Sierra Club among plaintiffs in lawsuit against feds over Alaska LNG project

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – For the second time in as many weeks, a government entity has been sued for its role in greenlighting the Alaska LNG project.

One week after eight Alaskan youth filed a lawsuit against the State of Alaska over its support of the natural gas pipeline, the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity have followed suit with a lawsuit of their own.

On Thursday, the two environmental groups announced they sued the federal government over not providing thorough opinions of the pipeline’s threats against Alaska’s polar bears, Cook Inlet beluga whales and North Pacific right whales.

“The agencies responsible for assessing the impacts on whales, polar bears, and other species neglected to take proper care in evaluating the full scope of harm Alaska LNG will cause,” Sierra Club Alaska Chapter Director Andrea Feinger said in a statement.

“We’ve only got one shot to protect the climate and critical ecosystems that these endangered animals rely upon. The federal government must take an honest look at the real outcomes of expanded gas extraction and transport across the landscape and waterways of Alaska.”

In a news release on Thursday, the nonprofits called out the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service for not following the Endangered Species Act.

“I’m outraged by how thoroughly federal agencies ignored the many ways this LNG project is likely to harm endangered whales and polar bears,” Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “Our climate can’t take more fossil fuel extraction and neither can these desperately imperiled animals.”

The lawsuit was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, with the hopes the legal system would deem the government’s wildlife assessments as faulty.

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