A federal district court dismissed a constitutional challenge to the eminent domain provision of the Natural Gas Act brought by landowners against Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for an approval of the $3.7 billion EQT Corp.-led natural gas pipeline project that carried with it the power to take private property.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, Roanoke Division, granted Mountain Valley and FERC's motions to dismiss three of four claims against them, saying it lacked jurisdiction over the claims. It dismissed the federal commission from the case, along with all plaintiffs not from Virginia. The court said it will hold a hearing on the viability of the fourth claim against Mountain Valley, in which Virginia landowners said the pipeline project violates a section of the Virginia Code in its land surveys. (U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, Roanoke Division, docket 7:17-cv-00357)
The district court said a "breadth of case law" requires that a challenge to an order issued by FERC under its Natural Gas Act authority must go to a federal appeals court, rather than a district court, and then only after a plaintiff first asks for rehearing at the commission. The lack of jurisdiction prevented the district court from ruling on the first three claims.
"Plaintiffs have not cited a single case where a district court exercised jurisdiction over claims — whether characterized as constitutional challenges or otherwise — that would require a modification of a FERC order if the claims were successful," U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Dillon wrote in the Dec. 11 order.
The plaintiffs are landowners who own property in the path of the FERC-approved Mountain Valley natural gas transportation project. They argued that the tests FERC uses to determine whether land is taken for public use "fall well below the standard imposed by the Fifth Amendment" of the U.S. Constitution. They also said Congress' delegation to the commission of the power of eminent domain was too broad, and they challenged FERC's "sub-delegation" of that power to Mountain Valley. They tried to keep the matter in front of the district court by arguing that they were not challenging any specific FERC order but challenging the Natural Gas Act and FERC standards on constitutional grounds.
Mountain Valley is a joint project of EQT, NextEra Energy Inc., RGC Resources Inc., WGL Holdings Inc. and Consolidated Edison Inc. On Oct. 13, FERC approved the 2-Bcf/d gas pipeline project, which would run about 300 miles from production areas in West Virginia to pipeline interconnects in Virginia. (FERC dockets CP16-10, CP16-13)
