The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit pressured the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on a two-year extension of the project's certificate. The court criticized the way the Mountain Valley pipeline was handled.
It is alleged that the construction of the pipeline caused additional sediment to settle in waterways along the pipeline's route, a recent E&E News release said.
"When the commission says that this terrible environmental problem was the result of something, does it have an obligation before it makes that statement to do a causal analysis?" U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Patricia Millett said in the release.
Millett felt that FERC still had an obligation to respond to issues that emerged.
"Is there a principle that if other entities find significant changed circumstances and they impose their own ways to respond, does that absolve FERC from responding?" Millett said.
The judge also doubted that rainfall could be the entire cause of the problems.
"The rainfall wasn't a full year, it wasn't in the times of Noah," Millett said. "Are you saying the sedimentation happened right after the rainfall? Saying there was a lot of rainfall in 2018 doesn't seem responsive to me."
FERC attorney Matthew Estes asserted that the agency had compliance monitors in place to keep track of the pipeline, to which Millett issued a rebuttal.
"That makes it worse," Millett replied. "If they have all this information coming in, and they can't connect dots, it doesn't make sense to me."
