Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen is leading 20 states into federal court to defend the permit upon which most U.S. pipeline water crossings depend.

Lawsuits brought by multiple environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, seek to vacate Nationwide Permit (NWP) 12. That permit allows for an expedited, streamlined review process for pipelines to cross rivers and wetlands. Ending the permit would stop the development and maintenance of oil and gas pipelines, the attorneys general argue.

“If NWP 12 were eliminated, pipeline construction and maintenance costs would increase, and pipeline availability would decrease,” the AGs say in their motion, which was filed last week but announced on Tuesday. “Montana and its citizens would incur increased transportation costs through the lack of pipeline access.”

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming all signed on to Knudsen’s request to intervene.

On July 22, the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth U.S., Waterkeeper Alliance and Montana Environmental Information Center filed a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineer’s NWP 12, alleging the permit violates the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act by not adequately evaluating its impacts on the environment and federally protected species. 

A second lawsuit came on July 27, filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) on behalf of the Alabama Rivers Alliance, Black Warrior Riverkeeper, Healthy Gulf, Ogeechee Riverkeeper and Savannah Riverkeeper.

NWP avoids bottleneck of individual permit filings under Clean Water Act

NWP was first issued in 1977 under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act and Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899. It is reviewed and reissued every few years with minor adjustments. The Army Corps of Engineers estimates that the 2026 NWP 12 will be used about 3,700 times annually, or about 18,500 times over the permit’s five-year term.

The lawsuit filed by the SELC suggests that even if NWP 12 were vacated, pipelines could still be built under individual Clean Water Act permits, but that would require more red tape and delay development and builds.

Energy in Depth (EID), a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, argued after the lawsuits were filed that the litigation is meant to “create uncertainty, increase costs, and delay infrastructure that communities and consumers rely on” by taking years to clear up in courts. 

In one example, the Mountain Valley Pipeline originally entered the pre-filing process in 2014 and was approved by the federal government in 2017, but the pipeline didn’t enter service until 2024 because of environmental lawsuits. Instead of being able to use the streamlined process of NWP 12, the pipeline developer had to seek individual permits for more than 500 waterway and wetland crossings as the pipeline was built.

“The latest lawsuit is about more than a single permit. It reflects a broader strategy of using litigation to delay U.S. energy infrastructure, even after agencies revise permits in response to earlier court challenges. Vacating Nationwide Permit 12 would push more qualifying projects into a slower permitting process, increasing costs, extending timelines and making it harder to deliver affordable energy to American consumers,” EID reported.

Cold weather results in more deaths than hot weather, and heating costs expected to rise 

Other pipelines have been canceled due to litigation. A 125-mile, 30-inch natural gas pipeline that would have connected Pennsylvania’s fracking fields to New York counties was canceled in 2020, but the developer is again trying to get the pipeline built. Democrats in New York, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, are again fighting the pipeline, even though it would help lower heating costs in the state and prevent unnecessary deaths this winter. 

Cold weather results in more deaths than hot weather, and heating oil is expected to average $5.26 a gallon between November and March – a 34% increase over last winter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The agency expects the average oil-heated home to spend $2,115 this winter, 21% more than last year. More pipelines could have brought those costs down for Democrat-controlled states in New England.