October 2020, Vol. 247, No. 10
Government
Army Corps Proposes New Pipeline Permit
By Stephen Barlas, Contributing Editor, Washington D.C.
With a federal court in Montana having thrown a monkey wrench in pipeline use of an Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) wetlands permit, the Corps is now moving to make changes in its Nationwide Permit 12 (NWP 12), which allows pipelines with construction plans that pose minimal impact on wetlands to enter a simple, quick regulatory permit approval process.
The Montana court ruled in a case initiated by Northern Plains Resource Council, which argued Keystone XL should not have been approved because the Corps acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in not considering requirements of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service when it issued the latest version of the NWP 12 in 2017. The Corps argued that consultation was unnecessary.
The Corps has 52 nationwide permits that allow companies doing a wide range of dredging around wetlands to avoid the major permitting requirements of the Clean Water Act if they will have minimal adverse environmental impacts. The NWP 12 is a broad category including construction of gas pipelines, electric utilities and drinking water and sewage projects.
The Corps’ new proposal does not explicitly address the Montana court’s objection. Instead, the Corps proposes to split NWP 12 into three separate categories, oil and gas pipelines, utility lines and water lines. In addition, the Corps would reduce the number of preconstruction notification (PCN) requirements that a pipeline would have to meet, from seven to two.
Those PCNs, when reviewed by a Corps local engineer, can often result in district engineers adding activity-specific conditions to NWP authorizations to ensure that the adverse environmental effects are no more than minimal.
These can include permit conditions, such as time-of-year restrictions, and use of best management practices or compensatory mitigation requirements to offset authorized losses of jurisdictional waters and wetlands so that the net adverse environmental effects are no more than minimal.
Beyond reducing the number of PCNs, the Corps is soliciting comments and suggestions for national standards or best management practices for oil and natural gas pipeline activities that would be appropriate to add to the NWP.
There have apparently been complaints about “potential inconsistency in Corps regional conditions for the NWPs,” and the Corps said in the proposed rule that “adding national standards and best management practices to the text of proposed NWP 12 has potential to provide additional environmental protection and promote consistency, regulatory certainty, transparency and predictability.”
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