BANGOR (AP) – A federal judge has dismissed legal challenges brought against the Bureau of Indian Affairs by a group of Passamaquoddy Indians who oppose a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal on the Pleasant Point Reservation.
U.S. District Judge John Woodcock ruled Thursday that We Protect Our Homeland did not have standing to file a lawsuit and had acted prematurely.
Woodcock wrote that a group of private citizens who are reservation residents do not have standing to bring a lawsuit because they are not the tribe and because none of them owns the Split Rock land where the proposed LNG terminal might be built.
The judge also suggested a lawsuit would be more timely if filed after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission completed an environmental impact statement and “determined what, if any, environmental detriments will be caused by an LNG terminal.”
The plaintiffs “have not challenged the action the BIA actually approved,” he said, “and any related risks to the environment based on those actions, but only the consequences they fear will occur sometime in the future, if other approvals are obtained.”
A hearing was held in September in U.S. District Court.
“The plaintiffs have chosen their field of battle,” Woodcock said. “If they had selected to fight at the beachhead, claiming injury even with the first test boring, this would be a different case. Instead they have focused their challenge on the terminals ultimate construction.”
In May 2005, the Pleasant Point Tribal Council signed a partnership agreement with Quoddy Bay LLC, an Oklahoma developer that wants to build an LNG terminal in Washington County. The Bureau of Indian Affairs approved the lease two weeks later.
Quoddy Bay LNG is proposing to build a receiving terminal at the Pleasant Point Reservation and an LNG storage facility in nearby Perry.
Among other developers that have eyed Maine, Downeast LNG of Washington, D.C., is proposing to build a receiving terminal and storage facility in Mill Cove in the adjacent town of Robbinston.
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