More states issue water permits for Atlantic Coast pipeline

Agencies in North Carolina and West Virginia separately issued water permits on Jan. 26 and 25, respectively, for the proposed Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline. Their actions came more than a month after Virginia’s water quality board certified its approval for the project, but with a delay (OGJ Online, Dec. 13, 2017).

The proposed 600-mile system would originate in West Virginia, extend across Virginia with a lateral east to Chesapeake, and continue south into eastern North Carolina where it would terminate in Robeson County. The line’s sponsors are Dominion Energy Inc., Duke Energy Corp., Piedmont Natural Gas Co., and Southern Co. Gas.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality water quality certification approval and its conditions are final and binding unless they are contested within 60 calendar days, the agency’s water resources division said in a Jan. 26 letter to Leslie Hartz, a vice-president at Dominion Energy Transmission Inc. in Richmond.

North Carolina’s Sierra Club chapter and other opponents intend to protest the permit’s approval before the state’s Office of Administrative Hearings, OGJ has learned.

West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection said its latest permit approval will require ACP’s developer to comply with a storm-water pollution prevention plan it had to develop in addition to the general permit has received, which will expire on May 18.

“Your annual permit fee has been assessed as $1,500. You will be invoiced by this agency 1 month prior to the anniversary date of your original approval date,” Scott G. Mandirola, who directs WVDEP’s water and waste management division, said in his Jan. 25 letter to Hartz.

Contact Nick Snow at nicks@pennwell.com.