New York AG Filed Petition for Review of FERC’s Approval of Northern Access Pipeline

MAY 30, 2019

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a petition for review of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) August 2018 order finding that the state waived its Clean Water Act certification authority for National Fuel’s Northern Access pipeline. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC) received an application for certification of the project under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act in March 2016, and subsequently entered into an agreement with National Fuel to revise the date of receipt to April 2016. In April 2017, within the one-year statutory limit for state review, NYDEC denied certification for the project. However, in August 2018, FERC sided with Natural Fuel and found that NYDEC exceeded the one-year limit and waived its certification authority, and subsequently denied NYDEC’s request for rehearing. In the petition for review, AG James argued that FERC’s waiver order and rehearing denial should be “set aside in whole as illegal, unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious.”