U.S. Supreme Court hear arguments in boundary dispute

U.S. Supreme Court hear arguments in boundary dispute U.S. Supreme Court justices heard arguments Tuesday in a dispute between Delaware and New Jersey over plans by BP to build a liquefied natural gas terminal in southern New Jersey.
   Delaware is seeking to block the terminal because of safety concerns by its residents on the other side of the river.
   In 1934, a Supreme Court decision settled a long-simmering dispute between the two states over the boundary along the Delaware, and found that the entire riverbed is owned by Delaware, right up to the low-river mark on the New Jersey side.
   However, under an earlier compact, the two states agreed that each could “exercise riparian jurisdiction of every kind and nature.”
   Delaware officials have refused to authorize construction of a 2,000-foot-long pier, which would extend from the proposed LNG facility in New Jersey into the river where ships would dock. The terminal would receive up to 150 ships a year and deliver up to 1.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day to homes and businesses in the mid-Atlantic region.
   In their decision the justices will have to resolve the seeming conflict between Delaware’s ownership of the riverbed with the rights each state granted in the 1905 compact.