Natural gas pipeline disturbances on Nixon Ridge, Marshall County, WV

From an Article by Shelby Davis, WTRF 7News, July 30, 2019

After many unanswered attempts to save his property, one Marshall County resident reached out to 7News for some help. Steven Coladonato moved to West Virginia from Connecticut in 2012 after visiting the area to see his grandkids.

He fell in love with the land on Nixon Ridge in Moundsville and built a brand new home there in 2013. Steven described his land as beautiful, with deer roaming all over his property.

He says he could get on his 4 wheeler, and ride through the country for hours, but claims all of that has changed. Just one year ago, he signed a contract for a 12-inch pipe to run through his land.

Now Steven says the land has slipped multiple times leaving a crumbling foundation. He is blaming Clearwater Construction and HG Energy. The homeowner is fed up.

“The amount of dust factor that’s out here is insane. It’s just terrible. My whole ground has shifted down hill and my foundation. I’m about ready to lose my house because of this. My foundation is gone.”

Steven Coladonato – Marshall County Resident — says that the workers are some of the nicest people he’s met, but he is upset up with the company for what he called neglect to the land on the ridge.

WTRF 7News reached out to the company and are waiting to hear back.

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See also: NATURAL GAS — Landslides, explosions spark fear in pipeline country; Mike Soraghan, E&E News, Energywire, June 4, 2019

‘ROW’ for MVP in Roanoke County, VA, in July 2018

Letter of Emily Satterwhite, Virginia Mercury, April 15, 2019

In May 2018, Mountain Valley Pipeline confessed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that its plan for stream crossings along its proposed 303-mile fracked gas pipeline had been based on “theoretical desktop analysis” that “did not take site specific constructability issues (elevations, terrain and workspace) into account.”

From May to September, MVP, FERC, and the Army Corps of Engineers communicated with one another about this confession. We only know about this correspondence thanks to the work of a community-based watershed group in West Virginia, which in December filed a letter with FERC outlining its findings from a Freedom of Information Act inquiry.

Before then, all we knew was that on September 24, 2018, MVP requested a project-wide Variance-006 that would allow pipe to be buried more shallowly on either side of streambeds and that the variance was granted the very next day.

In requesting a variance, MVP admitted that if it followed its original vertical scour and lateral erosion plan, construction “would pose increased environmental or landslide risks or be unsafe or impractical due to terrain or geology.”

FERC staff approved the massive changes, essentially allowing MVP to fabricate its own construction standards on the fly, despite reservations from within both FERC and the corps. Documents indicate that Chris Carson, a corps project manager for the Huntington district, cautioned that “no information is provided indicating whether any of the changes would result in additional discharges of dredge or fill material into waters of the United States.”

FERC Senior Consultant Lavinia DiSanto directed MVP to provide a “site specific scenario … for each location that would receive mitigation.” MVP Design Engineer Ricky Myers dismissed DiSanto’s directive as “excessive” and insisted that MVP would abide by its own newly revised rule: they would build as they saw fit and then consult with a monitor after construction.

FOIA documents give no indication that MVP or FERC informed the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection or the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality regarding the MVP—FERC-corps communications about the variance prior to publication on the FERC docket.

Collusion between FERC staff and MVP enables ongoing reckless construction of a massive project that continues to negatively affect water quality and the well-being of people and communities.

If MVP is able to obtain a new Army Corps of Engineers permit (its previous permit was vacated by the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals) and allowed to resume construction in waterways, MVP will do so under its own rogue standards.

FERC commissioners should mandate a supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) that includes the site-specific analysis requested by FERC contractor DiSanto. Virginia’s attorney general and State Water Control Board must issue a stop-work order until such time as the SWCB can assess the effects of variance-006 upon construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and demand that MVP to do the stream-by-stream homework that Virginia’s DEQ should have required in the first place.

>>> Emily Satterwhite is an associate professor and director of Appalachian studies at Virginia Tech.

To the Friends of the Allegheny – Blue Ridge Alliance (ABRA)

From Lew Freeman, ABRA Executive Director, June 12, 2018

A motion was filed June 11 with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission requesting that the agency immediately revoke its May 11 authorization for construction to proceed in West Virginia for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The action, filed by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club and Virginia Wilderness Committee, was prompted by a report last week to ABRA’s Compliance Surveillance Initiative (CSI) of construction activity occurring south of Buckhannon, West Virginia (in Upshur County). The construction work was subsequently verified by photographic evidence produced by the ABRA/CSI Pipeline Air Force. A copy of one of the photographs is attached.

In Monday’s filing, SELC said:

Petitioners request that the Commission grant rehearing, immediately revoke the West Virginia Notice to Proceed, and stay all pipeline construction authorized by the Notice. On May 15, 2018 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Incidental Take Statement for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Therefore, Atlantic and Dominion are not in compliance with two mandatory conditions of the project’s Certificate Order: Environmental Condition 54 and Environmental Condition 10. Certificate Order, Appendix A, ¶¶ 10, 54. Both of these conditions require a valid incidental take statement before pipeline construction proceeds.

A copy of the SELC motion is available at https://www.abralliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Defenders-of-Wildlife-et-al.-Request-for-Rehearing-re-May-11-2018-Notice-to-Proceed-6-11-18.pdf.

>>> Lewis Freeman, Executive Director,
Allegheny-Blue Ridge Alliance​, P.O. Box 685
Monterey, Virginia 24465

The Compliance Surveillance Initiative (CSI)

CSI Has New Online Incident Reporting Form Available —

ABRA’s Compliance Surveillance Initiative program now has a convenient online form available for reporting observations of pipeline construction noncompliance and pollution incidents. The form was developed in consultation with the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, Trout Unlimited and the Mountain Valley Watch.

ACP Construction photo – 6-8-18

Proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline thru WV Streams

Mountain Valley Pipeline 401 Application

From the WV Rivers Coalition, MVP Update, March 15, 2017

The Mountain Valley Pipeline, a proposed 42 inch natural gas interstate pipeline, has submitted their Section 401 Water Quality Certification Application to the WVDEP.

WV Rivers has reviewed the application and submitted comments to the WV Department of Environmental Protection on the application, which you can read here.

Our analysis finds that the application is inadequate and requests that the WVDEP give the Mountain Valley Pipeline an incomplete application notice.

Add your voice to the permitting process and send comments to the WV-DEP.

See also: MVP Public Comment Information

Extensive slippage does extensive damage to landscape in rough terrain

Study Concludes that Dominion Understates Pipeline’s Landslide Potential in Nelson County

From the Friends of Nelson County, Staunton, VA, March 13, 2017

A study of the potential for slope failures and landslides in Nelson County, VA from the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, coupled with a review of Dominion’s in-house analysis, has concluded that “Dominion has not adequately identified those soils and landforms that are prone to debris flows (and) landslides.”  The report also states that “the potential for debris flows in the very steep mountainous portions of Nelson County is underestimated by the reports submitted to FERC by Dominion.”

The author of the report, Blackburn Consulting Services, LLC, was contracted to review, assess, and comment on information submitted by Dominion to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), as related to the construction and operation of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) through Nelson County. The review was limited to information pertaining to soils/soil structure and slope stability, as well as the associated geohazards and erosion/water quality concerns that the ACP project raises for Nelson County.

As part of their work, Blackburn developed a series of predictive maps to better identify the areas with high debris flow potentials and spent three full days in Nelson County traveling to 17 pre-determined sites along the pipeline route to ground-truth their model.  In addition to their visual assessments of the terrain in those areas, four hand-auger borings were performed, and full soil descriptions were completed from 14 soil pits dug using a mechanical excavator.  Three of the sites were located near the Wintergreen entry on Rt. 664—proposed as the exit point for a 4500-foot tunnel through the Blue Ridge—where they found evidence of a history of numerous debris flows.

Blackburn also reviewed documents submitted by Dominion to FERC through December 1, 2016. Soil scientists looked at the information Dominion was using to determine the pipeline route, soil types along that route, slope stability and erodibility.

The scientists found that Dominion has been using inadequate and inappropriate data sets to assess the soils and identify the landslide risk potential along the pipeline route in Nelson.

The report states: “(The) review has discovered that, due to the reliance on this regional-based and publicly available information, many of the statements made in Dominion’s FERC filings represent gross generalities. Dominion has not adequately identified those soils and landforms that are prone to debris flows/landslides, nor have they adequately addressed how they plan to mitigate those site-specific hazards that can put people, property and water quality at extreme risk.”

“Given the types of soils that the soil/scientists observed during their site work on Nelson’s steep slopes (loose uncompacted soils on slopes that measured as steep as 83%), it is obvious that the erosion potential of these slopes is much higher than Dominion is reporting,” said Randy Whiting of Friends of Nelson.  “Considering the anticipated difficulties Dominion is expected to have with revegetating the pipeline right-of-way—both during and after construction—it becomes apparent that combining Nelson’s soils, slopes and this proposed pipeline is a recipe for disaster.”

“After reading this report, what scares me even more are the places where they want to install the pipeline along our narrow ridgetops,” said Joyce Burton of Friends of Nelson, referring to ridgetops such as those on Roberts Mountain. “There is no way to clear and flatten a 125’ construction right-of-way on a ridge that is only 60’ feet wide without severely impacting the landslide-prone slopes on either side.”

“We are calling on FERC to rescind the current DEIS and demand that Dominion follow these scientists’ recommendations to perform a more thorough assessment of the landslide risks in Nelson before the approval process is allowed to proceed any further,” Burton concluded.

Blackburn Consulting Services, LLC has over 50 years of experience in mapping and evaluating soil characteristics for a variety of purposes—ranging from agriculture and forestry to land development, environmental and wastewater disposal. They are licensed Professional Soil Scientists and On-site Soil Evaluators in the State of Virginia and nationally certified through the Soil Science Society of America.

The report was a joint project of Friends of Nelson, Friends of Wintergreen and Wintergreen Property Owners Inc.

The full report is available at: http://friendsofnelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Final-Steep-Slope-Report-March-2017.pdf