U.S. Supreme Court to hear PennEast pipeline eminent domain case
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A sign protesting the proposed PennEast Pipeline route in Carbon County, Pa. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
This article originally appeared on StateImpact Pennsylvania.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear an eminent domain case pitting the state of New Jersey against the PennEast pipeline company.
The 116-mile line would ship Marcellus Shale gas from Northeast Pennsylvania across the Delaware River to New Jersey, to provide what the company says is much needed, affordable natural gas to residents. But New Jersey wants to block the project from state-controlled conservation land, and argues seizing the land through court action is unconstitutional.
By Rebecca Beitsch - 02/03/21 11:36 AM EST
The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to take up a challenge from a pipeline project seeking to use eminent domain to build a natural gas pipeline between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The PennEast Pipeline Co. LLC is seeking to overturn a decision from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that blocks it from seizing New Jersey state land to build its 116-mile project.
The state of New Jersey has opposed the project, as have environmental groups, but under the Trump administration, the White House sided with the pipeline company.
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It is the federal government who has the “primary authority to determine whether additional pipelines and related facilities are needed and, if so, where they should be located and whom they should serve,” the solicitor general’s office wrote in a December brief.
The GOP senators want a federal court to invalidate the ban, potentially opening a sliver of NE Pa. to what their lawsuit describes as $40 billion worth of natural gas.
3 months ago
Lax regulation until recently
The action is the latest attempt to curb PFAS in New Jersey, which has some the nation’s highest concentrations of the chemicals because of its long industrial heritage, and until recently, lax regulation. In the last five years, the state has set some of the nation’s strictest health standards for PFOS, PFOA and a related chemical, PFNA (perfluornonanoic acid).
In November last year, the state sued Solvay Specialty Polymers, a Gloucester County chemical company, for allegedly polluting local groundwater with PFNA. In 2019, it issued a directive to that company and four others that it said had contaminated water supplies for years and done little to clean them up.