MVP’s Southgate water-quality certification denied again

Mountain Valley Pipeline’s (MVP) 75-mile Southgate extension project has received notice that the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Resources (DWR) reissued and supplemented its denial of MVP’s request for a Clean Water Act Section 401 water-quality certification and Jordan Lake Riparian Buffer Authorization, originally issued last year (OGJ Online, Aug. 11, 2020). MVP had appealed the 2020 denial to the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

In a Mar. 11, 2021, ruling, the Fourth Circuit upheld the state’s authority to determine that authorizing impacts from the Southgate extension at this time poses unnecessary risk to North Carolina’s streams, lakes, and wetlands. The Fourth Circuit only remanded the decision back to DWR to address certain statements made by the hearing officer and to “explain why the Department chose denial over conditional certification.”

The new denial reaffirmed DWR’s determination, concluding that a conditional approval would not provide reasonable assurance of compliance with water quality requirements.

MVP earlier this year received FERC permission to resume work on a limited portion of the main pipeline near Jefferson National Forest in Virginia (OGJ Online, Mar. 26, 2021). The pipeline is a joint venture of EQM Midstream Partners LP, NextEra Capital Holdings Inc., Con Edison Transmission Inc., WGL Midstream, and RGC Midstream LLC.