A federal court tossed a lawsuit this week filed by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network claiming the Federal Energy Regulatory is biased in favor of natural gas pipelines.

The environmental group filed the lawsuit in 2016.In her opinion, Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote, "FERC stands to gain no direct benefit from the approval of a particular pipeline project.""If FERC does not approve any one project, its budget remains the same, with the proportional volumetric charge per gas company being slightly higher. If FERC commissioners also had ownership interests in gas companies, they might individually have a financial stake in granting certificates because it would reduce the proportional charges on their own companies. The possibility that a decrease in industry fees brought on by pipelines being rejected could result in a budgetary decrease over time was simply too remote to create any such bias."FERC has the final say on natural gas pipeline applications, including one before them from the PennEast Pipeline Company.PennEast has proposed a $1.6 billion, 118-mile pipeline running through part of Carbon County on its way from Wilkes-Barre to Mercer County, New Jersey. Locally, Kidder, Penn Forest, Towamensing and Lower Towamensing townships are the affected municipalities."The Delaware Riverkeeper Network is an organization that stops at nothing to spread misinformation, scare the public and file ridiculous lawsuits, as validated by a federal court judge who dismissed the lawsuit that was filed last year," said Pat Kornick, PennEast spokeswoman. "This is the latest example of opposition groups wasting time, tax dollars and government resources with baseless claims and ridiculous lawsuits."Maya van Rossum, of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, argued FERC is unique because it recovers the full cost of its operations through charges and fees assessed on the industries it regulates. "Because FERC gets its funding from the big companies it is supposed to be monitoring, it has become, perhaps inevitably, a corrupt, rogue agency."Following the decision, van Rossum said she was pleased to see her group acknowledged as having standing in the lawsuit, but remains concerned there is "no level of government willing to take a stand against FERC."Last year, a separate lawsuit filed by opposition groups alleging trespassing also was dismissed by a New Jersey Superior Court judge."Despite scare tactics from opposition groups, the reality is that two government agencies under Democratic administrations have determined that PennEast pipeline can be constructed with minimal impact on the environment," Kornick said."PennEast looks forward to a favorable environmental ruling next month and soon delivering lower electric and gas bills, creating thousands of jobs and powering the region's economy with clean-burning, American energy for decades to come."A final environmental impact statement on the PennEast Pipeline is due from FERC by April 7.