Virginia's Atlantic Coast Pipeline approval makes N.C. the project's last major hurdle

Triangle Business Journal
by Lauren K. Ohnesorge

Nearly two months after the feds green-lit the $5 billion project, regulators in Virginia have issued a critical approval for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. That makes North Carolina the only state yet to give the project permission to proceed.

On Tuesday, the Virginia State Water Control Board approved a water quality certification for the project, a “very significant milestone,” says ACP spokesman Aaron Ruby.

With the approval, the only state agency standing between Duke Energy and Dominion Energy and the pipeline is the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, which has issued repeated requests for more information before it will approve the 600-mile project.

The federal approval ACP has already obtained for the pipeline is contingent on it getting all state permissions – including those being considered by NCDEQ.

According to Ruby, ACP has responded to all of the agency’s information requests regarding the water certification. ACP is still finalizing its responses for the last erosion and sediment control information request.

“We’ll have those completed and submitted to the agency in a week or two,” he says.

Ruby says ACP still expects to begin clearing trees “and other pre-construction activity” by the end of 2017.

In the meantime, ACP has filed condemnation complaints in North Carolina over some land where it hasn’t been able to obtain easements for pipeline construction.

Court records show that the parcels it’s trying to acquire in North Carolina via eminent domain total 20.6 acres so far. The four complaints it has filed over North Carolina land in federal court have, as of Tuesday, been limited to a handful of parcels in Nash and Cumberland counties.

Ruby says the firm has reached easement agreements “with about 80 percent of landowners” across the project’s three-state footprint, but still won’t release a breakdown for North Carolina, specifically.

In addition to NCDEQ’s approvals, ACP must also obtain a federal water quality permit form the Army Corps to build the pipeline.

Pipeline officials have repeatedly said the approval process has been one of the most in-depth of any similarly situated project. And public records show NCDEQ has applied heavy scrutiny to ACP’s applications.

While regulators in West Virginia and Virginia have either waived or approved necessary certifications, N.C.'s top environmental agency has not followed suit.