In mid-June 2020,
the US Supreme Court's
7-2 decision allowed
the construction of the
Atlantic Coast Pipeline,
a 600-mile project bringing
natural gas produced
in West Virginia eastward
into Virginia and North
Carolina.
The case was
United States Forest Service
v. Cowpasture River
Preservation Association
The Court reversed
a Fourth Circuit Court
of Appeals decision
that labeled the Appalachian
Trail—a 2,100 mile hiking trail
that runs through private, state,
and federal lands from Georgia
to Maine—as a national park.
Treating the trail as a national
park would have blocked
the proposed pipeline,
which has to pass underneath it,
and all other energy and
transportation infrastructure .
The lower court decision,
if allowed to stand,
would have cut off
the East Coast states
from the rest of the country.
The Department of Agriculture’s
Forest Service had approved
the pipeline, as not being part
of some new national park
that would be subject
to the Department of the
Interior’s National Park Service.
This case is part of
a larger trend among
climate change alarmists.
In the absence
of wanted
new federal
climate legislation,
climate alarmists
sought to achieve
the same goals
by reinterpreting
older statutory
authority
never intended
for the purpose.
That includes new i
nterpretations of the
1972 Clean Water Act
(since reined in by
a recent EPA final rule)
to block
natural gas pipelines
as well as other fossil fuel
projects such as
a coal export facility
in Washington State.
Here, the Supreme Court
rejected a strained reading
of existing law that had been
used to stop the pipeline.
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline
was intended to be an outlet
for West Virginia’s abundant
natural gas supplies, and
help keep energy prices
lower for end users
in the Virginia and
North Carolina.
It still faces regulatory
and permitting hurdles,
and may never be built.