In late summer of 2022, Appalachian Voices discovered selenium, a common pollutant associated with coal mining, in high concentrations in certain streams in the Big Sandy River watershed in Pike County, Kentucky. These waterways receive runoff from the S-1 Hunts Branch Surface Mine, a nearly 2,000-acre mountaintop removal coal mine operated by Lexington Coal Company.
Yesterday, the North Carolina General Assembly voted to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of HB 600, the Regulatory Reform Act of 2023. A section of this bill provides special loopholes for energy transmission projects, like pipelines, that are built in the state, giving them a much faster and more lenient Clean Water Act review by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
In September, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a new rule that restores certain protections for water under the Clean Water Act. The changes in the rule will give states and tribes more oversight over water protection within their boundaries.
The U.S. Army Corps issued a Clean Water Act permit to Mountain Valley Pipeline following a passage of a law requiring the agency to do just that.
Today, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit vacated the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Clean Water Act § 401 certification for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, finding that the agency’s justification behind its conclusion that the pipeline would not violate the state’s water quality standards was deficient.
Residents of every Appalachian and environmental justice community deserve to benefit from climate policy, and we firmly oppose any approach by Congress that sacrifices frontline communities as part of a political bargain.
MVP backers and supporters like to say the pipeline is 90% complete. That just isn’t true — and many hurdles stand in the way of this dangerous pipeline. Find out more in this blog post from us and our partners Sierra Club and the POWHR Coalition.
CONTACT: Dan Radmacher, (540) 798-6683, dan@appvoices.org Morgan Caplan, (443) 986-1221, Morgan.Caplan@sierraclub.org Washington, DC — This week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers committed to withhold a Clean Water Act Section 404 permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) at least…
CONTACT: David Sligh, Wild Virginia, david@wildvirginia.org, (434) 964-7455 Cat McCue, Appalachian Voices, cat@appvoices.org, (434) 293-6373 Russell Chisholm, Protect Our Water Heritage Rights, russell@powhr.org, (540) 404-2727 The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) today released a draft decision on a request…
The Kentucky Division of Water is accepting public comments through Sept. 3 on their draft plan to address high levels of harmful bacteria in the Licking River and Salt River basins.
