Compressor station ruling reversed

The New Jersey Supreme Court has reversed an appeals court decision, sending a lawsuit over Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) Co.’s new compressor station in West Milford back to that court.

In a decision issued Aug. 6, Associate Justice Michael Noriega said the state’s highest court concluded that the project is exempt from limits imposed by the Highlands Act.

That act is aimed at protecting natural resources in the Highlands Region, which includes West Milford.

The act says public utility projects are not affected by the limits if they qualify as “routine maintenance and operations, rehabilitation, preservation, reconstruction, repair or upgrade of public utility lines, rights of way or systems ... .”

Food & Water Watch, the New Jersey Highlands Coalition and the Sierra Club opposed the new compressor station, saying it was not “routine maintenance or upgrade of utility lines or systems” but instead “a massive expansion of operations in the protected Highlands Region.”

The Supreme Court found that the word “routine” applies only to the words “maintenance and operations.”

TGP proposed building the new compressor station in an abandoned quarry in West Milford as part of its effort to boost the flow of natural gas to customers in Westchester County, N.Y.

The Highlands Council did not object to the project because it would be built on a “historically disturbed” former quarry site where “(c)ritical wildlife habitat areas are disconnected and nonfunctional.”

The state Department of Environmental Protection also did not object to the project.

The state Supreme Court decision says a lower court must now decide whether the compressor station is consistent with the Highlands Act’s goals and purposes.

That decision would include considering “the fact that Compressor Station 327 is being built upon already disturbed lands that are unsuitable for vegetation and wildlife.”