By William Opalka
Millennium Pipeline has taken New York to federal court to force action on a gas line needed for an under-construction power plant entangled in a corruption scandal (16-1415).
In a 32-page brief filed Monday with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the company says the state Department of Environmental Conservation is sitting on a water quality permit for a 7.8-mile lateral needed to supply the Valley Energy Center plant being built by Competitive Power Ventures in Orange County.
The department must issue a Section 401 Clean Water Act permit for the project to proceed. Millennium says the department has ignored deadlines under the CWA, Natural Gas Act and a FERC order.
“By failing to act within a year of receiving Millennium’s permit request, the department thus has waived its authority to deny that request,” the suit says. “FERC set an Aug. 7, 2016, deadline for all decisions on federal authorizations relating to the Valley Lateral Project. The department missed that generous deadline by more than three-and-a-half months (and counting).”
FERC issued a certificate of convenience and public necessity for the line Nov. 9 (CP16-17).
The $39 million Valley Lateral project would connect the plant to Millennium’s main pipeline through the Lower Hudson Valley. State and NYISO officials say the plant is needed to relieve generation and transmission constraints to serve the capacity zone north of New York City.
Millennium applied for the water permit in November 2015. DEC issued a Notice of Incomplete Application in December 2015 and a second NOIA in June, to which Millennium responded Aug. 31.
A DEC spokesman said the department does not comment on matters under litigation.
The department told Millennium on Nov. 18 that it had received the pipeline’s response to its second NOIA and that its review of the project was ongoing. The department said it has until Aug. 30, 2017, to issue the permit, in effect arguing that the one-year deadline for action restarted when it received the response to the second NOIA in August.
The $1 billion, 650-MW generating plant, which has been opposed by environmentalists, also has a role in an ongoing political scandal that resulted in the indictment of Joseph Percoco, a former top aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Former CPV executive Peter Galbraith Kelly Jr. has also been indicted in the bribery scheme. (See Competitive Power Ventures Lobbyist, Former Cuomo Aides Named in Bribery Indictment.)
Millennium has not been implicated in the scandal.