The empty construction site for the Bayou Bridge pipeline through the Atchafalaya Basin February 25, the day after a district judge granted an injunction halting work. (Photo: Julie Dermansky)
This week the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a federal judge’s temporary injunction halting work on the Bayou Bridge pipeline within Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin. In a 2-1 vote the higher court’s decision will allow construction to proceed while the company, Bayou Bridge Pipeline LLC, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, appeals the injunction.
On February 24, US District Judge Shelly Dick, an Obama appointee, granted Earthjustice an injunction in order to prevent irreparable harm to the basin, an environmentally sensitive National Heritage Area, until the group’s lawsuit challenging a US Army Corp of Engineers permit for the pipeline could be heard.
Earthjustice had filed this lawsuit January 11 on behalf of the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association-West, Gulf Restoration Network, the Waterkeeper Alliance, and the Sierra Club. The suit alleges that the Corps is not enforcing existing permits for oil and gas pipeline companies already operating in the basin, where pipelines, canals, and dredge piles traverse the country’s largest river swamp. According to the suit, the Corps acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in issuing a permit for the Bayou Bridge pipeline.
Judge Edith Brown Clement, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in today’s decision that the “district court abused its discretion in granting a preliminary injunction” blocking pipeline work in the basin. Instead, she wrote, “the district court should have allowed the case to proceed” and sought more information from the Army Corps of Engineers justifying why it granted the permit in the first place.
“We are pleased with the 5th Circuit’s Ruling today,” Energy Transfer Partners said in a statement. “We will begin mobilizing for construction activities as soon as…