Park Service Experts Urge Supreme Court To Deny Pipeline Through National Park Lands

On behalf of Pamela Underhill (former Superintendent of the Appalachian Trail), Jonathan Jarvis (former Director of the National Park Service), the Coalition to Protect America's Parks, and National Parks Conservation Association, we filed an amicus brief in the high-stakes Supreme Court litigation that will decide the fate of the ill-advised Atlantic Coast Pipeline and many more pipelines that may seek to bore through federal lands located in units of the National Park System. The Trump administration and the pipeline's developers (led by Dominion Energy) have, for the first time in history, argued that the Mineral Leasing Act's longstanding prohibition against granting pipeline rights-of-way in or through lands in the National Park System does not apply to the United States Forest Service where that agency cooperatively manages a parcel of land along with the National Park Service that is both a component of the National Park System and a component of the National Forest System. But this tenuous argument overlooks the plain language of three public lands statutes that govern the National Park System unit at issue -- the Appalachian Trail -- as well as decades of inter-agency memoranda and practice that confirm the federal government's understanding, across many different administrations, that only Congress may grant the pipeline right-of-way sought by developers of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The Supreme Court will hold oral argument in this matter on Monday, February 24, and the outcome of the case will have significant ramifications for public land management long into the future.