Energy

Environmentalists Use Lawsuits To Tie Up A Louisiana Pipeline Project

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Tim Pearce Energy Reporter
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A pipeline company is asking a federal appeals court to lift a stay on construction of a pipeline issued after environmentalists sued over the project, the Associated Press reports.

Lawyers representing Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC will appear before a panel of judges from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday to ask that the company be allowed to continue construction of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana. U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, an Obama-era appointee, stopped work on the pipeline in February after the Sierra Club and other environmental groups sued.

The environmentalists sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, charging the agency violated federal law in approving the project, which crosses over the environmentally sensitive Atchafalaya Basin.

“The Bayou Bridge Pipeline would pose an unacceptable risk to the wetlands, water, and communities along its route, and should never be built,” Sierra Club Delta chapter director Julie Rosenzweig said in a statement, according to the New Orleans’s The Times Picayune.

About 25 miles of the 162-mile-pipeline crosses through the wetlands. The company is allowed to continue work elsewhere along the route, except in the basin.

At its core, The Sierra Club’s lawsuit alleges the Army Corps of Engineers did not require the Bayou Bridge company to complete enough mitigation projects to make-up for the environmental damage the pipeline will do to the wetlands, Louisiana’s The Advocate reports.

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