The Southern Environmental Law Center has sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for allowing companies to sidestep environmental laws when constructing oil and gas pipelines, including one scheduled to cross the Black Belt.
The lawsuit claims that the Corps of Engineers issued a type of permit that “authorizes the construction of oil and natural gas pipelines hundreds of miles long with thousands of individual waterbody crossings” without following federal laws that protect waterways, rare species and other aquatic resources.
The lawsuit specifically points to South System Expansion 4, a $3 billion project that calls for burying about 290 miles of natural gas pipeline from Clarke County, Mississippi east to Augusta, Georgia. That route takes the pipeline right through the middle of Alabama, much of it through the Black Belt…