Notice of Scoping Period Requesting Comments on Environmental Issues for the Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage Proposed Capital Area Project

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY <SUBAGY>Federal Energy Regulatory Commission</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. CP25-29-000]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Notice of Scoping Period Requesting Comments on Environmental Issues for the Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage Proposed Capital Area Project</SUBJECT> The staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or Commission) will prepare an environmental document, that will discuss the environmental impacts of the Capital Area Project involving construction and operation of facilities by Eastern Gas Transmission and Storage (EGTS), in Clinton, Centre and Franklin Counties, Pennsylvania, and Loudoun County, Virginia. The Commission will use this environmental document in its decision-making process to determine whether the project is in the public convenience and necessity. This notice announces the opening of the scoping process the Commission will use to gather input from the public and interested agencies regarding the project. As part of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process, the Commission takes into account concerns the public may have about proposals and the environmental impacts that could result from its action whenever it considers the issuance of a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. This gathering of public input is referred to as “scoping.” The main goal of the scoping process is to focus the analysis in the environmental document on the important environmental issues. Additional information about the Commission's NEPA process is described below in the <E T="03">NEPA Process and Environmental Document</E> section of this notice. By this notice, the Commission requests public comments on the scope of issues to address in the environmental document. To ensure that your comments are timely and properly recorded, please submit your comments so that the Commission receives them in Washington, DC on or before 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on March 6, 2025. Comments may be submitted in written form. Further details on how to submit comments are provided in the <E T="03">Public Participation</E> section of this notice. Your comments should focus on the potential environmental effects, reasonable alternatives, and measures to avoid or lessen environmental impacts. Your input will help the Commission staff determine what issues they need to evaluate in the environmental document. Commission staff will consider all written comments during the preparation of the environment document. If you submitted comments on this project to the Commission before the opening of this docket on December 23, 2024, you would need to file those comments in Docket No. CP25-29-000 to ensure they are considered as part of this proceeding. This notice is being sent to the Commission's current environmental mailing list for this project. State and local government representatives should notify their constituents of this proposed project and encourage them to comment on their areas of concern. If you are a landowner receiving this notice, a pipeline company representative may contact you about the acquisition of an easement to construct, operate, and maintain the proposed facilities. The company would seek to negotiate a mutually acceptable easement agreement. You are not required to enter into an agreement. However, if the Commission approves the project, the Natural Gas Act conveys the right of eminent domain to the company. Therefore, if you and the company do not reach an easement agreement, the pipeline company could initiate condemnation proceedings in court. In such instances, compensation would be determined by a judge in accordance with state law. The Commission does not subsequently grant, exercise, or oversee the exercise of that eminent domain authority. The courts have exclusive authority to handle eminent domain cases; the Commission has no jurisdiction over these matters. EGTS provided landowners with a fact sheet prepared by the FERC entitled “An Interstate Natural Gas Facility On My Land? What Do I Need To Know?” which addresses typically asked questions, including the use of eminent domain and how to participate in the Commission's proceedings. This fact sheet along with other landowner topics of interest are available for viewing on the FERC website ( <E T="03">www.ferc.gov</E> ) under the Natural Gas, Landowner Topics link. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Public Participation</HD> There are three methods you can use to submit your comments to the Commission. Please carefully follow these instructions so that your comments are properly recorded. The Commission encourages electronic filing of comments and has staff available to assist you at (866) 208-3676 or <E T="03">FercOnlineSupport@ferc.gov.</E> (1) You can file your comments electronically using the eComment feature, which is located on the Commission's website ( <E T="03">www.ferc.gov</E> ) under the link to FERC Online. Using eComment is an easy method for submitting brief, text-only comments on a project; (2) You can file your comments electronically by using the eFiling feature, which is located on the Commission's website ( <E T="03">www.ferc.gov</E> ) under the link to FERC Online. With eFiling, you can provide comments in a variety of formats by attaching them as a file with your submission. New eFiling users must first create an account by clicking on “eRegister.” You will be asked to select the type of filing you are making; a comment on a particular project is considered a “Comment on a Filing”; or (3) You can file a paper copy of your comments by mailing them to the Commission. Be sure to reference the project docket number (CP25-29-000) on your letter. Submissions sent via the U.S. Postal Service must be addressed to: Debbie-Anne A. Reese, Secretary, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 888 First Street NE, Room 1A, Washington, DC 20426. Submissions sent via any other carrier must be addressed to: Debbie-Anne A. Reese, Secretary, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 12225 Wilkins Avenue, Rockville, Maryland 20852. Additionally, the Commission offers a free service called eSubscription which makes it easy to stay informed of all issuances and submittals regarding the dockets/projects to which you subscribe. These instant email notifications are the fastest way to receive notification and provide a link to the document files which can reduce the amount of time you spend researching proceedings. Go to <E T="03">https://www.ferc.gov/ferc-online/overview</E> to register for eSubscription. The Commission's Office of Public Participation (OPP) supports meaningful public engagement and participation in Commission proceedings. OPP can help members of the public, including landowners, community organizations, Tribal members and others, access publicly available information and navigate Commission processes. For public inquiries and assistance with making filings such as interventions, comments, or requests for rehearing, the public is encouraged to contact OPP at (202) 502-6595 or <E T="03">OPP@ferc.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of the Proposed Project</HD> The proposed project is known as the Capital Area Project (Project) and would enable EGTS to deliver an additional 67,500 dekatherms per day (Dth/d) of natural gas from an existing upstream pipeline interconnect in Clinton County, Pennsylvania, for delivery to local natural gas utilities in Frederick County, Maryland, and Loudoun County, Virginia. The Project would increase natural gas capacity on EGTS' existing PL-1 pipeline system through the addition of compression and facility modifications at its existing Finnefrock, Centre, and Chambersburg Compressor Stations in Pennsylvania and Leesburg Compressor Station in Virginia. Specifically, the Project would consist of the following modifications to EGTS facilities: • adding one 6,130 horsepower (hp) gas-fired turbine compressor unit and ancillary facilities at Centre Compressor Station in Centre County, Pennsylvania; • adding one 11,110 hp gas-fired turbine compressor unit and installing ancillary facilities at Chambersburg Compressor Station in Franklin County, Pennsylvania; • adding one 5,000 hp electric-driven compressor unit and ancillary facilities at Leesburg Compressor Station in Loudoun County, Virginia; and • replacing gas coolers and headers and cold recycle piping, and installing new check valves, at Finnefrock Compressor Station in Clinton County, Pennsylvania. The Project Location Overview of the facilities is shown in appendix 1. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The appendices referenced in this notice will not appear in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Copies of the appendices were sent to all those receiving this notice in the mail and are available at <E T="03">www.ferc.gov</E> using the link called “eLibrary”. For instructions on connecting to eLibrary, refer to the last page of this notice. For assistance, contact FERC at <E T="03">FERCOnlineSupport@ferc.gov</E> or call toll free, (886) 208-3676 or TTY (202) 502-8659. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Land Requirements for Construction</HD> The Project would require the use of a total of 64.0 acres of land during construction, of which 42.5 acres would be permanent impacts. At the Centre, Leesburg, and Finnefrock Compressor Stations, all Project modifications and facility components would be installed within the fenced boundary of the existing stations. Overall, construction would require the use of about 33.7 acres within existing station fence lines, 23.8 acres of adjacent land that would be used for temporary construction workspace outside the existing facilities, and 6.6 acres of land for the expansion of the Chambersburg Compressor Station. Following construction, the temporary workspaces would be restored. <HD SOURCE="HD1">NEPA Process and the Environmental Document</HD> Any environmental document issu ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━