"HELP-!" Save our land, forests, streams
Mountain Valley Pipeline Project would disturb hundreds of miles of land and streams
Submitted by April Keating, Mountain Lakes Preservation Association, March 13, 2016
Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) has filed an application for a stormwater permit from the WV Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The pipeline would disturb hundreds of stream and wetland crossings in West Virginia.
We are asking everyone to send an email now to WVDEP to request:
1. DEP should not review the MVP stormwater permit application until after the FERC has issued their permit (or at least finalized the route).
2. DEP should hold public hearings in each county crossed by the MVP in West Virginia.
For the most part, the WVDEP staff is a group of individuals who care about the environment in West Virginia. They are underpaid and overworked. Sadly, there are not enough resources to hire the staff that DEP needs to adequately review permits and to inspect sites. We citizens need our government to allocate resources in the best way possible and we need local public hearings so that we can fully participate.
Make your message short and to the point. The following sample gives the e-mail addresses and names that your message should be sent to.
Thank you for helping to protect our water and support the best use of WVDEP resources.
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TO: Scott.g.mandirola@wv.gov, randy.c.huffman@wv.gov
SUBJECT: Do not review MVP stormwater permit until after the FERC issues a permit.
Randy Huffman, Cabinet Secretary, WVDEP
Scott Mandirola, Director, Division of Water and Waste Management
West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection
Charleston, WV
Re: Permit ID – WVR310667
Dear Secretary Huffman and Director Mandirola,
I am writing to request the following:
1. DEP should not review the Mountain Valley Pipeline stormwater permit application until after the FERC has issued their permit:
· DEP should follow a fiscally responsible course with taxpayer’s money. It is a waste of WVDEP’s time, manpower and resources to review Mountain Valley Pipeline’s (MVP) stormwater application until after the FERC issues a Certificate of Need, or at least issues their Draft Environmental Impact Statement recommending a route for the pipeline.
· The route that MVP has submitted in its application may not get approved by the FERC or may undergo serious modification, as evidenced by MVP’s major route revisions in Monroe and other counties as well as a recent Dominion Atlantic Coast Pipeline route change.
· The State of West Virginia is in enough of a fiscal crisis without wasting a great amount of WVDEP staff time and money on a potential project. The $1750.00 application fee will not come close to covering the State’s expenses on this review.
· DEP staff should spend their time reviewing, investigating and enforcing existing permits.
2. DEP should hold public hearings in each county that the MVP route goes through:
· The MVP proposed pipeline route is over 300 miles long and would result in the disturbance of hundreds of stream and wetland crossings in West Virginia.
· It is important that DEP collect site specific information from landowners along the route. Holding public hearings in each county would afford landowners the opportunity to provide important information that is not currently available in DEP or other national and state databases.
April P. Keating, Buckhannon, WV
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The WV-DEP should hold public hearing in every County this Pipeline concerns..
We should have a say so in it since it will be close to homes… destroying woods…
We have already seen what pipelines have done to our County, so why do we want another one..
“Fracking opinion warrants reply”
Letter to Editor, State Journal, January 3, 2016
Delegate Frank Deem’s opinion piece printed in The State Journal begs for a reply. To begin with, his economic accounting of the extreme extraction of natural gas from formations a mile or more below the surface, which must be crushed to free the gas, is wholly one-sided.
It does not take into consideration the huge externalized costs of the fracking industry. These include property damage, for which only a pittance is paid, because before and after appraisal is never done, nor is labor and lost product accounted for. It ignores the cost of lost aquifers, which impeccable research has shown occurs in 16 percent of the areas where a well is fracked. People get sick, cattle die, several industries are injured — not only forestry and agriculture, but also the retirement industry, which is substantial in West Virginia rural areas, recreation and hunting.
The real push for the big pipelines is export. The industry hopes to supply Europe and Asia with gas. This depends on cutting off supplies from other parts of the world. The United States has only 1.9 percent of the world’s dry land and has been a principal source of oil for the world for decades and a big national consumer of gas. The time has come when “the good stuff,” easy to extract, is gone and we must use “extreme extraction” to obtain oil and gas, even enough for ourselves, at considerably greater cost than conventional supplies.
Saudi Arabia is pumping oil at $20 a barrel from conventional wells. Qatar has huge reserves of gas and already has liquefaction plants. Russia, the ‘Stans, Iran have so much gas they really don’t even know how much they have — all conventional; no one even thinks about shale there. Russia has 10 percent of the Earth’s dry land and a great market, China, adjacent. Russia will take Yuan, rather than dollars, or rubles if they can get them. The ‘Stans would like to deliver their gas through Iran and Syria, or over Russian pipelines to Europe.
Mr. Deem shouldn’t be upset because people living in the countryside don’t want their living space uglified, their water polluted and their health harmed (reproductive difficulties is one of the most-studied effects — abortions, deformities and cycling problems), and their property values drastically reduced.
Besides, isn’t gas a temporary solution? Why give it subsidies and favorable legislation to tear up jack when what follows will be labor intensive, rather than capital intensive, inexhaustible, kind to the environment, work with existing industries and friendly to people? And, most important of all, doesn’t produce carbon dioxide?
S. Thomas Bond, Jane Lew, Lewis County, WV
http://www.statejournal.com/story/30860654/letter-to-the-editor-fracking-opinion-warrants-reply