The Mountain Valley Pipeline faces another hurdle after the Fourth Circuit on Tuesday tossed the federal government’s approval of a three-and-a-half-mile pipeline route through Jefferson National Forest in Virginia and West Virginia.
The Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service’s reauthorizations for the project didn’t consider sedimentation and erosion impacts, prematurely approved the use of a conventional bore method to build stream crossings, and failed to comply with the Forest Service’s 2012 planning rule, the court said.
The planning rule creates guidelines for changing a forest plan, and it imposes requirements for sustainability, plant and animal diversity, and multiple ...