project’s environmental impacts.

DEQ’s “request for additional information” detailed the additional information it wanted in order to evaluate the proposed natural gas pipeline’s impacts on the 320 rivers and streams and many acres of wetlands in its path. If built, the project would cross eight eastern North Carolina counties. The request for information named a new mid-December decision date for the requested state water quality permits.

Pipeline opponents regarded DEQ’s action as vindication of their criticisms that the pipeline proponents had provided inadequate analysis of its impacts. “The current application leaves out critical information,” said Geoff Gisler, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “There are literally hundreds of streams and wetlands that the company has asked to dig through with hardly any analysis.”

A series of public hearings last month were crowded with pipeline opponents, and 85% of the more than 9,000 written public comments opposed its construction.

DEQ’s decision undermines recent assertions by the pipeline’s backers to federal agencies that state approval was on the way soon. They said that their contractors wanted to begin site clearing in November, but state officials warned them that they had no authorization to proceed, and “any work done within waters of the state or protected riparian buffers” would violate state law.

Next: NCLCV calls on Governor Cooper to veto anti-environmental House bill 56