Mountain Valley Pipeline, the 303-mile vessel that will transport natural gas from the Appalachian region of West Virginia to southwest Virginia, officially entered service Friday, after about a decade of staunch opposition over concerns about environmental and community impacts in the areas of your path.
This article It was reprinted with permission from Virginia Mercury.
Mountain Valley Pipeline, the 303-mile vessel that will transport natural gas from the Appalachian region of West Virginia to southwest Virginia, officially entered service Friday, after about a decade of staunch opposition over concerns about environmental and community impacts in the areas of your path.
In a press release, the company said the project is now available to deliver natural gas with a capacity of up to 2 billion cubic feet of gas per day. Roanoke Gas said in a separate statement Friday that it had begun receiving the fossil fuel.
Diana Charletta, president and CEO of Equitrans Midstream Corp, the pipeline’s developer, called the day “important and long-awaited” for the country as it will allow “greater access to an abundant supply of domestic natural gas for use as an affordable, reliable and cleaner energy resource.”
The project was first announced in 2014 and planned to deliver natural gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale regions to Pittsylvania County, with an expected completion date of 2018.
But numerous legal challenges led the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to revoke state permits, finding that some agencies failed to adequately ensure protection against sediment erosion and harm to endangered fish species. , like the sweet dart.
However, in May 2023, West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin included a measure in an interim federal spending plan, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, that required all state and federal agencies to approve permits necessary to complete the project. . The measure also avoided any legal challenges until its completion.
With that green light, MVP resumed construction in August. The company requested final approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday, saying the project was “mechanically complete.”
On Tuesday, FERC granted the go-ahead, after consultation with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration revealed that the agency “had no objection to Commission staff authorizing service for the Mountain Valley Pipeline project.” . MVP had entered into a consent agreement with PHMSA in October, due to conditions that posed “an integrity risk to public safety, property or the environment.”
Terry L. Turpin, director of the FERC office overseeing the project, said that “Mountain Valley has adequately stabilized areas disturbed by construction and that restoration and stabilization of construction work is progressing satisfactorily.”
The cost of the project, initially estimated at $3.5 billion in 2018, more than doubled to $7.85 billion, according to a news release from earlier this year.
Scrutiny of the project, including the safety of pipeline linings that collapsed during years of delays and violations to prevent sediment erosion, has increased in recent weeks as applications have been submitted to bring the project online.
On Wednesday, with pipeline activation imminent, groups that have been advocating for indigenous peoples, other community members and the environment in western and southwestern Virginia expressed concerns and called for caution to remain in place.
“I don’t know how else to express how angry, enraged and heartbroken I am right now,” said Russell Chisholm, co-executive director of Protect our Water and Heritage Rights. The pipeline would have “repercussions… for everyone upstream in the fracking fields, and for everyone downstream, where the gas is shipped and eventually burned, overheating our planet.”
After a failed test on May 1, Appalachian Voices continually submitted requests for information about inspection reports, in addition to the most recently released March 29 quarterly report, but received no response, said Jessica Sims, field coordinator for the group in Virginia.
The lack of response from PHMSA and FERC has left community members in the dark with few legal recourse to take action, Sims added, while condemning Manchin’s intervention at the federal level.
“The level of Congressional interference with the project was unprecedented and certainly concerning as a reality that could happen again,” Sims said. “We remain deeply disappointed that a pet project was included in an unrelated debt bill and used to pressure members of Congress on an issue in which they should not have intervened in that way. That lack of separation of judicial and legislative powers is deeply troubling,” Sims said.
PHMSA officials said in response to questions about its transparency, that information for the public can be found on the PHMSA website in an electronic reading room.
A PHMSA official said the law requires the agency to “consult and redact” information that is sensitive or confidential.
“This process can take time. However, PHMSA and its community liaisons have provided numerous briefings directly to the public, congressional offices, and interested journalists on the matter.”
MVP will be required to perform different tests within a year of operation and the agency is awaiting results on what caused the May test to fail, the official added.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality “will continue to monitor the progress of final grading, stabilization and restoration, including vegetation establishment,” an agency spokesperson said Friday.
This article was updated with the correct route of the pipeline and the month Senator Manchin included his provision in the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
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