Larger pipe size in steep terrain results in land slides and water pollution

News from the Allegheny Blue Ridge Alliance, Update #282, June 25, 2020

The U.S. Forest Service has been cautioned that it should not depend upon the reliability of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) developed in 2017 by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) as the agency develops a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the project.

The Forest Service announced on June 11 that it was developing a SEIS in response to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ vacating of the Forest Service permit for the ACP. While one portion of that opinion (e.g. authority to grant the ACP the right to cross the Appalachian Trail) was overturned on June 15 by the U.S. Supreme Court, several deficiencies in the permit for the ACP are required to be remedied by the Forest Service before it can issue the ACP a new permit.

The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) stated in a June 22 letter to the Forest Service:

The Forest Service cannot continue to rely on FERC’s obsolete FEIS. The original analyses of potential alternatives to the project and the environmental consequences of its risky and costly preferred route are in question. Significant, new and relevant information related to endangered and threatened species, water quality, landslides and slope failures, environmental justice communities, and climate change demonstrates the original analysis is stale and incapable of allowing effective review of the environmental consequences of the project. Meanwhile, the energy landscape of the region the ACP purports to serve also has transformed dramatically, the costs of the project have ballooned, and its timeline has been pushed back.

A motion was filed with FERC on May 30 by SELC, Appalachian Mountain Advocates and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation asking that FERC conduct an SEIS for the ACP to address significant new information bearing on the project’s environmental impacts.

###########################

New Biological Assessment Filed With FERC, But Not Made Public

News from the Allegheny Blue Ridge Alliance, Update #282, June 25, 2020

Dominion Energy Transmission, Inc. filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on June 22 a new Biological Assessment (BA) for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), but designated the information as “privileged and confidential” and thus not available to the public.

The new BA, which was developed in consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), is a necessary step toward the issuance of a new Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement (BiOp/ITC) for the ACP, as required under the Endangered Species Act. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had previously twice vacated the BiOp/ITC for the ACP, which led to construction activity on the ACP being suspended in December 2018.

Southern Environmental law Center wrote FERC on June 24 requesting that a public version of the new BA be posted on the FERC docket within five business days (by June 30), in accordance with statutory requirements.

Kelly Knob on Appalachian Trail

ATC: Mountain Valley Pipeline an unprecedented threat to ALL national trails

From an Article by Diana Christopulos, Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club, April 21, 2017

Kelly Knob on Appalachian Trail and other mountains to be affected

Many small pipelines currently cross the Appalachian Trail, but they are nothing like the proposed new Mountain Valley Pipeline that would be built by a consortium led by EQT, a fracking company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The latest edition of AT Journeys, the magazine of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, has a major article on the threat of this pipeline to all national trails. “Cutting to the Core:Setting a Precedent for Pipeline Proposals” by Jack Igelman.

Unlike existing pipelines, this one would be visible off and on for almost 100 miles of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia. In Giles County, the pipeline would cut an ugly swath that would be visible from Kelly Knob on the AT, only about 2 miles away. Even worse, the project would create a 500-foot utility corridor through the national forest that would invite co-location of two or three equally large projects immediately adjacent to this monster.

Gary Werner, executive director of the Partnership for the National Trails System based in Madison, Wisconsin, says the project would set a precedent for lowering the status of all national trails, including the Pacific Crest Trail and many others. Construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline would ignore established scenic standards that required decades of work and massive financial expenditures by citizens, nonprofits, the US Congress and government agencies.

Yet the applicant contends that the project would have almost no impact on scenic values, public safety or the water supplies to both groundwater wells and public drinking water for Roanoke, Virginia and a host of other places. Andrew Downs, ATC’s Regional Director in Virginia, expresses frustration at the extremely poor quality of the pipeline’s documentation, noting that, “It’s almost comical. The document is missing huge and important pieces of analysis.” Diana Christopulos, President of the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club, was unconcerned about yet another pipeline until she learned the facts about this one. Now she describes is as “a total trainwreck.” Here are some of the reasons:

• The Mountain Valley Pipeline would measure 42 inches in diameter, more than twice the size of the large transmission pipelines that currently supply the East Coast. It would be under 1,440 pounds of pressure per square inch, with a blast zone (where everything is destroyed) of about 1,000 feet on each side (based on recent explosions of large pipelines, the distance might be closer to 1,600 feet) and an evacuation zone (where anyone present would suffer serious injuries) of about 3,600 feet on each side.
• Instead of following roads, railroads and rivers like existing transmission pipelines, it would climb steeply up and down almost 225 miles of slopes with significant landslide potential, including 120.0 miles of extremely steep slopes (grades >20%)
• Over its 300-mile length, it would cut through almost 250 miles of forested land (over 80% of the total route), including an Old Growth Forest in Jefferson National Forest. It would pass directly through the Brush Mountain Inventoried Roadless Area, which has been declared eligible for Wilderness status, and directly next to both the Peters Mountain Wilderness and the Brush Mountain Wilderness.

Oh, and the pipeline would tunnel through the epicenter of the Giles County Seismic Zone, scene of the largest earthquake in recorded Virginia history, with an estimated magnitude of 5.9. What could possibly go wrong?

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net