4:53 PM Fri, May 02, 2008 | Permalink
Tim Barmann  Email
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A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by LNG developer Weaver’s Cove Energy against the environmental management agencies of Rhode Island and Massachusetts in which the company argued that the agencies were taking too long to evaluate its application to dredge sections of the Mount Hope Bay and the Taunton River.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit concluded this afternoon that Weaver’s Cove had not been hurt by the agencies’ inactions and that the company’s dispute may be with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, not the state agencies.
James Grasso, a spokesman for Weaver’s Cove, said the company was still reviewing the decision and had not formed a response yet.
Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch, whose office argued the case before the three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., issued a statement: “Weaver’s Cove Energy, the Court found today, cannot bypass or short circuit this mandatory review by rushing to a Court that has no jurisdiction,” Lynch said.
Weaver’s Cove Energy is the company owned by Hess LNG that is seeking to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in Fall River. The LNG vessels that would bring the super-cooled fuel to the terminal are so large that parts of the Mount Hope Bay in Rhode Island and the Taunton River in Massachusetts would have to be dredged for the ships to pass. Weaver’s Cove needs permission from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management as well as the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to dredge the waterways.
The company filed a lawsuit with the appeals court, arguing that the agencies took longer than the one-year review period allowed by the federal Clean Water Act. Weaver’s Cove asked the court to declare that the state agencies missed the deadline and have therefore waived their right to deny permission to dredge.
In an eight-page decision, written by Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, the court decided that it did not have jurisdiction over the Weaver’s Cove petitions because the company failed to show that it had been injured by the agencies’ inactions.
If, in fact, the agencies have taken too long to evaluate the dredging proposals, then it would be up to the Army Corps of Engineers to decide whether or not to accept the recommendations of the state agencies. The Army Corps is the agency that would issue the final permit for dredging, based partly on the recommendations of the state agencies.
If one or both of the states decide to reject the Weaver’s Cove dredging application, and the Army Corps of Engineers denies the dredging permit, then the company’s dispute is with the Army Corps, not with the state agencies, Ginsburg wrote.
“The denial of a dredge-and-fill permit would undoubtedly be a legally cognizable injury,” Ginsburg wrote. “That injury, however, would be caused by the Army Corps, not by the state agencies… A’s injuring B does not create a case or controversy between B and C.”
The court also said that it was not clear that if it did what Weaver’s Cove Energy had asked -- give notice to the Army Corp of Engineers that it is not bound by the state’s decisions on the dredging permits -- it is not clear that doing so would speed up the Army Corps own review.
Michael Healey, a spokesman for Attorney General Lynch, said the court’s decision indicates that Weaver’s Cove may have further avenues of legal challenges on the dredging issue.
The Weaver’s Cove proposal is facing obstacles on several fronts. The biggest is a decision last year by the U.S. Coast Guard that it did not believe that LNG tankers would safely navigate the waterways leading to the site of the proposed terminal. One especially tricky part of the trip would involve maneuvering the LNG tankers underneath two bridges that are very close to each other.
In March, Weaver’s Cove responded by suggesting that LNG tankers could offload the liquefied fuel before the bridges at an “offshore” platform, situated in the Mount Hope Bay, in between Fall River and Somerset, Mass. A 4-mmile underwater pipeline would then carry the LNG the remaining distance to the onshore terminal in Fall River.
Local officials in Massachusetts and Rhode Island continue to oppose the original proposal and this alternative.
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Good for the court. Weaver's Cove needs to wait like anyone else and let the chips fall where they may; if the agencies all work at reviving the natural bounties of the river, they will come to see that dredging it out for industrial port siting would be going in the wrong direction.
Look back at the river in better years:
"MENHADEN.-The following extract is from the Boston Daily Advertiser of Friday morning, May 23, 1884:
"A correspondent says that Mount Hope Bay and Taunton River have been visited by a tremendous mass of menhaden, the like of which has not been reported for a long time. They came unexpectedly, as few had been noticed till recently. This irruption of menhaden may, perhaps, account for the sudden departure of the scup. They abound all over the bay, but generally move in immense schools, one of which was playing around the piers of the iron railway bridge, and made the river below the bridge, in some places, almost solid. Captain Springer, an old fisherman employed at the draw, estimated the school at the bridge to contain 1,000 barrels at least. Capt. C. C. Winslow, who passed up from below with the fishing schooner Penekese, reports that Seconet River, below the Stone Bridge and Gould Island, is almost solid with menhaden."
-Gloucester, Mass., May 24, 1884. "
Source: US Fish Commission Bulletin 1884
http://penbay.org/usfc/usfc01.html
That's the Taunton River we want to see again!
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o2s3q
People in R.I are against most everything, that is part of the problem, A big part of the problem.
Re: fuel rates unemployment al a host of other things. Afraid to take chances
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Emile, whachu talkin' 'bout? Rhode Islanders take BIG chances. Don't we hold elections every couple of years?
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