Virginia environmental groups call for a declaration of climate emergency & protest the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Richmond (8/2/22)

From an Article by Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury, August 2, 2022

A deal between Democratic congressional leadership and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin III over sweeping federal climate legislation could force the completion of Mountain Valley Pipeline, according to a one-page summary of the agreement’s provisions obtained by The Washington Post.

The final item on the summary reads: “Complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline.”

Since the surprise 11th-hour deal between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Manchin resurrected President Joe Biden’s climate change agenda last week, Virginia environmental groups and many landowners in the state’s southwestern region have been waiting uneasily to learn the agreement’s terms.

Numerous national news outlets reported that Manchin’s support was linked to promises by Democratic leaders to pass separate legislation smoothing the fraught federal permitting process for fossil fuel pipelines such as Mountain Valley, a 303-mile-long conduit planned to carry gas from the Marcellus shale fields of West Virginia into Virginia.

The summary released Monday, which a Manchin spokesperson confirmed Tuesday reflects the provisions the senator is seeking, offers the clearest look yet at what those promises are. For Mountain Valley, the asks are twofold: First, require federal agencies “to take all necessary actions to permit the construction and operation” of the pipeline. Second, transfer jurisdiction over legal cases concerning the pipeline from the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to the D.C. Circuit.

Lee Williams, director of Green New Deal Virginia and advocacy chair of the Richmond-area Falls of the James chapter of the Sierra Club, reacted to the proposal with dismay. Environmental groups “want everything” that’s in the federal climate bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, she said. “We’ve been asking for it for the last decade. Unfortunately, to get Sen. Manchin to vote for it, they literally threw Southwest Virginia under the bus.”

Exactly what Democratic leaders promised Manchin, however, remains unclear. Despite the one-page summary that has been released, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) said during a Tuesday teleconference that “there is no connection between voting on the Inflation Reduction Act and then having to vote for the Mountain Valley Pipeline or a permitting bill.” Also, “The deal was (that) in exchange for getting an agreement on the Inflation Reduction Act, we will have the opportunity to debate and vote on permitting improvements, but no one’s made commitments about how they’re going to vote, and I’m certainly not going to make a commitment until I see what that bill is,” he said.

Valeria Rivadeneira, a spokesperson for Virginia Sen. Mark Warner (D), said the senator would review the proposal “once the full legislative text is made available.”

Originally expected to be completed by 2018, Mountain Valley Pipeline has been hampered by staunch opposition in both Virginia and West Virginia, hundreds of environmental violations and a string of successful legal challenges in the 4th Circuit that have repeatedly stripped the project of necessary federal permits. Construction has proved especially halting along a Southwest Virginia corridor that crosses through part of the Jefferson National Forest in Giles, Craig and Montgomery counties.

This summer, with few immediate breakthroughs evident, the developers sought permission from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has authority over pipeline construction, to extend its deadline another four years.

With delays and costs mounting, investors have become increasingly skeptical that the pipeline will ever be completed. In a February filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, project investor NextEra Energy wrote that “continued legal and regulatory challenges have resulted in a very low probability of pipeline completion.”

The deal with Manchin could change all that. Amid news of the agreement, shares in lead pipeline developer Equitrans Midstream soared to a three-month high Tuesday.

“MVP is being recognized as a critical infrastructure project that is essential for our nation’s energy security, energy reliability, and ability to effectively transition to a lower-carbon future,” Equitrans spokesperson Natalie Cox wrote in an email.

More than 300,000 miles of natural gas pipelines exist in the U.S., she noted in a lengthy statement. “None of these existing pipelines have undergone the extensive level of environmental research, analysis and review that has been performed on the MVP project.”

The reforms to the federal energy permitting process outlined in the summary document, which would include timelines for permitting reviews and a statute of limitations for court challenges, leave Virginia environmental groups in a tight spot. Organizations that last week hailed the sudden reappearance of federal climate action are now left scrambling to decide whether they can swallow a deal that includes Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project many have spent years opposing.

“We’re not going to sit by and roll over and let Southwest Virginia be a sacrifice zone,” Williams told the Mercury Tuesday after leading a demonstration in downtown Richmond calling on Biden to declare a climate emergency, one of many organized by activists nationwide. “But we don’t want to blow up the deal. It’s a fine line.”

We don’t want to blow up the deal. It’s a fine line. Some groups have already come out in opposition.

“We firmly oppose any approach by Congress that sacrifices frontline communities as part of a political bargain,” said Jessica Sims, Virginia field coordinator for environmental and economic development nonprofit Appalachian Voices, in a statement. The group’s North Carolina field coordinator, Ridge Graham, called any legislation requiring completion of Mountain Valley “unacceptable.”

But others were reluctant to speak on the record, indicating they are still sorting out their stances in a rapidly evolving situation.

Regardless of the Manchin deal, Kaine on Tuesday emphasized the need for reforms to federal pipeline permitting, saying he thought FERC’s initial review of Mountain Valley had been “shoddy.” Also, “I view many of the controversies that are connected with the Mountain Valley Pipeline as having been sort of stoked by an inadequate federal permitting process through FERC,” he said, citing “in particular the unwillingness or inability of FERC to get information out to the public and appropriately take public comment and then take that into account in terms of deciding (a) whether a pipeline was necessary and (b) whether the proposed route was the right route.”

A spokesperson later said that Sen. Kaine believes improving permitting “is preferable to having members of Congress decide outcomes on individual energy infrastructure projects.”

Both Kaine and Warner, as well as Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, have previously proposed federal legislation to change the federal review process for proposals and clarify when eminent domain can be exercised. Those bills were crafted in response to not only Mountain Valley Pipeline but the Dominion Energy and Duke Energy-backed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would have stretched from West Virginia to North Carolina via Virginia but was canceled in July 2020.

We can do better, we need to do better, let’s try harder!

Press Release from Karuna Jaguar, Center for Biological Diversity & Peter Hart, Food & Water Watch, July 29, 2022

WASHINGTON— More than 350 conservation and community groups, representing millions of people, called on President Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer today to reject fossil fuel expansion during negotiations over a reconciliation package.

The groups also urged Biden to use the full suite of his executive authority to stop issuing federal fossil fuel leases and deny permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure, and to declare a climate emergency, which would unlock powerful tools to combat the climate crisis.

“Permitting new fossil fuel projects will further entrench us in a fossil fuel economy for decades to come — and constitutes a violent betrayal of your pledge to combat environmental racism and destruction,” the groups’ lettersaid. “New fossil fuel projects will also lock workers into a dying industry and delay the growth in sectors that will support jobs of the future.”

Two provisions buried in the Inflation Reduction Act would require massive oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, reinstate an illegal 2021 Gulf lease sale and mandate that millions more acres of public lands be offered for leasing before any new solar or wind energy projects could be built on public lands or waters. These leasing provisions lock in decades of additional fossil fuel pollution and continue a racist legacy of sacrificing environmental justice communities.

Greenlighting new fossil fuel extraction is incompatible with climate science and the administration’s climate goals. The science is clear that the president cannot approve any new fossil fuel leases and still stay within the U.S. carbon budget for keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Communities at the front lines of the climate emergency are already dealing with and dying from ever-worsening fires, hurricanes, flooding, heat waves and drought. A recent analysis showed that more than 40% of Americans lived in areas hit by climate disasters last year, a number that would grow if the fossil fuel-friendly provisions in the IRA become law.

Letter signers, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Climate Justice Alliance, Food & Water Watch, Greenpeace USA, Indigenous Environmental Network, Our Revolution and Sunrise Movement, are urging Democratic leaders to reject fossil fuel expansion and stand with the communities that voted them into office.

>>>>> COMMENTS AND QUOTES TELL MORE ABOUT IT!

“We can’t let the renewable energy transition be held hostage by fossil fuel companies,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The Manchin bill is a devil’s bargain that ignores science and locks us into at least a decade of new oil and gas extraction. There’s a way forward that doesn’t spew more greenhouse gas pollution into the air and harm frontline communities, and it means eliminating these giveaways to the fossil-fuel industry.”

“This bill should not be considered a climate victory,” said Jim Walsh, policy director for Food & Water Watch. “Locking in more drilling and fracking on public lands and waters, billions in subsidies for the myth of carbon capture, and fast-tracking permit approvals for gas pipelines and exports are exactly the policies fueling the climate crisis and harming public health with increasing pollution in our air and water. Lawmakers who support real climate solutions should reject this deal until the fossil fuel handouts are removed.”

“The Inflation Reduction Act may be the most Washington can offer right now, but it’s a far cry from what’s actually needed to address the climate crisis,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. “The investments in renewables, energy efficiency and Superfund clean-ups will make a difference, but communities and the climate continue to be sacrificed to Sen. Manchin’s fossil fuel demands.”

US Clean Water Act contains many sections

From an Article by John McFerrin, WV Highlands Conservancy Voice, July 2022

States, including West Virginia, have gained more control over the issuance of permits under the federal Clean Water Act.

Under the federal and state Clean Water Acts, anybody who wants to undertake a wide variety of activities which have an impact upon water must have a permit. These include discharging water into a stream, filling a stream, or crossing a stream or a wetland. Most recently this requirement has meant that both the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline have been required to have permits for pipeline construction.

These permits are issued by federal agencies. Under the law as it historically existed, even when federal agencies issue permit decisions, states still had a role. Under Section 401 of the federal Clean Water Act, federal agencies could not authorize projects in a state unless that state certifies (called a 401 Certification) that the project will not violate state water quality standards.

Our most recent experiences with this are the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. With those two pipelines, or any other project where federal agencies issue water permits, West Virginia could have stopped the project by refusing the 401 Certification. If it did not want to refuse the 401 Certification outright, it could have conditioned its approval on the pipeline developers taking certain steps to protect water quality.

The reason for this requirement of state certification were explained during the original debates on the federal Clean Water Act. Senator Muskie explained on the floor when what is now §401 was first proposed: “No polluter will be able to hide behind a Federal license or permit as an excuse for a violation of water quality standard[s]. No polluter will be able to make major investments in facilities under a Federal license or permit without providing assurance that the facility will comply with water quality standards. No State water pollution control agency will be confronted with a fait accompli by an industry that has built a plant without consideration of water quality requirements.”

In the spring of 2020, the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued a new rule dramatically reducing the authority that states have to refuse certification or demand conditions on permits. This was in response to complaints about other states imposing too many conditions upon pipeline construction or refusing certifications altogether. For the reasons mentioned below, there were no complaints about West Virginia authorities.

Now the United States Environmental Protection Agency has changed the rule back to what it was historically. The states once again have the authority to review federal permits and certify that a project will not cause a violation of water quality standards. If a project needs conditions to protect state waters, states can demand those conditions.

Does West Virginia really care?

If recent experience is any guide, regaining this authority will not make any difference to West Virginia. Both the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline had to have permits to cross streams and wetlands in West Virginia. Through the 401 Certification process, West Virginia could have prevented the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from finally approving the pipeline as well as the United States Army Corps of Engineers from approving the stream crossings, etc. that the pipeline will entail until we had assurance that West Virginia’s water would not be damaged. West Virginia had the opportunity to either stop the project entirely or, more likely, place conditions upon it that would make it less damaging to West Virginia waters.

Instead of reviewing the projects and either rejecting them or placing conditions upon them, West Virginia waived its right to do so. For the details, see the stories in the December, 2017, and January, 2018, issues of The Highlands Voice.

While the restoration of authority might make a difference in some states, it is not clear that it will make any difference in West Virginia. When the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection had the authority before, it did not use it. There is nothing to indicate that having it back will make any difference. The current West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has no interest in using the right which the Clean Water Act grants it anyway.

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The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy is a non-profit corporation which has been recognized as a tax exempt organization by the Internal Revenue Service. Its bylaws describe its purpose:

The purposes of the Conservancy shall be to promote, encourage, and work for the conservation — including both preservation and wise use — and appreciation of the natural resources of West Virginia and the Nation, and especially of the Highlands Region of West Virginia, for the cultural, social, educational, physical, health, spiritual, and economic benefit of present and future generations of West Virginians and Americans.

LOCAL SHALE REGION HEALTH SEMINAR .... ZOOM @ 7 PM

From the local Environmental Health Project, Peters Township, Penna., April 25, 2022

Please join the Environmental Health Project (EHP) this Wednesday, April 27, 2022, for Reproductive Health and Shale Gas Development featuring Mary Willis, Ph.D., MPH. The webinar will begin at 7 p.m. EST.

During the event, Dr. Willis will present the findings of her two most recent studies, emphasizing the role of environmental exposures on reproductive health.

Registration is available for free at the link below. We look forward to seeing you!

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZErcuuurz0sHNa1jwQF515JvaWN04Nts9Sk

Marcellus & Utica shale region struggles for economic progress

Natural gas production boom was a bust for Appalachia, report urges economic transition

From an Article by Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette Mail, July 21, 2021

Appalachia’s natural gas boom turned out to be an economic bust that local and state officials can rebound from if they embrace the rising clean energy economy.

That’s the bottom line of two bottom-line-focused reports released Tuesday by nonprofit think tank Ohio River Valley Institute making an economic case for transitioning away from fossil fuels, especially natural gas development that has failed to convert production into prosperity.

“We know that the Appalachian natural gas boom hasn’t just failed to deliver growth and jobs and prosperity so far. We now know that it’s structurally incapable of doing so,” Ohio River Valley Institute senior researcher Sean O’Leary contended during a webinar on the reports Tuesday. “[That] means that a lot of economic development strategies in the region need to be rethought.”

The Ohio River Valley Institute’s analysis focuses on changes in income, jobs, population and gross domestic product — the total market value of goods and services produced — in 22 counties in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania from 2008 to 2019 that suggest a rise natural gas production in that span did little to lift up the economies in those counties.

One of the reports calls those 22 counties — which include Doddridge, Harrison, Marshall, Ohio, Ritchie, Tyler and Wetzel counties in West Virginia — “Frackalachia” based on the slang term for hydraulic fracturing of deep rock formations to extract natural gas or oil.

Jobs increased in the counties that comprise “Frackalachia” by just 1.6% from 2008 to 2019, 2.3 percentage points behind all West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania counties and 8.3 percentage points below the national average, the report notes.

The report concludes that a dramatic increase in gross domestic product in “Frackalachia” over the same span that came with the natural gas boom didn’t yield economic prosperity because the boom depended heavily on out-of-state workers and service suppliers, yielded less leasing and royalty income for property owners than expected and generated comparatively little income going to employee compensation.

The report find that from 2008 to 2019, when 97% of gross domestic product growth nationally was realized as personal income, that figure was just 21% in the 22 counties across West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania — something that the study attributes to three quarters of growth in those counties taking place in the mining, quarrying, oil and natural gas extraction sector.

“We’re not looking at this from a pro-fracking or anti-fracking perspective or a pro-industry or anti-industry perspective,” O’Leary said. “We’re looking at the fact that the counties are getting a bad deal economically. Whether you’re pro-industry or anti-industry, pro-fracking or anti-fracking, … you look at the numbers, it’s a bad deal.”

The report highlights a recent study from researchers at the University of Akron and Ball State University finding that micropolitan-area counties with higher quality of life experience higher population and employment growth. The study found no “statistically significant relationship between quality of the business environment and growth in micropolitan areas.”

“This finding should come as no surprise to policymakers in many micropolitan and rural regions and states that have premised economic development strategies on providing the best possible business environment — low taxes and minimal regulation — for the natural gas industry only to be disappointed with the result,” states the report authored by O’Leary, fellow Ohio River Valley Institute staff member Ben Hunkler and three University of Washington researchers.

“We have things like the natural resource curse,” said Amanda Weinstein, an associate economics professor at the University of Akron who co-authored the micropolitan-area county study cited in the Ohio River Valley Institute report. “These areas that tend to extract their natural resources tend to do worse … What we’ve seen in the Appalachian area is that they haven’t invested in that quality of life, making sure that as they take out those resources that they’re doing something to maintain their environment and the physical capital, this kind of natural capital that they have in that area.”

In August 2019, Gov. Jim Justice established a task force to bring manufacturing opportunities to West Virginia ahead of an anticipated expansion of the petrochemical industry in Appalachia. Justice’s office said that expansion would bring billions of dollars in investments and more than 100,000 new jobs to the region.

O’Leary said that will never happen because the natural gas industry doesn’t support a large enough workforce to produce its output, arguing that Appalachia should instead embrace the more labor-intensive energy efficiency industry.

“Energy efficiency is heating, ventilation and air conditioning and insulating, and door and window replacement, things that are done by local suppliers even in relatively small towns,” O’Leary said. “These are very labor-intensive businesses. They’re locally delivered. These are businesses that are done by local contractors, and so when you spend money with them, the money stays in the local economy. They hire local workers, and it has a multiplier effect locally.”

O’Leary noted that residential energy efficiency measures for low and moderate-income residents, along with clean energy technologies and worker retraining, were priorities for economic transition funding in Centralia, Washington, where a plant owner-funded $55 million economic transition plan was finalized in 2011 to help that community deal with the closures of a coal mine and plant.

The Ohio River Valley Institute’s other report released Tuesday highlights that transition model, which O’Leary has touted as an example replicable in areas like Marshall County, which faces the possible early closure of the American Electric Power-controlled, Mitchell coal-fired generation facility that serves as an economic engine for the county.

Federal infrastructure proposals inching their way through Congress and savings that American Electric Power would realize from closing the facility in 2028 instead of at the end of its planned life in 2040 could fund such a transition plan for Marshall and surrounding counties.

“[T]he concept of economic transition really needs to take root in the region,” O’Leary said.

MVP Involves Environmental Violations in WV & VA

From a Submitted Essay by Thomas Hadwin, Roanoke Times, July 18, 2021

I have read with interest the various community opinions about the Mountain Valley Pipeline. As a former electric and gas utility executive, I am very familiar with the challenges involved in creating the energy facilities we need at a reasonable cost and with the least possible disruption to our environment.

So far, MVP’s record of environmental protection has not been good. They have been cited for hundreds of permit violations and fined $2.7 million. Construction in the areas with the greatest potential for landslides, soil erosion and stream crossing impacts has not yet occurred.

In their June 30 opinion column, Cline Brubaker and Bob Camicia, former Franklin County Supervisors, argue that if the MVP were finished, the Summit View Business Park could draw new businesses and jobs to the area, benefitting the region and making a certain amount of environmental disruption acceptable.

Choosing between protecting our water, heritage and property rights versus increased economic activity is a false choice based on incomplete information.

The former supervisors said the MVP could be tapped “at no cost to residents.” This is probably accurate in the context of the way the connection was presented to the Franklin County Board of Supervisors, but it does not reflect the cost to Roanoke Gas customers.

Roanoke Gas told the Virginia energy regulator that Franklin County could obtain gas service with a connection to its existing supplier East Tennessee Gas. This extension would cost about $37 million for 40 or more years of service. Connecting to the MVP, which was routed through the Summit View Industrial Park, would cost just $6.5 million.

It looks like MVP is the better choice, but an important detail was left out. Roanoke Gas committed to pay the MVP $122 million over 20 years to reserve a small amount of capacity on the pipeline, based on the current estimated cost of $6.2 billion for the MVP. Two such contracts would be needed to equal the 40 years of service from East Tennessee. The gas is purchased separately.

Connecting to its existing supplier would save over $200 million compared to using the MVP. Such a connection could have been accomplished years ago and the added economic development would already be occurring.

Why didn’t it happen that way? My guess is that RGC Resources, the company that owns Roanoke Gas, wanted to make a bigger profit. They will receive about $211 million in revenues over the first 20 years as an owner of the MVP. RGC’s 1% share of MVP taxes, financing and operating costs would be deducted from those revenues.

It is claimed the MVP is required for us to have the gas we need. That is untrue. Existing pipelines in the region have expanded by more than twice the amount the MVP would provide. EQT, the nation’s largest gas producer, is responsible for about two-thirds of the capacity of the MVP. This requires them to pay over $620 million each year to the MVP for a pipeline they don’t need.

EQT’s chief executive officer told financial analysts that gas production in the Appalachian Basin will not be growing if gas producers want to remain profitable. He said they have all of the pipeline capacity they need to get their gas to market. The MVP just adds to the existing surplus of capacity and creates a huge financial risk for our largest gas producer.

We need to talk about the “whole story.” We can protect our environment and have the lowest cost access to the gas we need — but that’s not possible with the MVP.

>>> Thomas Hadwin served as an executive for electric and gas utilities in Michigan and New York. He lives in Waynesboro, Virginia.

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See also: US EPA challenge muddles future of Mountain Valley pipeline – Allegheny-Blue Ridge Alliance, July 12, 2021

The Property Rights and Pipeline Center is very concerned about resident rights to their lands and forests

News Report from the Allegheny Blue Ridge Alliance, May 28, 2021

The Property Rights and Pipeline Center, a national coalition of which ABRA is a member, this week released five new mini-documentary films about the unjust manner in which the power of eminent domain is granted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

These are excellent depictions of the issues involving eminent domain use to take farmers lands for private gain. Pipelines involve more than the taking of land. The disturbances, noises, air pollution fumes, and water pollution are extreme. Safety issues are due to leaks, fires and explosions.

Kudos to our filmmaker friend and colleague Sarah Hazelgrove for creating such compelling stories! Each video is 12-14 minutes long.

Links for all are below:

• A Town at Risk – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsCVUSWkSAU

• Averitt Family ACP – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXLABUIgNpU

• Megan Holleran Fighting the Constitution Pipeline – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sljN2RmGWg

• The Hero from the Holler – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMe-nrvmNTY

• Landowners vs The Law – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrTufM0W3D4

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See also: The Property Rights and Pipeline Center (PRPC) is committed to ending the use of eminent domain for oil and gas pipelines and associated infrastructure. We are determined to fight oil and gas infrastructure that takes land without the consent of its owners and puts treacherous pipelines under their homes and in protected forests, water supplies, farms and neighborhoods.

The fact is, we don’t need these pipelines — there is currently an oil and gas glut. Energy demand is generally flat in many cases and going down around the country. Pipelines leak and explode all the time and in many cases are used to move product for overseas export; not for our energy needs at all. Americans treasure their right to own and enjoy their property. Companies that foul the local environment and add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere should not take Americans property against their will.

Across America, more municipalities, citizens and landowners every day push back as pipeline companies threaten their land and safety. Many property rights and pipeline fights and legal battles are going on today throughout the country. We hope to join the many voices together so that we can speak with a powerful, unified voice for property rights and a clean energy future in all corners of this country.

The DeSmog Blog has a longstanding record of speaking out

From the Letter of Brendan DeMelle, Executive Director, DeSmog Blog, May 8, 2021

More than 40 cities have enacted bans on new gas infrastructure, but in the Pacific Northwest one company is trying a new tactic to head off climate policy. In recent months, Oregon utility Northwest Natural has been promoting its use of “renewable natural gas” — methane captured from places like landfills and repurposed into energy for homes. Its push to promote its green image comes on the heels of a contentious effort by officials to require carbon emissions reductions from the company. Read Nick Cunningham’s story.

Meanwhile, a new government report highlights federal failures to oversee offshore drilling. The report found that 97 percent of the time, existing regulations on environmental protection and cleanup are not enforced. More proposed rules to fix the broken regulatory system, however, are a distraction from the real issue of the government failing to hold the oil industry accountable, argues Justin Mikulka.

Finally, this week five environmental groups filed a lawsuit in a Montana federal court alleging that the way the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issues permits for oil and gas pipelines nationwide violates some of the country’s cornerstone environmental laws. The lawsuit is the most recent round in a nearly decade-long battle, sparked under the Obama administration, over how regulators approach the environmental impacts from oil and gas pipelines and the extent to which the public gets a say in the permitting process. Sharon Kelly reports.

Have a story tip or feedback? Get in touch: editor@desmogblog.com.

Thanks, Brendan DeMelle, Executive Director, DeSmog Blog

P.S. Readers like you make it possible for DeSmog to hold accountable powerful people in industry and government. Even a $10 or $20 donation helps support DeSmog’s investigative journalism.

Marcellus gas well pads & wastewater impoundment in prime forest of north central Penna.

From an Article by Ad Crable, Bay Journal, 5/3/21

Pennsylvania’s robust natural gas industry has been embarrassed by three environmental scandals in 15 months. Among the fallout: temporarily closed pipelines, the state’s largest environmental fine, the elimination of streams, and the illegal burial or alteration of parts of 163 wetlands.

In one case, Texas gas company Range Resources was found to have classified spent gas wells as temporarily inactive, rather than closed, thus avoiding a requirement to plug the wells to prevent leaks of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

In another case, Chesapeake Appalachia, an arm of Chesapeake Energy and one of the largest fracking gas companies in Pennsylvania, signed a consent agreement March 24 with the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

The agreement, which included a $1.9 million civil penalty, acknowledges that Chesapeake Appalachia had, according to its own reports, filled approximately 26 acres of wetlands with dirt, rock or sand, without state or federal authorization, at 76 of its gas wells across five counties.

The company will have to restore about 11 acres of affected wetlands. To compensate for the remaining 15 acres, which are irreparably damaged, the company must create twice that many acres of new wetlands nearby, ideally in the same watershed.

Chesapeake Appalachia’s record of the damage goes back to 2013, when the EPA and Justice Department fined the company $3.2 million for violations in West Virginia. The company agreed then that it had impounded and filled in 2.2 miles of streams and smothered portions of wetlands at 27 well pad sites without required federal permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The violations were discovered by routine EPA inspections, complaints from nearby residents and reports from the gas company itself.

After that case and a management shake-up at the company, Chesapeake Energy did an internal audit of 500 gas well sites in Pennsylvania and informed state officials that it had discovered similar violations at 76 sites.

Gordon Pennoyer, a Chesapeake Energy spokesman, said of the enforcement action, “Having voluntarily disclosed these issues with the DEP and EPA seven years ago, we are pleased to resolve this legacy matter.”

Under federal regulations, Chesapeake has a choice of restoring violated wetlands or creating new ones elsewhere at double the amount destroyed. The company has submitted a plan to restore wetlands at some of the drilling sites, restore wetlands elsewhere to compensate for places where steep slopes prevent work at the original location, and conduct a combination of on-site and off-site work in some cases.

DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell applauded Chesapeake Appalachia for coming forward with its violations and called the settlement a “significant benefit to Pennsylvania’s public natural resources” because it will result in an increase of wetlands in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Diana Esher, acting administrator of the EPA’s Mid-Atlantic region, said wetlands are “critical ecological and economic resources for all Pennsylvanians.”

The Chesapeake Appalachia penalties followed another high-profile case that concluded in early 2020, when a gas pipeline company was fined an unprecedented $30.6 million by the DEP, partly for widespread wetlands and stream violations.

The case against ETC Northeast Pipeline stemmed largely from a landslide that ruptured the one-week-old Revolution Pipeline in rural western Pennsylvania on Sept. 10, 2018. The blast from ignited natural gas burned one house, caused six power transmission poles to collapse, and destroyed two garages, a barn and several vehicles, as well as forced evacuations.

The DEP found that the company, an arm of Texas-based gas pipeline builder Energy Transfer Corp., used poor construction and oversight practices in building the pipeline. But an investigation after the blast uncovered more widespread environmental harms along the 40-mile pipeline.

According to the DEP, the company’s violations included 120 altered streams, 23 “eliminated” streams, 17 buried wetlands, 70 altered wetlands, 352 cases of erosion and sedimentation, 540 cases of sediment washing into streams, and 1,359 violations of required best management practices.

That laundry list of violations prompted the DEP to take the rare step of freezing pipeline permits for Energy Transfer Corp. subsidiaries, including that of the cross-state pipeline known as Mariner East 2.

That pipeline’s construction had already amassed a list of environmental violations, including sinkholes and 320 spills of drilling fluids. One spill into a central Pennsylvania lake cost Energy Transfer a $2 million fine.

“There has been a failure by Energy Transfer and its subsidiaries to respect our laws and our communities,” Gov. Tom Wolf said at the time of the Revolution Pipeline consent order. “This is not how we strive to do business in Pennsylvania, and it will not be tolerated.”

But after a one-year freeze, the DEP allowed Energy Transfer pipelines to resume or proceed with construction. The DEP ordered Energy Transfer to restore all wetlands and stream sections where possible. Seventy of the 87 damaged or destroyed wetlands will be restored. The other 17 harmed wetlands will be atoned for with the restoration of four times as much wetlands in the same watershed.

In a much smaller case, the DEP and Range Resources agreed in February to a consent order after the DEP found that the company was trying to avoid plugging spent gas wells as required. The agency fined Range Resources $294,000 and required plugging all but one of the 42 wells in question.

“Abandoned wells can be an extreme hazard to the health and safety of people and the environment,” said Jamar Thrasher, DEP spokesman. “That contributes to air, water and soil contamination, so it’s an environmental hazard.” Abandoned wells can leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas. These were conventional gas wells dating mostly from the 1980s or older, and not new fracking wells.

The company had filed paperwork with the DEP, mostly from 2012 to 2016, saying the wells were “inactive.” But an internal memo that Range sent to the DEP three weeks before paperwork was received on one well had reported that the well “was incapable of economic production.”

The DEP then investigated other wells and found 41 more that had been improperly classified.

Families with children are caught up in these sacrifice zones

Article by Kristina Marusic, Reporter, Environmental Health News, March 1, 2021

This is part 4 of our 4-part series, “Fractured,” an investigation of fracking chemicals in the air, water, and people of western Pennsylvania.

WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pa.—On a balmy evening in September of 2019, eight women gathered around a conference table in a small office about 25 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. A statewide network of fracking and conventional wells, pipelines, and petrochemical plants is closing in on their communities.

As a mother of four and the outreach coordinator for the nonprofit organization hosting this event, Ann LeCuyer was comfortable telling people what to do. She’d spent the last four years helping the group, Protect PT (short for Protect Penn-Trafford), work to keep fracking out of the small municipalities of Penn Township, Trafford, and surrounding neighborhoods.

In that time, Ann and her boss, Protect PT co-founder and executive director Gillian Graber, had compiled thousands of documents detailing the oil and gas industry’s plans in the region. They’d invited all of the group’s several dozen members to their office to learn how to access them—but only women showed up. “This is pretty typical for us, actually” said Gillian, a middle-aged mom of two with chocolate-brown hair and a no-nonsense demeanor.

“I think it’s because we’re moms, so we have more at stake when it comes to our children and grandchildren,” she told Environmental Health News (EHN), noting that every member in attendance had kids and half also had grandkids. “My husband is on the board and we do have some very passionate male members. But it tends to be the women who consistently show up.”

The group chattered and laughed through the presentation until Ann pulled up a map of the planned route for the Mariner East 2 Pipeline, sending a brief hush through the room. “It’s so close to my house!” someone exclaimed. “Look, I’m in the blast zone and I didn’t even know until now.”

Mariner East 2 is one of three pipelines (along with Mariner East 1 and Mariner East 2X) being constructed to carry highly flammable natural gas liquids—liquid components of natural gas that have been separated out—350 miles from the Utica and Marcellus Shale plays in eastern Ohio, the northern panhandle of West Virginia, and across Pennsylvania to processing facilities at Philadelphia ports. From there, the end products will be carried overseas by ship for use in plastics production. (Ethane, a byproduct of fracking, is used to manufacture plastics.)

The project is orchestrated by Sunoco’s parent company Energy Transfer LP, which also owns the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The Mariner East pipeline projects have been rife with accidents, spills, and controversy, in part because Pennsylvania doesn’t have a state agency that oversees the placement of such pipelines. The planned route runs across people’s yards and within a half mile of 23 public schools and 17 private schools, which worries residents due to the company’s safety record: Between 2002 and the end of 2017, Energy Transfer LP pipelines experienced a leak or an accident every 11 days on average.

Pipeline construction in Pennsylvania has already resulted in sinkholes, polluted waterways on public land, and an explosion in a town 35 miles west of Pittsburgh that destroyed a house. At least 25 other sites along the proposed pipeline route have been identified as being at risk for similar accidents. The Pennsylvania Utility Commission is fighting in court to keep its calculations on potential damage if such accidents occured secret, even though a recent investigation by Spotlight PA found many communities in the “blast zone”—the areas adjacent to the pipeline that could be engulfed in flames in the event of a pipeline explosion—lack adequate emergency response plans.

Gillian told the group that they planned to canvas in the blast zone nearby to inform residents they’d be at risk if the pipeline is completed. “Oh, we’re canvassing, ladies!” chirped the oldest of the group, a spry 81-year-old. “If we can stop the pipeline, we can stop the well pads. I’m getting my muckboots out!”

Gillian initially started Protect PT in 2015 because she wanted to stop a fracking well proposal about a quarter of a mile from her house in neighboring Penn Township. So far, her efforts have been successful—the well, which is owned by Apex Energy, received a permit from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in 2018, but has yet to be drilled in part because of Protect PT lawsuits.

But that fracking well victory is overshadowed by a vast industrial infrastructure in the state and the region that goes well beyond unconventional drilling.

In the summer of 2019, EHN collected air, water, and urine samples from five households in southwestern Pennsylvania, including Ann and Gillian’s families, and had them analyzed for chemicals associated with fracking. EHN included Ann and Gillian’s families because they live further away from fracking wells than the families we looked at in Washington County. However, despite their relative distance from fracking wells, we found they also faced above average levels of exposure to numerous chemicals associated with pollution from the oil and gas industry.

While Project PT and similar groups target new pipelines, or plastics plants, or fracking wells in court — or just the court of public opinion — it has become a game of whack-a-mole in a state where oil and gas production, infrastructure, and transportation are so ubiquitous.

“It’s just alarming to think that with all the stuff that we’re doing to be careful, we’re still being exposed to all these chemicals,” Gillian told EHN.

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See also: Fractured: FAQs page, Douglas Fischer, February 25, 2021

“We found alarming exposures to likely fracking pollution. But that’s just the beginning of the story.”