Path of Mariner East II Pipeline borders many private residences

From an Article by Scott DiSavino, Stephanie Kelly, Reuters News Service, November 28, 2018

MEDIA, PA — Energy Transfer LP and its Sunoco pipeline subsidiary have racked up more than 800 state and federal permit violations while racing to build two of the nation’s largest natural gas pipelines, according to a Reuters analysis of government data and regulatory records.

The pipelines, known as Energy Transfer Rover and Sunoco Mariner East 2, will carry natural gas and gas liquids from Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, an area that now accounts for more than a third of U.S. gas production.

Reuters analyzed four comparable pipeline projects and found they averaged 19 violations each during construction.

The Rover and Mariner violations included spills of drilling fluid, a clay-and-water mixture that lubricates equipment for drilling under rivers and highways; sinkholes in backyards; and improper disposal of hazardous waste and other trash. Fines topped $15 million.

Energy Transfer also raised the ire of federal regulators by tearing down a historic house along Rover’s route.

The Appalachia region has become a hub for natural gas as it increasingly replaces coal for U.S. power generation, creating an urgent need for new pipelines. But the recent experience of residents and regulators with the two Energy Transfer pipelines has state officials vowing to tighten laws and scrutinize future projects.

“Ohio’s negative experience with Rover has fundamentally changed how we will permit pipeline projects,” said James Lee, a spokesman for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

Problems with Mariner prompted Pennsylvania legislators to craft bills tightening construction regulations, which have drawn bipartisan support. “Any pipeline going through this area is going to face resistance which it would not have faced before,” said Pennsylvania State Senator Andy Dinniman, a Democrat.

Energy Transfer spokeswoman Alexis Daniel said the firm remained committed to safe construction and operation and at times went “above and beyond” regulations for the two projects.

Construction of the 713-mile, $4.2 billion Rover started in March 2017 and was planned to proceed at about 89 miles a month, while work on the 350-mile, $2.5 billion Mariner East 2 started in February 2017 and was planned at 50 miles a month, according to company statements on construction schedules. Both were targeted for completion late last year.

Regulators and industry experts said the pace of both projects far exceeded industry norms.

The four other projects examined by Reuters were mostly completed at a pace averaging 17 miles per month. Reuters selected the projects for comparison because, like Rover and Mariner, they cost more than $1.5 billion, stretched at least 150 miles and were under construction at the same time.

Construction on both Energy Transfer pipelines was ultimately slowed when state and federal regulators ordered numerous work stoppages after permit violations. Energy Transfer completed the last two sections of Rover in November and said it expects to put Mariner East 2 in service soon.

In February, Pennsylvania fined the company $12.6 million for environmental damage, including the discharge of drilling fluids into state waters without a permit. After further problems, including the sinkholes, a state judge in May ordered work halted on Mariner East 2.

Administrative Law Judge Elizabeth Barnes wrote that Energy Transfer’s Sunoco unit “made deliberate managerial decisions to proceed in what appears to be a rushed manner in an apparent prioritization of profit over the best engineering.”

While pipeline construction schedules vary, the planned timelines for Rover and Mariner were ambitious, said Fred Jauss, partner at Dorsey & Whitney in Washington and a former attorney with the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which regulates interstate gas pipelines.

“They aren’t taking their time … we’re all concerned about it,” said Pennsylvania State Senator John Rafferty, a Republican, referring to other state politicians, constituents and first responders.

Energy Transfer spokeswoman Lisa Dillinger told Reuters the schedules were “appropriate for the size, scope, and the number of contractors hired.”

Other companies that planned slower construction of comparable projects have finished mostly on schedule with almost no violations. Canadian energy company Enbridge Inc., for instance, recently finished a $2.6 billion, 255-mile pipeline – following a path similar to Rover through Ohio and Michigan – with just seven violations. Enbridge did not respond to a request for comment.

HAZARDOUS SPILLS

Energy Transfer, now one of the nation’s largest pipeline operators, encountered large protests led by Native American tribes and environmental activists over the route of its Dakota Access crude oil line in North Dakota in 2016 and has seen protests of Mariner East 2 in Pennsylvania, where opponents have highlighted its safety record on existing pipelines.

The company has had a relatively high incidence of hazardous liquid spills and other problems, according to a Reuters review of data from the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA).

Energy Transfer’s Sunoco unit ranked third worst among all pipeline companies in average annual incidents between 2010 and 2017, according to the PHMSA data. In total, Energy Transfer and its affiliated companies released more than 41,000 barrels of hazardous liquids causing more than $100 million in property damage, PHMSA data shows.

Bibianna Dussling of Media, Pennsylvania, joined a group of activists protesting Mariner East after learning the project’s route would pass near her daughter’s elementary school. “The violations are really meaningless to them,” she said. “You do so much to protect your children day-to-day, and to face something like this, that you feel is so much out of your hands.”

Energy Transfer’s Dillinger said incidents have been sharply reduced since the merger of Sunoco Logistics and Energy Transfer Partners into one company, Energy Transfer, in the spring of 2017. Incidents this year are “trending below industry average,” she said.

HISTORIC HOUSE DEMOLITION

The Rover pipeline attracted additional federal scrutiny when Energy Transfer demolished a historic house along its route.

After Energy Transfer bought the 1843 Stoneman house in Ohio, FERC staff in February 2016 required the firm to come up with a plan to prevent adverse effects on the property, according to a staff’s environmental report.

Instead, the company tore down the house in May 2016 without notifying FERC or the Ohio State Historic Preservation Office. That led FERC to deny Energy Transfer a so-called blanket certificate that would have allowed the company to construct Rover with less oversight, noting the demolition convinced regulators the company “cannot be trusted” to comply with environmental regulations.

Energy Transfer said in a statement that it had “resolved all outstanding issues” with the demolition and donated more than $4 million to the Ohio preservation office.

DAMAGED WETLANDS

Once Energy Transfer started building Rover, FERC and West Virginia regulators required the company to halt work on parts of the project after violations, including the release of an estimated 2 million gallons of drilling fluid into wetlands near the Tuscarawas River in Ohio in April 2017.

>>> For a breakdown of Rover’s 681 federal violations, see: tmsnrt.rs/2PUGmYr

In Pennsylvania, Mariner East 2 has received more than 80 notices of violation from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, mostly for accidental release of drilling fluids. Drilling fluids can impair the natural flow of streams and rivers and harm an area’s ecosystem, said Lynda Farrell, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Coalition.

The Ohio Attorney General filed a lawsuit in November 2017 seeking about $2.6 million from Rover and some of the construction companies building the pipeline for the alleged illegal discharge of millions of gallons of drilling fluids into state waters, among other things. That lawsuit is ongoing.

Energy Transfer’s Dillinger said the company was “disappointed” that the Ohio AG sued after the company tried to resolve issues amicably and that it would continue cooperating with regulators. “We continue to work closely with both state regulators to resolve any outstanding issues related to our construction,” she said.

The government needs to fully evaluate all the issues and reject pipelines when necessary

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County WV, July 30, 2018

The word in a businessman’s mind only has to duplicate the real world to the extent of making profit. Unfortunately, for society as a whole, a lot of other aspects of the real world are important.

One illustration of real word discord between the abstraction of the folks that sit in air-conditioned offices in summer and heated offices in winter and think about how to make a profit, given certain assets, came to me a few days ago. A timber man was telling about his last job. He’d paid to cut and remove a stand of timber, gotten in all the paperwork, satisfied the inspector about his haul roads, and all that, and gotten into the job.

Then a pipeline company had sent a representative through and told him he would have to stop, they were going to clear a right of way for one of the 42 inch pipelines. He quit, and they cut the right of way and piled the trees alongside their clearing. When he was released to go back to it, the timber was worthless. He’d paid for it, the farmer got damages, the pipeline company wouldn’t let him clear the right of way, and to add insult to injury, the standards for their access roads wasn’t near as stringent as for his!

Laying pipelines in country where there are steep grades, rock layers near the surface and karst limestone is not the same as laying pipe in deep soil, in relatively level country. When they have to anchor the backhoe digging the trench by running a cable to a dozer with its blade dug in upslope it’s not only life-threatening for the operators, but beyond restoration. I’ve seen rock-cutting grind wheels on dozers in place of the blade, and seen rock-cutting grind wheels on the arm of backhoes.

Tell me, when they cut a path up a hillside and lift the rock out, how are they going to fill back in? Keep in mind this is on slopes over 30 degrees, sometimes 60 degrees or more. I’ll tell you, they are going to throw back the big rough rock! So there is an underground channel four or more feet wide, perhaps eight feet deep carrying water below the surface. And there will be spots where the anti-rust coating on the outside is cut through. The diversion ditches on the uphill side simply dump storm water into the pipeline trench. God help the natives!

If much of the fill in those deep ditches is woods soil, it won’t be so hard on the pipe anti-rust coating, but will be constantly soft and if a long unsecured section will be inclined to slip out, with or without the pipe. At the bottom the water will come out and enter a natural stream. At this point the question becomes how to avoid sediment if the fill does stay in place. These big pipelines are hundreds of miles long and hundreds of ups and downs have draining streams. A lot of landscape is involved.

What about karst landscape? This is limestone, very hard to dig, but full of cracks through which slightly acid surface water sinks. In such places caves form, and collapse to make sinkholes. What will happen in such places where pipelines are laid? They will certainly affect drainage. And may cave in in sections.

These are generalizations easily ignored at the top office. They draw a line on the map where it will be allowed and make the most money. Engineers for the companies that do the work have their work cut out for them. The construction company has to agree to build it where the pipeline company wants it to go, or the pipeline company gets some other company to do the work. Then the engineers have to draw up the plans – or look for another job. Everybody is constrained to least cost. It is cheaper to not look at finer detail.

Then there is the minutia the engineers miss. A recent 36 inch pipe went a few miles west of where I live. Here are two examples of things I observed that the engineers ought to have known better. In one place instead of going to the bottom of a gully, they made a fill and put in a culvert, then laid the pipeline in the fill above the culvert. The watershed above the culvert is not so large the culvert won’t carry the water, but it is wooded. That means there will constantly be small branches washing down to block that culvert. If it isn’t checked several times a year it, it can get blocked and the fill washed so the pipe is exposed or even undercut.

Further south there is a place where that pipeline goes straight down a steep grade for a mile or more. Each of the storm water diversions goes the same distance off the line, so each one adds its load of diverted storm water to what has come from upslope. This will build up a large load tending to make a gulley.

Most folks have no idea of the scale of the pipelines, the compressor stations, the access roads, the rights of way. If you get fracking newsletters it helps.

Some have, lets say, contact with Marcellus Air which takes many, many quality aerial photographs of installations and wells and pipelines in progress. Many include enough of the surroundings to see the neighborhoods, pointing out schools, housing developments, where people are. These newsletters also regularly include photographs showing the pollutant haze that hangs over the Marcellus gas field.

You can go to Google Earth or Apple’s similar application and look for fracking damage in an area. I like the Apple app because the satellite photos are clear summer pictures, no clouds with leaves on. If you have it, try “Hurst Hollow Road.” It shows a compressor station in SW Harrison County, WV, with the recent pipeline installation, not yet grassed over. You can follow it miles north to Jarvisville, where there is another pump station, on north to the four lane US Route 50 west of Clarksburg. Here the line becomes less distinct. Reduce the scale and you can see the veins and pimples of fracking in many places on the countryside.

The reply from the big boys who play their profit game from air-conditioned rooms, mentioned above, would be, “Aahh, lots of trees left in the countryside!” But they ignore the fact the trees have a very important job: they provide oxygen and remove pollutants from the air, not the least of them carbon and nitrogen oxides. Each 44 tons of carbon dioxide they remove from the air provides 32 tons of pure oxygen. Twelve tons of carbon is stored in wood and the soil. Twenty five percent of what we humans put into the air is removed by trees now. They do it with free energy from the sun with no cost and no planning and no labor. Over a 50-year lifespan, a tree generates almost $32,000 worth of oxygen, providing $62,000 worth of air pollution control. Pretty good deal!

The Mountain Valley Pipeline will have no odorant. That means leaks cannot be smelled by locals living near it!

Think of the recent big explosion of the new LeachXPress pipeline that occurred near Moundsville WV after only 6 months after start up. It had recently had a “pig run,” a device sent through it to inspect it, and wasn’t even up to full operating pressure. The cause was a landslide where the pipeline traverses a steep hill. They lost $437,250 worth of gas. The Follansbee explosion of 2015 is blamed on a landslide, too.

Inspection of welds is a weak spot. Lots of welds, all around the pipe, in a ditch often on steep hillsides, must be very strong to hold natural gas at several tens of times atmospheric pressure.

This construction is useless when the gas is gone. In a few years grass and shrubs cover the pipeline right of way, but they don’t remove as much pollution from the air, and much of that goes back to carbon dioxide soon. It takes 70 years or more for mature trees to come back.

The access roads are covered deeply with crushed rock, as are the well pads. Those will be kept bare a decade or two, and many more decades will be required for establishment of new forest cover.

The pump stations will fall into disuse eventually. Maybe the heavy metal will be extracted for salvage, but the buildings will be abandoned, leaving the neighborhood a mess. The companies will go out of existence before proper reclamation, or they will be excused from reclamation. Like coal and railroads, the litter will dominate the neighborhoods indefinitely.

Enthusiasm wanes with time, as does profit. Investors move on and their gain can’t be tapped against the public loss and private loss, such as spoiled water wells and useless land. Loss of property value to individuals is over looked. Facts are distorted. Legislation is bought and lax enforcement is ignored.

We humans have seen environmental disaster before. But never before with climate change, exploding populations, world wide resource exhaustion, and misinformation on a colossal scale simultaneously. We have widely turned off citizens, too. How will it end? We can only guess, but it doesn’t look like there is any chance of a “soft landing.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

See also a personal story now unfolding:

High up on a hill (With VIDEO)| register-herald.com

36 Inch Sherwood Lateral of ROVER PIPELINE in Tyler County, WV

By Kate Mishkin, Charleston Gazette-Mail, March 13, 2018

State regulators have slapped a cease and desist order on a natural gas pipeline, citing multiple water pollution violations, according to a letter made public by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

The 713-mile-long Rover Pipeline, which would transport 3.25 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from processing plants in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania per day, received a cease-and-desist order March 5 from Scott Mandirola, director of the Division of Water and Waste Management, documents show.

According to the order, DEP officials conducted inspections on four different days in February, during which they cited 14 violations in Doddridge, Tyler and Wetzel counties. The offenses include leaving trash and construction debris partially buried on site, improperly installing perimeter control and failing to inspect or clean public and private roads around the construction site.

The pipeline, owned by Energy Transfer Partners, has been ordered to halt construction until state regulators inspect the site and determine Rover Pipeline LLC is complying with the Water Pollution Control Permit, issued Dec. 15, 2016. Rover is also tasked with submitting a plan of “corrective action” due March 25 and installing devices to control erosion and sediment water release.

Energy Transfer Partners also owns the Dakota Access Pipeline — the subject of protests in North Dakota last year.

The cease-and-desist order is the second the WVDEP has issued to the Rover Pipeline in the last year; state regulators cited the pipeline for similar violations in July. Earlier that year in April, the pipeline spilled more than 2 million gallons of drilling fluid in Ohio, eliciting scrutiny from regulators there.

That’s a red flag, said Angie Rosser, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition.

“When I see repeated violations, I say it’s time for this company to stop doing business in this state if they can’t do it responsibly,” she said.

The cease-and-desist also comes as other major projects, such as the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and Mountain Valley Pipeline, get ready to begin construction on their 300 and 600-mile-long natural gas pipelines, respectively. In Monroe County, though, people have been sitting in trees on top of Peters Mountain to protest knocking down trees to build the Mountain Valley Pipeline there, potentially forcing the project to miss its March 31 deadline — the day the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says bats come out of hibernation.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline requested a preliminary injunction to continue construction, and the case was brought to Monroe County Circuit Court Tuesday afternoon. Another motion filed in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals says the Mountain Valley Pipeline shouldn’t have gotten its streamlined construction permit, called the Nationwide 12 permit, from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers because state regulators waived another certificate that was crucial for that streamlined permit.

“[There's] a lot of anxiety building with people along the pipeline route seeing trees falling, there’s a sense that construction is eminent, and seeing the photos of Rover, and people are rightfully concerned because it’s just unequivocal that pipeline construction can cause damage to water, to rivers and streams and nobody wants to see that. So it’s not an imagined threat, it’s a very real threat,” Rosser said.

The cease-and-desist order should signal to other pipelines that they’ll be closely watched by state regulatory agencies, as well as mobilized citizen groups and landowners, she said.

“We’re seeing the DEP enforcement staff is very busy with this one pipeline, but what happens when we layer three or four pipelines at the same time, as far as keeping an eye on things?” she said.

In an email, WVDEP spokesman Jake Glance noted that the order is just for the Sherwood lateral, one of the sections of the pipeline.
“Also, the company requested and was given clearance to wrap up work on one section of borehole that they were concerned would collapse if they stopped work,” he wrote.

Rover can appeal the cease-and-desist order, but Alexis Daniel, spokeswoman for Rover Pipeline and Energy Transfer Partners, said they were working with FERC and the state DEP to “resolve any outstanding concerns in a manner that ensures the complete remediation of the areas to the satisfaction of all parties.”

Construction is over 99 percent complete, and the project is expected to be finished in the second quarter of this year, she said.

Summers County Residents Against MVP

Greetings from Buckhannon, WV:

This is a reminder that the deadline for submitting comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on the proposed Mountain Valley Pipeline is November 27th.

You can do this electronically, so please set about figuring out what impact the pipeline will have on:

• water resources in your area/on your land
• cultural interactions
• historical considerations
• health and safety issues
• environmental impacts

Contact information is all on this internet page:

http://www.ferc.gov/contact-us/contact-us.asp

The docket # for the MVP is CP16-10 (CP16-10-000).

Please forward this to anyone you know who may be a landowner on the MVP. Keep in mind that some landowners do not have email and would need to have this information in print, so if you can, print this email and deliver it to them, or alternatively, give me their land address and I will drop it in the mail to them.

This is an urgent matter. Your help is appreciated.  In gratitude,

>>> April Keating for the Mountain Lakes Preservation Alliance

See also: www.mountainlakespreservation.org

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Deadline to file as an “Intervenor” for the MVP is November 27!

MVP has filed its formal application today — see: Mountain Valley Formal Application. FERC has also released the new docket number — it is CP16-10-000.

There are two possibilities for filing for intervenor status: file as a group or file as an individual. The Greenbrier River Watershed Association (GRWA) will be intervening on behalf of our members, but  individual intervenors are an important part of the FERC process.

Intervening may inundate your inbox with e-mail, but for those passionately opposed to the pipeline, it is important to be actively engaged in the process. An intervenor has a right to file motions, file testimony, cross examine witnesses, and file briefs in any administrative hearing.

You will still be able to submit your comments if you are not an intervenor. If the purpose of intervening is simply to get copies of documents, that can be accomplished by just subscribing to the appropriate docket. The FIRST step is to be registered with FERC. Go to the FERC website and register with the appropriate docket number: CP16-10-000

You need to have “standing” to file as an Intervenor. It is best to prepare this statement ahead of time. Copy and paste this information when prompted to avoid your session timing out. If you are a landowner impacted by the pipeline route that would give you standing, but not all community members will have standing. “Being a concerned citizen” may not give you standing. Dominion may petition FERC to limit the amount of intervenors so prepare a good argument for why you are applying to be an intervenor.

The attorneys at the Appalachian Mountain Advocates (Appalmad) will be submitting the motion for intervention on behalf of GRWA and several other organizations. The primary benefit of working together is to pool our resources and expertise so that we can collaborate to make the best possible case in front of FERC.

Let’s keep in touch on this important matter.  Contact info:  elise@greenbrier.org

>>> Elise Keaton for the Greenbrier River Watershed Association <<<

See also:  www.Appalmad.org

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Energy Transfer pushing for Rover Pipeline approval

From an Article by Shane Hoover, Canton Times Reporter, November 9, 2015

Energy Transfer urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday to approve the Rover Pipeline project no later than June. The Texas-based company wants to build two 42-inch-diameter pipelines to carry natural gas from the Utica and Marcellus shales to customers in the Midwest, Great Lakes, Gulf Coast and Canada.

The proposed route crosses parts of Stark, Carroll, Tuscarawas and Wayne counties. Rover would ship 3.25 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day. << See the Note below on WV counties affected. >>

The company says summer construction would be safer for workers and the public and cause less damage to farmland and the environment, according to paperwork filed with FERC. Energy Transfer says it’s essential the pipeline start carrying natural gas by January 2017 to meet market demand.

Before the company can build the pipeline, FERC has to determine the project’s environmental impact. FERC staff plan to complete the review by July 29, 2016 and federal agencies would have until October 27, 2016 to finish their own reviews.

Rover staff have been in contact with FERC since June 2014 and formally applied in February 2015 for permission to build the pipeline. The company argues that “two years is a sufficient period of time” to review a project that will ease pipeline bottlenecks on Utica and Marcellus shale gas, and said it would respond promptly to environmental issues as they are raised.

FERC spokeswoman Tamara Young-Allen said the commission hasn’t decided whether to modify the current review schedule.

Note: The Rover pipeline with its lateral branch lines will likely impact Doddridge, Tyler. Wetzel, Marshall, Ohio, Brook, and Hancock counties in northwestern West Virginia. The FERC Docket Number for the Rover Pipeline Project  is CP15-93-000.

>>> See also an article on the various pipelines of the Energy Transfer – Williams partnership.