Even as Mountain Valley Pipeline’s rushed construction results in landslides and muddy waters in Virginia and concerned residents call for state and federal authorities to stop the damage, communities to the south are facing new and changing threats from the pipeline’s proposed Southgate extension.
With a wholly new project that requires an ‘open season’ to find customers, FERC should cancel the original Southgate Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity and send the developers back to the drawing board.
Along the route of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, citizen monitors have watched a frenzy of workers hurriedly lower sun-bleached and degraded pipe into trenches, burying as much material as possible. Although safety concerns led the agency tasked with pipe safety, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, to issue a consent agreement, the agreement has not brought peace of mind.
Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit granted Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC’s motion to dismiss its appeal of the Virginia State Air Pollution Control Board’s decision to deny the company’s requested minor source air permit for the Lambert Compressor Station.
On Friday, Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board will rule on Mountain Valley Pipeline’s hotly contested plan to place a polluting compressor station in a majority Black district already burdened with air pollution from two other compressors.
Critics of the Mountain Valley Pipeline are calling on Virginia to deny a Clean Water Act certification for MVP. The pipeline’s proposed extension, MVP Southgate, faces several hurdles.
The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality again rejected a permit for Mountain Valley Pipeline’s proposed extension into the state. MVP also announced another delay and cost increase for the 300-mile fracked-gas pipeline.
The long-contested MVP faces new delays due to water-crossing permits. Bills that would give Virginia more authority to protect water quality from pipelines are advancing in the state legislature. As the commonwealth considers a compressor station for MVP Southgate, developers of the canceled Atlantic Coast Pipeline begin the restoration process.
Residents along the paths of the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipelines have made it clear that fracked-gas projects are not welcome.
A federal court halted work at nearly 1,000 stream crossings in Virginia and West Virginia one week after federal regulators allowed construction to resume on most of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
