Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-04-01136/USCOURTS-caDC-04-01136-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
East Tennessee Natural Gas, LLC
Intervenor
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Respondent
National Committee for the New River, Inc.
Petitioner

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued November 10, 2005 Decided December 16, 2005

Reissued February 9, 2006

No. 03-1251

NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR THE NEW RIVER, INC.,

PETITIONER

v.

FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION,

RESPONDENT

EAST TENNESSEE GROUP, ET AL.,

INTERVENORS

Consolidated with

03-1411, 04-1136

On Petitions for Review of Orders of the

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

James W. McNeely argued the cause and filed the briefs for

petitioner.

Dennis Lane, former Solicitor, Federal Energy Regulatory

Commission, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the

brief was Cynthia A. Marlette, General Counsel. Lona T. Perry,

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Attorney, entered an appearance.

Henry S. May, Jr., John S. Decker, Catherine O’Harra were

on the brief for intervenor East Tennessee Natural Gas, LLC in

support of respondent. Paul M. Teague and Jennifer N. Waters

entered appearances.

Before: SENTELLE, RANDOLPH and ROGERS, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SENTELLE.

SENTELLE,Circuit Judge: National Committee for the New

River, Inc. (“NCNR”), petitions for review of seven Federal

Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) orders denying an

assortment of legal claims. Because we lack jurisdiction, we

dismiss the petitions for review.

I. 

In 2001, East Tennessee Natural Gas Company (“East

Tennessee”) petitioned FERC for permission to extend its

Tennessee-based natural gas pipeline about 94 miles from

Virginia to North Carolina. 98 FERC ¶ 61,331 (2002). The

proposed extension was known as the “Patriot Project.” In

2002, FERC issued East Tennessee a certificate of public

convenience and necessity, subject to 69 conditions, pursuant to

Section 7 of the Natural Gas Act, 15 U.S.C. § 717f. See 101

FERC ¶ 61,188, 61,764-72 (2002). 

The conditions involve a range of arcana related to

construction of the pipeline. For example, Condition 36 requires

East Tennessee to minimize the Project’s impact on the southern

population of the bog turtle. Condition 43 sets a 10-day

deadline for cleanup after the backfilling of trenches. Other

conditions require East Tennessee to file certain documents with

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FERC. Condition 8, for example, provides that East Tennessee

must file weekly status reports with FERC until all construction

activities are complete. And Condition 5, central to this case,

sets forth the terms under which East Tennessee may realign the

pipeline’s route during the course of its construction. See id. at

61,765. 

NCNR is an environmental group devoted to protecting the

New River, which travels northward from North Carolina

through southwest Virginia. NCNR fought the initial

certification as an intervenor and lost. FERC denied a request

for stay and rehearing, 102 FERC ¶ 61,225, 61,655 (2003), and

this Court affirmed. See Nat’l Comm. for the New River, Inc. v.

FERC, 373 F.3d 1323, 1325 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (holding that

FERC’s certification was not arbitrary and capricious). The

pipeline has been operational since late 2003. 

Certification and the project’s completion did not deter

NCNR from mounting further legal challenges against East

Tennessee. NCNR filed almost 20 adversarial pleadings after

the project was certified. This particular appeal concerns seven

FERC orders addressing five legal issues arising from those

pleadings. For the most part, the issues boil down to claims that

East Tennessee failed to live up to the conditions of

certification. We discuss each in turn, though only the first

merits more than cursory analysis. 

II.

NCNR’s primary claim, the subject of four FERC Orders

and two rehearings, is that East Tennessee’s route realignments

were unauthorized because they deviated too far from the route

FERC certified. FERC maintains that it had approved the

realignments as garden-variety changes, often at the behest of

landowners. NCNR argues that East Tennessee moved the

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1

 Because we decide this issue on standing grounds, we do not

reach mootness.

pipeline so far in spots that it no longer resembles the route

originally approved. At the very least, NCNR wants this Court

to remand the matter to FERC, which might then order East

Tennessee to conduct new environmental impact studies for the

realigned routes. 

We do not evaluate the realignments on the merits because

we hold that NCNR lacks standing to bring this challenge.1

Aesthetic and environmental harms may confer Article III

standing if they describe a concrete and particularized injury in

fact that is actual or imminent, causally linked to the conduct at

issue, and redressable by the relief requested. See Lujan v.

Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992). The harms

alleged here do not meet this standard. 

NCNR submitted five affidavits describing the harms its

members would suffer if a pipeline were constructed under and

around the New River. The affidavits recount manifold

environmental injuries, including impacts from soil erosion and

blasting during construction, scars on the landscape, and water

pollution. They also portray aesthetic harms such as degradation

of the viewshed, decreased pleasure from swimming and fishing

in the river, and lessened enjoyment picnicking and hiking near

it. These harms mirror those deemed sufficient in Friends of the

Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Envtl. Servs., Inc., 528 U.S. 167 (2000),

and Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Glickman, 154 F.3d 426 (D.C.

Cir. 1998) (en banc), cert. denied, 526 U.S. 1064 (1999). 

These allegations are no longer sufficient on the present

record. All five affidavits focus on the general harms that would

arise from the construction of a natural gas pipeline under and

across the New River. But NCNR already lost that battle when

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2

 That Condition provides: 

If East Tennessee cannot successfully use [horizontal

directional drilling] at the proposed crossing of the New River

this Court upheld FERC’s certification of the pipeline. See New

River, 373 F.3d at 1334. Such broad allegations that a pipeline’s

construction will cause environmental and aesthetic harms no

longer suffice. To have standing to challenge route

realignments, NCNR must demonstrate that its members have

suffered, or will suffer, specific environmental and aesthetic

harms as a result of the route realignments themselves. NCNR’s

affidavits do not explain why any realignment would inflict a

concrete and particularized injury on its members. 

A further consequence of this failure to plead particularized

injury arising from the route realignments is that the injuries

discussed in the affidavits are not redressable by the relief

requested. Cf. Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 753 n.19 (1984)

(observing that causation and redressability sometimes

converge). Assume this Court were to agree with NCNR that

the route realignments were too drastic. The remedy would not

be to scrap the pipeline altogether. At most, it might be moving

the pipeline back to its original location. NCNR has failed to

explain how this remedy would alleviate the general

environmental and aesthetic harms stemming from the Patriot

Project itself. Simply put, our earlier decision permitted the

pipeline to be built, so general harms stemming from

construction of a pipeline do not confer standing for this lawsuit.

Beyond the route realignments, NCNR raises four

additional issues. The first is whether East Tennessee’s

successful effort to drill under the New River two years ago

should have been declared a “failure.” We assume NCNR is

referring to Condition 22 of the Certification,2

 a safety-valve

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and the New River Trail State Park, East Tennessee shall

provide an analysis of rerouting the pipeline across the New

River at a location where geotechnical investigations indicate

[the drilling] will be more feasible. . . .

101 FERC at 61,767. 

allowing East Tennessee to abort an ill-executed drilling effort

in order to find a new spot more amenable to drilling. This

Condition confers no rights upon NCNR. Moreover, since the

pipeline has been operational for over two years, we hold that

the issue is moot: Having succeeded, the drilling effort patently

was not a failure. 

The next issue is procedural in nature. NCNR argues that

it was entitled to service of documents by East Tennessee after

certification. “[I]n cases in which a party has been accorded a

procedural right to protect his concrete interests, the primary

focus of the standing inquiry is not the imminence or

redressability of the injury to the plaintiff, but whether a plaintiff

who has suffered personal and particularized injury has sued a

defendant who caused that injury.” Fla. Audubon Soc’y v.

Bentsen, 94 F.3d 658, 664 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (en banc) (emphasis

added) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Here,

NCNR has no such procedural right. As FERC has explained

repeatedly, its rules do not require that all parties to a

certification be served with documents after certification is

finished. “Rule 2010[, 18 C.F.R. § 385.2010,] does not require

that former parties be served with pleadings after a permit,

license, or exemption has been issued.” 105 FERC ¶ 61,139,

61,737 n.6 (2003) (citing Pacific Gas & Elec. Co., 40 FERC ¶

61,035 (1987); Joseph M. Keating, 40 FERC ¶ 61,254 (1987);

Kings River Conservation Dist., 36 FERC ¶ 61,365 (1986)).

Lacking a valid procedural right to post-certification service,

NCNR has no standing to bring this challenge. 

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3

 This Circuit has described res judicata as having “a

somewhat jurisdictional character.” SBC Commc’ns v. FCC, 407 F.3d

1223, 1230 (D.C. Cir. 2005); see also Stanton v. D.C. Court of

Appeals, 127 F.3d 72, 77 (D.C. Cir. 1997). 

Next, NCNR raises another procedural claim to which it has

no entitlement. It argues that FERC’s November 14 Order was

invalid because it was signed by the Deputy Director of the

Office of Energy Projects, not the Director himself. This claim

is frivolous. As FERC explained, the Director could—and

did—delegate signing responsibility to his deputy and designee.

FERC regulations state: “Where the Commission, in delegating

functions to specified Commission officials, permits an official

to further delegate those functions to a designee of such official,

designee shall mean the deputy of such official, the head of a

division, or a comparable official as designated by the official to

whom the direct delegation is made.” 18 C.F.R. § 375.301(b)

(emphasis added). Even assuming NCNR had a procedural right

in this case, it has not shown a “substantial probability” that the

agency’s action “created a demonstrable risk, or caused a

demonstrable increase in an existing risk, of injury to the

particularized interests of the plaintiff.” Fla. Audubon, 94 F.3d

at 669; see also Nat’l Parks Conservation Ass’n v. Manson, 414

F.3d 1, 6 (D.C. Cir. 2005). NCNR has not articulated what

interests it believes are at risk, and this Court has no reason to

assume that a rogue deputy surreptitiously issued FERC’s order

against the Director’s will. 

Finally, NCNR appeals a FERC order rejecting the claim

that East Tennessee failed to consider a particular route

alternative. See 106 FERC ¶ 61,159. NCNR’s passing reference

in its brief was arguably insufficient to preserve the issue. See

City of Waukesha v. EPA, 320 F.3d 228, 250 n.22 (D.C. Cir.

2003) (per curiam). But even assuming it was not waived, the

claim is barred on res judicata grounds.3

 See Apotex, Inc. v.

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FDA, 393 F.3d 210, 217 (D.C. Cir. 2004) (“[T]he doctrine of res

judicata holds that a judgment on the merits in a prior suit bars

a second suit involving identical parties . . . based on the same

cause of action.”). The parties were required to—and indeed

did—raise route alternatives during the initial certification

process in November 2002. See 101 FERC at 61,755. FERC

addressed further arguments concerning alternatives in its

February 27, 2003, denial of a request for rehearing. See 102

FERC at 61,658-60. This Court affirmed, specifically rejecting

NCNR’s arguments that route alternatives were not adequately

considered. See New River, 373 F.3d at 1331-32. Accordingly,

res judicata precludes us from readdressing the merits of

NCNR’s claim.

III.

For the reasons set forth above, NCNR’s petitions for

review are dismissed. 

 So ordered.

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