By Michael Kuser

FERC on Thursday refused Constitution Pipeline’s request to find that New York environmental regulators had failed to act in a timely manner on the company’s water permit application (CP18-5).

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation rejected Constitution’s application in April 2016, saying the company had not included sufficient information for the agency to determine whether its 124-mile natural gas pipeline met state water standards. The pipeline, originating in Susquehanna County, Penn., would deliver 650,000 dekatherms of gas per day.

Constitution asserted that the DEC had waived its authority under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act by failing to issue or deny a water quality certification for the project within the stipulated one-year “reasonable period of time,” contending that a cycle of withdrawal and resubmission of its application had not changed the effective start date for the agency to act.

Though the company first submitted its application in August 2013, it withdrew and resubmitted it several times at the request of the DEC. It submitted its final application on April 27, 2015, and the DEC ruled on April 22 the next year.

In its Jan. 11 order, the commission said that “that once an application is withdrawn, no matter how formulaic or perfunctory the process of withdrawal and resubmission is, the refiling of an application restarts the one-year waiver period under Section 401(a)(1).”

The commissioners said they “continue to be concerned, however, that states and project sponsors that engage in repeated withdrawal and refiling of applications for water quality certifications are acting, in many cases, contrary to the public interest and to the spirit of the Clean Water Act by failing to provide reasonably expeditious state decisions. Even so, we do not conclude that the practice violates the letter of the statute.”

FERC, however, also refused a formal hearing request by the Sierra Club and local environmental organizations Catskill Mountainkeeper and Riverkeeper, saying they raised “no material issue of fact that the commission cannot resolve on the basis of the written record.” The groups wanted the commission to reconsider its 2014 approval of the pipeline.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday issued a statement commending the commission “for ruling in favor of New York’s efforts to prevent this project from moving forward,” saying that “the Constitution Pipeline represented a threat to our water quality and our environment.”

Last September, the commission ruled against the DEC on the same issue regarding the Millennium Pipeline, finding the agency had waived its authority by failing to act within the one-year time frame (CP16-17). (See Environmentalists Denounce FERC Millennium Pipeline Ruling.)