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

Recent Meeting of Ohio Residents

From an Article by Julie Grant, StateImpact PA, May 4, 2018

TOGETHER WE CAN STAND STRONG”

Jeff and Kerri Bond attended a meeting to hear from Pennsylvania legal and health experts about what they should be doing to protect themselves from the dangers of fracking.

The Bonds were among about forty people who gathered recently at Salt Fork State Park in eastern Ohio for a meeting organized and funded by the Freshwater Accountability Project. It was an opportunity for residents to voice their concerns, and to hear from experts about the environmental, legal, and health issues of fracking.

Environmental activist Teresa Mills says people like the Bonds aren’t getting assistance from Ohio officials. “The industry has everything locked down,” she says. “So people feel helpless.”

This feeling of helplessness is why Mills helped organize this community meeting. “What we were hoping to do is to get everyone together, and show that together we can stand strong, and we can move forward,” she says.

Pennsylvanians have dealt with these issues, too. John Stolz, an environmental microbiologist at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, has researched the environmental impacts of fracking for years. He says Pennsylvania regulators didn’t seem to take citizen complaints seriously.

“The reality is you’ve got 9,000 people calling the [Pennsylvania] DEP [Department of Environmental Protection] over the past ten years to complain,” he says. “It got to the point where I finally came out and said, ‘We’re not dealing with crazy people.”

Stolz studies the impact of fracking on water quality, and claims the industry has worsened pre-existing water problems. “For instance, I use the analogy, you’ve always had back problems, and then somebody rear-ends you, and really knocks your back out of whack,” Stolz explains. “But that was a preexisting condition, who’s going to pay for it? These are the kinds of things that are happening.”

But regulators, he says, are hesitant to pin this water pollution on the gas industry. “They want to see a smoking gun,” he says. “They want to see a chemical that the industry has used, and frankly the probability of finding that, even from the get-go, is very, very low.” Stolz wants to start research on how fracking is impacting the water quality here, in eastern Ohio.

DIFFERENT STATE, DIFFERENT LAWS

Environmental attorney Megan Hunter hears from people in eastern Ohio worried about the gas industry all the time. People are especially concerned about compressor stations, which keep the gas moving through pipelines. “Hands down that is the number one call that I’ve seen since I’ve been in Ohio related to this industry.”

Hunter says people complain of health impacts and claim their farm animals are dying and the wildlife is gone. But, she told the group, Ohio doesn’t have many legal avenues to protect people who feel they’ve been harmed by the gas industry.

“There’s just a host of things that are lacking here in Ohio. Pennsylvania, not exactly an amazing role model, has some additional laws that help,” Hunter says.

For example, unlike Ohio, Pennsylvania’s constitution includes an amendment that guarantees clean air and water as a basic right. A citizen’s group in a suburban township east of Pittsburgh is using the Environmental Rights Amendment to challenge the local ordinance which allows fracking in rural areas of the township.

Local governments in Pennsylvania can use zoning to restrict where well pads are located. Hunter says in Ohio, local zoning authority is still in question.

“IT’S NOT OK”

Raina Rippel, director of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project, works with people in communities impacted by the natural gas industry. She understands that lack of control in the face of change can be scary for people who live in communities experiences rapid expansion of the natural gas industry.

“The sense that what was once a rural community is overrun with truck traffic; the sense that you’re not sure if your air is safe to breathe; you’re not sure if your water is safe to drink,” Rippel says, “…is too easily dismissed by the industry saying, you don’t have the data, you don’t have the facts.”

Rippel points to research associating the chemicals emitted by diesel trucks and other gas infrastructure with health problems like headaches and nausea, as well as cancer and heart disease. “I think we all understand we are being exposed,” says Ripple. “We understand that we are being subjected to these harmful emissions. We may not understand exactly how that’s going to translate – and I hate to say the word – into cancer – years down the line, but we know that something is happening, and we know that this is not ok.”

From the air, you can see how fracking operations sit in the middle of small farms in rural Ohio.

In an email, the Ohio EPA said it has public involvement coordinators to talk with citizens about complaints. The agency recommends people visit its website or call these numbers:

>>Ohio EPA’s website has a “Citizen Concerns” section where public meetings and notices are listed. The publc can also access public records there, file an environmental complaint, and even report a spill. You can also call the office for help: 614.644-2160.

>>To report spill, release or environmental crime call the Ohio EPA 24/7 hotline: 1-800-282-9378

>The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has a incident reporting hotline staffed around the clock: 844-OHCALL1. Routine complaints can be directed to central office at (614) 265-6922 or any of the regional offices or via email at oilandgas@dnr.state.oh.us.

Drilling, fracking and pipelines can involve leaks, fires and explosions

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

Everywhere the gas industry goes it makes enemies.  It ruins ground water.  The industry has turned itself inside out trying to deny it in court, often settling with people who make claims by making the victims sign non-disclosure contracts.  They can’t say the company paid them, nor how much.  Legally, it is a black hole.  No light gets out. Aquifer contamination is a long story many of our readers are familiar with. People have the same problem elsewhere it is tried.  Fracking has already poisoned much of the underground water in the Murray-Darling basin in Australia, for example.

Also the large diameter, long distance pipelines the industry wants to build to carry gas are so hated they are a big factor in politics in several states and have brought about formation of substantial groups to fight them.  Disturbance of surface water and erosion and resulting sedimentation are one aspect.  Another is the reduction of land values due to the restrictions on use after the pipelines are in place. The land owner’s looses building lots, places are opened up for trespassing, additional access roads beyond the pipeline right of way are required, loss of timber growing capacity results and more.  To add insult to injury, the land owner gets no tax reduction, and the right of way does not come back to the land when the use for gas is over.  No one has been able to explain why the gas company (more likely their heirs) should hold it FOREVER. Maybe they will put in an underground roller coaster?

It’s no secret that these pipelines will pay off for the investors even if gas flow ceases soon after they are built  –  and utility patrons will pay the cost.  No loss to investors.

A big issue coming up is the supersized drilling pads.  EQT seems to be the leader.  They are now getting permits for concrete pads for up to 30 wells, while currently using pads for just under 20 wells. But, 40 well pads are under consideration.  The justification for well pads with so any wells is to “marry the efficiencies of having one site of operations with the careful choreography of spacing the production from each well so it doesn’t overwhelm the gathering and compression infrastructure.”

Imagine what it does to the neighborhood – what chance does ground water have?  Imagine the noise, dust, runoff from a hard rain, air pollution, chemical leaks, chance of explosion, etc.  Sort of puts the pictures of early capitalism, drawn by Philipp Jakob Loutherbourg in mind doesn’t it?  See here, and here, and here.   Certainly designed from a comfortable place and with the same lack of concern for humanity and the natural world!

Then there is the medical aspect of fracking. Since it involves data and statistics, and most of us are woefully under educated in statistics, results are easily countered by efforts to confuse the research.  Asthma, particularly in the young and the old, seems reasonable considering the heavy diesel traffic and vast evaporating ponds, which not only disperse water into the air, but also volatile chemicals.  Low birth weights near the drilling platforms have been claimed in some research.  Numerous other complaints are found.

In view of the large number of chemicals involved (a hundred or more) pumped down one well or another plus some unknown number coming back up with the petroleum and percolated out of the crushed rock by temperatures typically around 180 degrees Fahrenheit and pressures of up to 700 or more times atmospheric pressure.  This just isn’t your ordinary high school or college chemistry lab stuff.  It is far from it, very specialized.  But the driller or his company don’t have to research toxicology of their process, nor is the government going to do anything to research it, because of the politics of petroleum.  The scheme is to make victims responsible for proving that drilling and fracking bring many risks, nuisances, and possible health problems.

The toxicology has some very subtle stuff involved.  The endocrine glands are ductless glands in the body.  They deliver very small amounts of hormone chemicals directly to the blood.  The most common mechanisms of toxicity are to block receptors for signaling compounds, or tying up the hormone molecules so they can’t be used.  Consequently, the so called “endocrine disrupters” need be present only in very small amounts to cause problems. So small they can hardly be measured.  But the effects can be significant (powerful).

There has been a hullabaloo about endocrine disrupters since fracking began.  When you think of the vast evaporating ponds, the thousands of truckloads of water and materials used, it is hard to think that small amounts of hormones could mess up your nice big fracking operation.  So the companies don’t do the research, and government officials, dependent on them for campaign funds, simply don’t have the stomach to face the problems.

Finally, fracking is hugely dangerous. Frank Branson, a Dallas-based plaintifff’s attorney who specializes in catastrophic workplace accidents, said oil and gas operations are inherently dangerous and many companies are lax on safety, especially as energy prices go higher.

One company had five workers killed on one rig accident recently.  Another company lost 20 workers in a five year period.  Here in West Virginia, drivers have been forced to work  over 24 hours straight.  People are becoming more aware of these costs of drilling.

People die and there are others to take their place, what’s new about that?  Why worry about those they left behind? Individual people sometimes pay with their lives while a company and their insurance company can absorb the dollars needed.

All these things add pressure on fracking as time passes by.  More and more people become convinced of the damage caused, but not previously charged to the extracting company. More and more, as time goes by, fracking looks the wrong way to go.

Proposed MVP crossing in Monroe County, WV

From an Article by Brad McElhinny in WV Metro-News, January 09, 2018

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Environmental groups have filed a federal appeal to try to stop construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

The groups filed a motion asking for a stay of the project’s certificate of public convenience and necessity that was issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The motion was filed late Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The motion argues that the federal court system needs to act immediately to stop “irreparable environmental harm” that would occur once construction of the natural gas pipeline begins. The motion to stay contends property owners along the pipeline’s path would suffer damage to their property and lifestyles.

“Petitioners, whose members reside near, recreate on, and own land that will be taken and degraded by the MVP, seek the stay to prevent irreparable injury to their property, environmental, aesthetic, and recreational interests pending the Court’s review.”

The motion contends FERC’s didn’t critically evaluate the purpose and need for the MVP. The environmental groups also contend FERC lacked substantial evidence to support its finding of public convenience and necessity.

It aims to stop tree clearing and other construction that could start as soon as February 1: “Once private property is taken, mature trees are cut, steep slopes denuded, wetlands filled, trenches dug, and a high-pressure large-diameter pipeline is laid and filled with gas, the court can no longer restore the status quo,” the motion states.

MORE: Read the MVP Motion to Stay.

The pipeline developers wrote in a recent court filing that they need access to all the property no later than Feb. 1 to comply with a window for tree clearing required by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The federal appeal was filed by attorneys for Appalachian Mountain Advocates on behalf of several other environmental organizations: Appalachian Voices, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, the Sierra Club, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and Wild Virginia.

“FERC failed to follow the law; in so doing, it is recklessly sacrificing our streams, public lands and private property rights,” stated Angie Rosser, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition.

“Their refusal to fully evaluate the purpose and need of this project robs the public of benefiting from less harmful alternatives. FERC’s shoddy approval of MVP makes a mockery of their responsibility to the public interest.”

The Mountain Valley Pipeline, along with the similar but separate Atlantic Coast Pipeline, gained approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in mid-October. One of the commissioners dissented, calling the public interest of the projects into question.

The motion to stay reflects one of the points raised by Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur, who contended FERC should have given greater attention to co-locating the MVP with the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

The $3.5 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline would extend 42-inch diameter natural gas pipeline over 303 miles to transport West Virginia natural gas into southern Virginia. The path would cross Greenbrier, Monroe, Nicholas, Summers, Braxton, Harrison, Lewis, Webster and Wetzel counties.

The MVP will be constructed and owned by Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC, a joint venture between EQT Midstream Partners, LP; NextEra US Gas Assets, LLC; Con Edison Transmission, Inc.; WGL Midstream; and RGC Midstream, LLC.

Starting February 1, MVP wants to start mobilizing construction crews across 11 segments of the project. Each of those is 30 miles long and will be cleared and constructed simultaneously.

MVP and its contractors will first fell and clear trees for properties used for service facilities and access roads. Work then will continue in a straight line down the path — clearing and grading the rights-of-way, ditching the line and moving the pipe.

Hitting that window is crucial, the company says, to minimize environmental consequences. Tree clearing has to happen prior to March 31 for locations with protected bats and before May 31 for species with protected migratory birds.

By mid-April to early May, MVP and the contractors intend to weld pipe in each of the 11 segments. They’ll then test the welds, lower the pipe into the trench, cover and grade the surface, work on crossings and tie-ins, clean and dry the pipeline and finally put as in.

The pipeline is planned to go into service by next December. The company says it has agreements in place to start shipping gas late this year.

The pipeline developers are also in federal court cases over eminent domain with some property owners fighting the claims.