By Anita Miller
A lawsuit alleging Kinder Morgan has violated the Endangered Species Act with its approach to building a natural gas pipeline through the heart of the Texas Hill Country just got another plaintiff.
The Hays County Commissioners Court voted unanimously on Tuesday to join the suit, which was filed by the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District (BSEACD). The city of San Marcos voted to join the action last week, and the city of Kyle is expected to vote on the matter at its regular meeting Feb. 4.
Pct. 4 Commissioner Walt Smith, whose jurisdiction much of the proposed route of the Permian Highway Pipeline (PHP) would cross, predicted the action when he issued a press release Jan. 24.
In addition to Kinder Morgan, the lawsuit alleges the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) have violated terms of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and its protections, which are supposed to extend to each listed species.
Repeating claims made by the BSEACD, Smith charged that Kinder Morgan’s refusal to get a biological opinion from USFSW or to create a habitat conservation plan in its construction of the 42-inch pipeline, which would run from the oil fields on west Texas to near Houston, violated the terms of the ESA.
Central Texans — including those who own land along the proposed route, first learned of the pipeline plans in late 2018. Smith called natural gas a “toxic and flammable substance,” and the proposed route as crossing some of “the most ecologically sensitive features in Central Texas and the Hill Country.”
As proposed, the route would cross the recharge zones of both the Edwards and Trinity aquifers and come within a mile of the artesian spring that forms Jacob’s Well.
“The proposed route does not require approval from any state agency even though it crosses the Edwards and Trinity aquifers, which supply drinking water for over two million people,” Smith said. “The pipeline will also cut directly through the habitat of endangered species such as the Barton Springs salamander and the Austin Blind Salamander, among others.”
