Virginia Tech team studies stream impacts

From an Article by Laurence Hammack, Roanoke Times, March 27, 2020

A winter hiatus in construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline will last well into the spring. The latest delay came this week, with word that two federal agencies will take another month to review one of several approvals — set aside by legal challenges from environmental groups — that must be restored before work can ramp up on the highly disputed natural gas pipeline.

Thursday, March 26th had been the deadline for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to finish their reconsideration of the project’s impact on endangered or threatened species of fish and bats.

But in a letter Wednesday to FERC, the Fish and Wildlife Service said the agencies and Mountain Valley had agreed to take another 32 days, pushing the completion date to April 27. It was the third such delay since December, when the review was originally set to be completed.

Despite the slow process with that and two other sets of suspended permits, the joint venture of five energy companies says it still plans to finish the 303-mile pipeline by the end of this year.

“Mountain Valley will continue to work diligently to obtain all necessary permits to complete construction of this vital infrastructure,” company attorney Matthew Eggerding wrote this week in a letter to FERC.

Since work began two years ago on the $5.5 billion project, regulatory agencies in Virginia and West Virginia have cited Mountain Valley for repeatedly violating erosion and sediment control regulations along the pipeline’s 303-mile path.

Other environmental problems, raised in legal challenges by the Sierra Club and other groups, have led to the suspension of three sets of permits: for the buried pipe to pass through the Jefferson National Forest, under more than 1,000 streams and wetlands in the two Virginias, and into the habitat of endangered species without causing them undue harm.

Last October, FERC ordered that all active construction be halted pending a review of a biological opinion, issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2017, that found the pipeline would not significantly jeopardize protected fish and bats.

Candy Darter — Photo of Blue Ridge Outdoor magazine

“The additional time is also needed to allow the Service and the applicant to ensure that any additional information needs have been addressed,” field supervisor Cindy Schulz wrote in the letter to FERC.

When construction was halted last year, Mountain Valley was allowed to stabilize some work sites and maintain erosion control over the pipeline’s entire length from northern West Virginia to Chatham, near the North Carolina line.

Attorneys for the Sierra Club, which challenged the biological opinion and a second permit that allowed limited harm to protected species, have argued that the company is continuing active construction in a “steamrolling” attempt to finish the project.

“The measures currently in place are failing to protect endangered species from severe habitat degradation,” attorney Elly Benson wrote in a Nov. 5 letter filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The appeals court has put on hold a lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups until the review of the biological opinion is completed. Meanwhile, other agencies are continuing their court-ordered reconsideration of permits for the pipeline to cross the national forest and streams and rivers.

According to Height Capital Markets, an investment banking firm that has been following the project, delaying the endangered species case until April 27 is not expected to change Mountain Valley’s completion goal of late this year.

Dirty politics will not keep our water clean !!!

From an Article by Stacy Lovelace, Blue Virginia, November 29,  2017

While the hotly contested Atlantic Coast (ACP) and Mountain Valley (MVP) pipelines have put a considerable amount of focus on Dominion Energy, primary stakeholder in the ACP, the Virginia State Water Control Board (SWCB) is getting its own share of attention as it gears up for making a decision on the two “natural” gas pipelines at December hearings in Richmond.  One would think that because the SWCB’s function is to make independent decisions on Virginia water quality, the SWCB and Dominion wouldn’t have any connection outside of ‘independent’ decisions made by the SWCB involving Dominion projects.  But upon taking a closer look at individual members of the SWCB, a stunning and disconcerting number of ties between board members and Dominion can be found.

• Robert Dunn, who serves as Chair of the SWCB, is an executive board member for the statewide organization called VIRGINIAforever.  He serves alongside Pamela Faggert, also an executive board member at VIRGINIAforever, who is a Chief Environmental Officer for Dominion. Note that VIRGINIAforever claims to be the driving force for conservation policy action in Virginia, but the fact that the board is made up of people from so many corporations with a vested interest in getting what they want in terms of water and land, like the Home Builders Association of Virginia and Smithfield Foods (which produces a great deal of agricultural runoff), I am suspicious of the true nature of the organization. The board also includes representatives from two firms that have represented Dominion legally.
• Heather Wood, SWCB Vice-Chair, serves on the St. Margaret’s School Board alongside Jane Whitt Sellers, a lawyer who represented Dominion in a $4.4 billion acquisition to expand its natural gas assets.  Additionally, while serving on the SWCB and after the announcement of the ACP proposal, Wood worked for the Port of Virginia, owned by the Virginia Port Authority, an open supporter of the ACP.
• Roberta Kellam served on the board for the Virginia Institute of Marine Science until June of this year.  Dominion has given multiple grants to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, including one for $40,000 this past April.
• Nissa Dean is the Virginia Director of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay.  Dominion has given a large sum of money in grants to the Alliance over the years, including a $20,000 grant given this year.
• Timothy Hayes is a retired partner of Hunton and Williams, LLP.  This firm has acted as counsel for Dominion and employs a former Dominion officer, J. Kennerly Davis, Jr.
• Lou Ann Jessee-Wallace is an elected Republican of the Russell County Board of Supervisors.  The political influence of Dominion is well known – the company donated thousands of dollars to the Republican Party of Virginia in the past year alone and is considered one of the largest influencers in Virginia politics.

.
The people listed above represent six members of the SWCB, which comprises only seven members.  It’s worth noting that two recent former members of the SWCB, Thomas Branin and Joe Nash, also had potential ties to Dominion.  Branin, as an elected Republican of the Henrico Board of Supervisors, received thousands of dollars from the Republican Party of Virginia, shown above to be under the influence of Dominion.  Joe Nash was and still is a writer for the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy on whose board serves James Beamer, a Managing Director for Dominion.  The latter of these two men, along with some of the current SWCB members, made controversial decisions in favor of Dominion regarding the company’s coal ash policies.

All of the current members of the SWCB were appointed or reappointed by Governor Terry McAuliffe, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from Dominion.  David Paylor, another appointee of Governor McAuliffe who has also received thousands of dollars in gifts from Dominion, is Director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).  The DEQ gives recommendations to the SWCB and oversees the day-to-day administrations of the SWCB programs.

If it were only one or two members of the SWCB with connections to Dominion, one might consider it a coincidence.  After all, Dominion is a very large corporation.  But because six out of the seven current Board members along with multiple related officials have connections with Dominion money or high level Dominion employees, the possibility of it being coincidence diminishes.

And while Dominion’s influence is directly tied to the ACP, any SWCB decision made with regards to one pipeline will potentially affect the other.  It is highly unlikely the Board would approve water permits for the ACP without approving the same permits for the MVP.  Doing so would make Dominion’s influence dangerously obvious.

These two pipelines would cross thousands of waterbodies and impact the drinking water sources of millions of people.  With so many potential conflicts of interest involving the SWCB and Dominion, it begs the question: can the State Water Control Board really be trusted in making decisions on protecting our water with regard to the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipelines?

——–
Contact: Carolyn Reilly, Pipeline Fighter, Appalachia Region
Bold Alliance, Carolyn@BoldAlliance.org
www.BoldAlliance.org