The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld state approval for Florida-based NTE Energy to build a $700 million, 650-MW gas-fired power plant and dismissed opponents’ claim that regulators should not have approved the project without also considering environmental impacts of necessary upgrades to a feeder natural gas pipeline.

The court ruled Sept. 28 that the Connecticut Siting Council properly refused to consider environmental impacts of installing a natural gas pipeline to the proposed plant when weighing the project’s public benefit.

尽管下级法院还发现该理事会不需要考虑管道的环境影响，但两名高等法院法官不支持三名成员的多数票。

The plant is proposed in the town of Killingly, on the state’s eastern border with Rhode Island, for utility owner Eversource.

必须升级在湿地的现有管道中约2.5英里以扩大其体积以服务于发电厂，但尚未提出升级，并且没有细节。

法院驳回了反对者的主张，即选址委员会不当地从管道中分割了发电厂，以避免对整个项目的整体环境影响进行全面审查。下级法院承认，两者是“交织在一起的”，并且没有管道就无法运作，但指出，产品线升级也需要理事会审查。

法官说，如果未批准管道升级，但工厂建设开始，总部位于圣奥古斯丁的NTE必须制定一项计划，以恢复现场。

反对者辩称，Eversource可以要求理事会的声明性裁决，即管道不会产生重大的不利环境影响，也不需要其批准。

The high court ruled based on state law that says the council needs to consider only the environmental impacts of the plant together with other “existing” facilities and not the impact of nonexistent facilities. “We recognize that, as a purely practical matter, the council cannot consider the actual environmental impact of a future project, the nature and scope of which is indeterminate and that has not yet even been proposed,” the court majority said.

但是执政党还表示,法律并不意味着n that the council must ignore that a proposed plant will depend on future existence of another facility that may well have a significant adverse environmental effect. It added that the regulator could find that the plant’s benefit is “entirely speculative” since there is a “significant likelihood that the second future facility will not be approved.”

高等法院说，该法律也不禁止理事会一起考虑这两个建议。两位异议法官说，理事会应该利用其酌处权来考虑未来天然气管道的潜在环境影响。

NTE proposed the plant in 2016 and won state approval in 2019, with plans to have it operational in 2020.

Glastonbury, Conn.-based Gemma Power Systems was selected as plant EPC contractor in 2020. Its contract value was not disclosed. The firm ranks at No. 329 on ENR's Top 400 Contractors list, reporting $268.1 million in 2020 revenue. The plant’s power train contract was awarded to Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems Americas.

杀人的项目（如果建造）将是自2018年以来在康涅狄格州建造的第一个主要的天然气厂。

Mary Miller, an atorney for the opponent group, Not Another Power Plant,, said it "was pleased that the court encouraged a 'full and fair consideration of the [pipeline expansion] issue' by all permitting authorities in the days, and possibly years, to come" She added that the group "still considers the pipeline expansion to be a grave threat and will continue to do all it can to protect the valuable environmental resources in its anticipated path."