Wild Virginia Sues Virginia State Water Control Board Over Approval of MVP Permit

Press Release from David Sligh, Wild Virginia, December 8, 2017

Today, Wild Virginia has joined allies in filing suit to challenge the legality of the State Water Control Board’s decision to issue a water quality certification for the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

The lawsuit, filed by attorneys with Appalachian Mountain Advocates in Richmond’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, asserts that the Board has failed base its decision on adequate and complete information and, therefore, lacks a rational basis for its action. All parties admit that vital information and analyses were missing at this time yet the Board endorsed DEQ’s recommendation to approve the rushed permit decision.

“The Board and DEQ cannot determine that the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline will not violate Virginia’s water quality standards without doing detailed and cumulative water quality analyses,” said Misty Boos, Wild Virginia’s Director.

Members of the Board did express doubt that DEQ’s proposal to rely on the Army Corps of Engineers’ Nationwide 12 permit for protection of water quality at stream and wetland crossings would be adequate to meet state standards. However, the Board’s revised certification, which attempts to reserve its authority to address those concerns through another, separate certification process is inadequate. That decision still sidesteps the real issue – that the Board had a responsibility to protect our waters from the whole range of damages this pipeline would cause,” Boos stated.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline project would send fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia through a 42-inch pipe and would involve blasting and excavating through hundreds of streams, including some of the most sensitive and high-value aquatic habitats in the region. It would slice through the headwaters of the Roanoke River watershed endangering water supplies for Roanoke City and Roanoke County and threatens to pollute and disrupt flows in wells and springs that thousands of rural residents rely on.

“The DEQ’s erosion and sediment control plans and stormwater control plans are incomplete and have not been presented to the Board,” said David Sligh, Wild Virginia’s Conservation Director. “Karst analyses are incomplete. Data related to specific waterbody crossings is non-existent. The Nationwide 12 permit has not yet been authorized and determined to be applicable. The procedure is not based on sound science and is legally flawed. We cannot accept this betrayal of our trust and our rights without challenge,” Sligh stated.

Appalachian Mountain Advocates is representing Wild Virginia in the lawsuit along with the Sierra Club, Appalachian Voices, the Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resource Defense Council and Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

See the Petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals (Fourth Circuit) here.

Sincerely,

Misty Boos, Director
Wild Virginia, P.O. Box 1065
Charlottesville, VA 22902

misty@wildvirginia.org
www.wildvirginia.org

MVP under challenge by Appalmad, et al.

West Virginia Nixes Enviro Group’s Appeal of Mountain Valley Pipeline

From an Article by Jamison Conklin, Natural Gas Intelligence, May 17, 2017

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has denied an environmental group’s hearing request to appeal the state’s water quality certification for the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

In a short letter sent to citizens and the nonprofit environmental organization Appalachian Mountain Advocates last week, WVDEP Secretary Austin Caperton denied the hearing under state law, which gives him, rather than a regulatory board, discretion over the matter.

The agency issued the pipeline’s Section 401 Water Quality Certification in March after three public hearings on the project across the state. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last month delayed the project’s final environmental impact statement to June 23 to consider more information, and other state permits are still pending. Opponents of the pipeline appealed the water quality certification claiming the agency did not have enough information to issue it.

The 300-mile pipeline would originate in Wetzel County, WV, and move up to 2 million Dth/d of Marcellus and Utica shale gas to an interconnect with the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line in Pittsylvania County, VA, for delivery to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast. It is expected to be in-service by 4Q2018. The project is a joint venture of EQT Midstream Partners LP, NextEra US Gas Assets LLC, Con Edison Transmission Inc., WGL Midstream and RGC Midstream LLC.

Caperton, who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Jim Justice after he took office earlier this year, has faced criticism from environmental groups. Prior to his appointment he worked as a consultant for the coal industry and moved quickly to fire the agency’s environmental advocate, Wendy Radcliff, and to hire as her replacement Ed Maguire II. Justice, who was a businessman and coal baron before taking office, has expressed strong support for the oil and gas industry and its role in helping the state economy he’s been intently focused on reviving.

Caperton didn’t explain why he denied the hearing request, and the agency has not commented. But the project’s opponents have told local news media that they will likely appeal his decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

State water quality certification is required by the U.S. Clean Water Act (CWA) and is needed when any project affects state waters. Environmental advocates have increasingly focused on state-issued CWA permits as a new way to stymie pipeline construction.

In nearby Pennsylvania, Energy Transfer Partners LP began constructing the Mariner East 2 pipeline in February after receiving CWA and other state approvals. An appeal of those permits filed by the Clean Air Council, Delaware Riverkeeper Network and the Mountain Watershed Association is pending before the state Environmental Hearing Board.

Meanwhile, both the Northern Access expansion project and Constitution Pipeline are on hold as their sponsors fight New York state’s denial of CWA permits in federal court.

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AppalMad and Sierra Club File Rebuttal to Mountain Valley Pipeline Claims

POWHR Coalition (Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights), 13 WV & VA Community Groups, https://powhr.org

Karst geology experts have strongly condemned Mountain Valley Pipeline’s Draft Environmental Impact submittals to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regarding pipeline construction in sensitive karst terrain. A 14 page rebuttal, prepared by Ernst Kastning and submitted on behalf of the Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club by Appalachian Mountain Advocates attorneys Benjamin Luckett and Joseph Lovett, describes the risks to Southwest Virginia and West Virginia communities from pipeline construction.  Damage would include groundwater contamination, groundwater recharge, surface collapse and other dangerous consequences of building a massive infrastructure project in a seismic area populated with caves and sinkholes.

Read the entire AppalMad briefing below:

APPALMAD submittal of Kastning Rebuttal 20170524-5177(32180600)

Sabal Trail Pipeline Project (AL-GA-FL)

Gas pipeline project headed to Suwannee River leaks into Georgia waterway; sparks environmental worries

From an Article by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville News, November 14, 2016

A leak in the shaft for a natural gas pipeline beneath a Georgia river has reinforced environmental worries at Florida’s Suwannee River and other waterways in the pipeline’s path.

The leak into the Withlacoochee River near Valdosta, Ga. underscored earlier concerns about twin hazards from the Sabal Trail pipeline: that pipeline shafts could leak contaminants into rivers, and let river water escape through cracks in the area’s sinkhole-riddled bedrock.

“What they said couldn’t happen did happen,” said John Quarterman, president of the WWALS Watershed Coalition Inc., a group fighting work on the 515-mile pipeline planned to cross three states.

The aquifer feeding North Central Florida’s signature rivers and springs already faces long-term supply strains, and pipeline critics argue that underground drilling could compound those if it accidentally opened routes for water to drain into underground voids and caverns.

The leak last month didn’t cause any harm, but the pipeline was already controversial.

Fourteen people – five from the Jacksonville area – were jailed over the weekend in Gilchrist County, west of Gainesville, after a demonstration protesting the project’s use of water from the Santa Fe River.

Another demonstration, opposing both Sabal Trail and the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota, is planned Tuesday outside the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office on Jacksonville’s Southbank.

A contractor for Sabal Trail Transmission, the company building the pipeline, told Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division last month that material it described as “drilling mud” appeared in the Withlacoochee west of Valdosta, Ga., while workers were drilling a pilot hole under the river, a first step toward installing the pipeline.

Drilling mud is made with bentonite, a clay containing aluminum that’s used in some constuction for waterproofing. But it wasn’t waterproof enough last month.

As a crew drilled Oct. 20 under the Withlacoochee, near U.S. 84 between Valdosta and Quitman, Ga., an environmental contractor emailed regulators that “some kind of substance” floated to the river’s surface, and workers put up a barrier to keep it from moving downstream. The next day, the same contractor told the state drilling mud was found on the riverbed in about 2 feet of water.

A Sabal Trail Transmission spokeswoman, Andrea Grover, said the state and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission “have reviewed and are satisfied that the work and containment is appropriate.”

Quarterman said he learned of the contractor’s emails Friday, when a state employee working through the Veteran’s Day holiday forwarded them to him as part of a public records request.

Quarterman said he didn’t know how the state reacted to the leak last month, but that two members of his organization checked the river Saturday and found a barrier still looping around a section of the waterway that was discolored.

The contractor’s emails to the state said drilling for the pilot hole was about 400 feet short of being complete on Oct. 21, but a construction progress report filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said that by Oct. 30 the pilot hole had been completed.

The report to the commission, which regulates gas pipelines, didn’t mention a leak. “There was never any danger to human health or safety, and no harm to the environment,” Grover said. But pipeline opponents had warned about risks before and said the leak shouldn’t have happened.

“I am so angry because this is what we said would happen and we were assured the rivers wouldn’t be affected because they were drilling under them,” Deanna Mericle, a member of WWALS, said in a release from the group describing the river Saturday.

“… We told them it was likely because of our karst geology and we got patronized and patted on the head. You can guarantee they will downplay it and just drill another hole,” Mericle said in the weekend statement.

Karst geology is the pattern of limestone bedrock and unpredictable voids that happens in a lot of Florida where water has gradually washed away porous rock. That process leads to sinkholes, and water management officials questioned whether underground drilling for the pipeline could create problems.

“We were considering the crossings of the rivers. … The porosity in the area is pretty high,” Carlos Herd, director of the Suwannee River Water Management District’s water supply division, said during a videotaped hearing last year about a challenge WWALS brought last year to fight approval of the pipeline by Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection.

An administrative law judge concluded the group, which advocates for several watersheds near the Florida-Georgia border, didn’t show it had legal standing for the challenge. The judge said concerns the group’s members couldn’t enjoy rivers like the Suwannee or Santa Fe if they were damaged was “speculative.”

A spokeswoman for Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection said the federal commission will regulate the pipeline, but state regulators inspected work as it progressed, the most recent time being last week. No problems were found, said the spokeswoman, Dee Ann Miller.

State officials will examine the Santa Fe by boat this week for water-quality violations or problems with construction runoff or other debris making the river too cloudy, Miller said.

Demonstrators arrested over the weekend were protesting the fact that water from the Santa Fe was being loaded into trucks for work on the pipeline project.

Protesters blocked a truck as it tried to move into a work area, with some climbing onto the trailer truck or getting under it, said Gilchrist County chief deputy Jeff Manning. He said one person used a bicycle lock around his neck to attach himself to the truck.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net