A federal appeals court is weighing whether to freeze construction of a project to extend the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline about 30 miles into North Carolina.
Environmental groups asked a three-judge panel Tuesday to put work on the MVP Southgate pipeline on hold while the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reviews whether state regulators improperly certified that the project complied with water quality standards in Virginia and North Carolina. The Sierra Club, Appalachian Voices and other groups are appealing both permits in two separate cases before the court.
It was unclear whether the panel, which in the past tossed out approvals for the main pipeline, would intervene in Mountain Valley’s latest project. At times, the judges appeared concerned with the pipeline developer’s track record of environmental violations while building the mainline pipe from West Virginia to southern Virginia.
But Judge James Andrew Wynn noted that comparisons between the construction of the main pipeline and the North Carolina extension were limited, since the projects were built in different states, with different water standards and using different mechanisms.
