Court rejects latest effort to stop Mountain Valley Pipeline
An appellate court has declined to stop work on the Mountain Valley Pipeline, dealing the latest blow to arguments that there is no public need for the natural gas that is to be transported by the line.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied a request Friday by a coalition of environmental organizations. The groups had sought an emergency stay of a decision last year by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that allowed work on the project, which has been slowed by a slew of lawsuits, to resume.
No reasons for the denial were given in a three-paragraph order from the court, which is expected to rule later this year on the underlying legal challenge.
But in a brief filed Jan. 29, the Sierra Club and seven other petitioners based their arguments in large part on the assertion that the public’s need for more gas to heat homes, serve businesses and fuel power plants — cited by FERC when it first approved the project in 2017 — no longer exists.
Read more: https://roanoke.com/business/local/court-rejects-latest-effort-to-stop-mountain-valley-pipeline/article_4b7c2964-738b-11eb-a5c9-035dba0ba909.html