Punxsutawney Phil has relatives in West Virginia who care!

>>> Received on January 31 at 8:41 AM

Make sure you join us Thursday, February 2nd, for a special #GroundhogsDay webinar on the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Right now, there are two permits from federal agencies pending approval and you have the opportunity to comment!

Learn how you can send your comments. This webinar is set for 12:00 Noon! (See the recording below.)

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RECORDING ~ Mountain Valley Pipeline Lunch and Learn February 2, 2023 – WV Rivers Coalition

ACCESS WINDOW~ https://wvrivers.org/2023/02/mvpfeb2023/

YouTube Recording ~ https://youtu.be/42d-68a1-tc

Two permits from federal agencies are pending approval and you have the opportunity to comment on them. This February 2nd webinar discussed how you can craft and submit your comments.

1. You can comment on the US Forest Service permit approval until February 6, through this webform.

2. You can comment on the Army Corp of Engineers permit until February 10, through this webform.

Thank you for your participation at this important time!

The 15 state ORSANCO / ORBA region

From the Ohio River Basin Alliance, Cincinnati, October 21, 2020

The Ohio River Basin Alliance released a sweeping strategy today to help the 15-state region and its more than 25 million residents tackle urgent environmental threats and economic needs, including inadequate river infrastructure, pollution to the river and its tributaries, and increased flooding that is only expected to get worse due to climate change.

“The regional plan provides a roadmap for needed investments that will benefit millions of people in the region by boosting our economy, protecting our drinking water, restoring our environment, protecting our public health, supporting our outdoor recreation, and improving our quality of life,” said Harry Stone, chairperson of the Ohio River Basin Alliance. “We have a historic opportunity to stand up for communities large and small in the region—and we are going to do it. We look forward to working with stakeholders in the region, as well as local officials, governors, and members of Congress to implement these common-sense solutions, before these challenges get more difficult and costly. We have solutions, and it’s time to use them.”

The plan, which covers portions of the states of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, highlights six regional priorities:

>> Restoring the river, its tributaries and ecosystems to protect the health of people, fish, and wildlife;
>> Addressing flooding to protect vulnerable communities and infrastructure;
>> Ensuring abundant clean water for people, fish and wildlife, and businesses;
>> Increasing nature-based recreation and tourism;
>> Growing water-borne commerce and ensuring efficient waterborne commerce through adequate lock and dam infrastructure; and,
>> Supporting robust research and education to inform the needs and opportunities of the region.

The goal is for the regional strategy to be implemented by collaborating with local communities, states, and federal government and other diverse partners that leads to robust new federal investment in the region, akin to what other regional initiatives have received in the Chesapeake Bay, Florida Everglades, Great Lakes, Gulf Coast, and Puget Sound. The next phase is to craft implementation plans for the six goals.

“We look forward to working with local partners to put forward solutions that benefit our environment, economy, and communities—especially those communities that have historically borne the brunt of pollution and environmental harm, such as people of color, low-income and rural communities, and Tribal Nations,” said Stone. “We have an obligation and responsibility to help all of the people who call the region home, and we believe that the regional plan can lift all boats.”

The “Plan for the Ohio River Basin 2020 – 2025 Planning Assistance to States Study” was funded and performed under an agreement between Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville District, with financial support from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The plan received input from a diverse set of stakeholders, including state and federal agencies, colleges and universities, businesses, industry associations, cities, and non-governmental organizations.

The Ohio River basin covers 204,000 square miles encompassing parts of 15 states. It is home to over 25 million people. The Ohio River supplies drinking water to more than 5 million people.

Ohio River Basin Alliance, a collaboration of Ohio River Basin stakeholders and stakeholder organizations, was formed in 2009 to fill the need for an organization to speak for the Basin holistically by capturing the highest priorities of the numerous organizations of the Basin and advocating for the ecological health and economic well-being of this world class basin through sound laws, policies, and projects, and the funds to support them. ORBA is a collaboration that includes more than 250 representatives from over 130 states, local and federal agencies, industry, academia, and nonprofit organizations in the Ohio River Basin. ORBA’s purpose is to foster broad collaboration to advance education and science; promote the conservation of natural resources in the Ohio River Basin; and achieve sustainable economic growth, ecological integrity and public safety across and within political jurisdictions within the Ohio River Basin.

Read the plan at: http://bit.ly/ORBAplan

ORBA Address:
Ohio River Basin Alliance, 5735 Kellogg Ave, Cincinnati OH 45230

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See the list of sample sites and parameters

This 42 inch pipeline creates pollution problems at stream crossings, on steep terrain, etc.

Commentary by Jacob Hileman, Roanoke Times, July 12, 2020

On Oct. 2, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated Nationwide Permit (NWP) 12 for the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Upon losing this permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, MVP was forced to cease construction at all stream and wetland crossings in Virginia and West Virginia, leaving hundreds of crossings outstanding. That the Corps has been unable to reinstate NWP 12 for twenty-one months, and counting, is truly incredible.

Why has the Corps delayed reissuing NWP 12 to MVP for so long?

It is likely the Corps has not been able to find a way to reinstate the permit that will withstand legal scrutiny. Since beginning construction in early 2018, MVP has lost numerous permits as a result of opponents’ successful legal challenges. In a number of these cases, the courts thoroughly rebuked the implicated agencies for failing to justify their issuance of permits for the MVP. For example, authorization from the U.S. Forest Service was deemed “silent acquiescence.” The Corps has assuredly seen the writing on the wall.

The magnitude of the delay in reissuing NWP 12 to MVP is a stark indication the Corps never should have granted the permit in the first place.

If reinstating NWP 12 was simply a case of dotting i’s and crossing t’s — a purely procedural matter — the Corps would have reissued the permit to MVP within weeks. Instead, the Corps finds itself facing the absolutely monumental task of rewriting a fatally flawed permit. This was confirmed by the April 15 ruling against the Keystone XL pipeline, which found the Corps acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” when it reauthorized the NWP 12 program in 2017.

While the U.S. Supreme Court recently issued a partial stay of the lower court’s ruling — allowing pipelines other than Keystone XL to continue using NWP 12 during the appeal process — it does not solve the underlying permit issues for the MVP.

Can the Corps refuse to reissue NWP 12 for the MVP?

Yes. And while unlikely, it absolutely should. The text of the Corps’ suspension letter to MVP makes it clear the Corp has the authority to “reinstate, modify, or revoke the authorizations.” Without NWP 12 in place, MVP is not allowed to impact waterways during construction, yet failed sediment and erosion control devices have been the source of dozens of water quality violations in Virginia and West Virginia. These violations have resulted in more than $2 million in fines for MVP, and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality recently announced more fines are on the way.

The timing of the Corp’s reissuance of NWP 12 to MVP will communicate far more information than the text of the permit.

One year after MVP lost NWP 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit granted a stay of the Biological Opinion issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This action effectively halted new construction along the entirety of the 303-mile-long MVP, leaving the project belly-up as it contends with the fact it is $2 billion over budget and two years behind schedule. Even if the Corps is able to reissue NWP 12 in the near future, until the stop work order is lifted all forward construction remains at a standstill.

However, the concurrent suspension of both NWP 12 and the Biological Opinion may actually prove to be a boon to MVP. Assuming both permits are reissued simultaneously, the largest barriers to project-wide construction will immediately evaporate. This leaves the public and courts little time to scrutinize the revised permit conditions before MVP embarks on a frenzy of new construction, knowing the project’s very existence may depend on it. MVP surely recognizes this opportunity.

Since December, MVP and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have slow-walked the consultation process on the Biological Opinion, extending the process by one- and two-month increments while NWP 12 remained in limbo. Although the consultation process was completed last month, the Biological Opinion still has yet to be reissued.

Ultimately, regardless of how the Corps rewrites NWP 12 for the MVP, the permit conditions will have little to no effect on the ground. There is simply no way the damages wrought by the MVP can be contained. Any reissuance of NWP 12 is antithetical to the core function of the permit as a regulatory tool, and must be seen for what it is: a free license for MVP to pollute, damage, and desecrate any and all waterways in its path.

>>> Jacob Hileman is an environmental hydrologist with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. He was raised in the Catawba Valley of Virginia, and is presently a researcher at Stockholm University working on global water sustainability issues.

Holden Dometrius arrested on Little Mountain near Lindside, WV

From an Article by Laurence Hammack, Roanoke Times, April 24, 2019

A state regulation that delayed a key part of work on the Mountain Valley Pipeline — the crossings of more than 1,000 streams and wetlands in the two Virginias — has been revised in a way likely to benefit the project.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection wrote in a letter Wednesday to federal regulators that it has modified about 50 conditions to permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

One of the conditions was that the pipeline needed to be built across four major rivers in West Virginia within 72 hours. The Army Corps improperly bypassed that rule when it issued what’s called a Nationwide Permit 12 to the natural gas project, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in throwing out the authorization in October.

Although several more steps need to be taken before water body crossings can resume, a revised condition doing away with the time restriction in certain cases was seen as a victory for Mountain Valley.

However, complications from another court challenge involving a different pipeline in Virginia led one of the five partners in the joint Mountain Valley venture to say this week that completion of the project by the end of this year now “appears unlikely.”

Rebecca Kujawa, chief financial officer of NextEra Energy Inc., made her comments in a report on first quarter results posted to the company’s website.

Construction of Mountain Valley, which began last year, is expected to ramp up in the coming months following a winter lull, Kujawa said. But she expressed concerns about a 4th Circuit decision last year that prohibited the Atlantic Coast Pipeline from crossing the Appalachian Trail.

The Mountain Valley pipeline would also cross the scenic footpath, and backers worry that the project could be jeopardized by the Atlantic Coast ruling. “We are continuing to work through options with our partners and will provide a further update in the near future,” Kujawa said.

Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for Mountain Valley, said Thursday that there have been no announced changes to the company’s most recent goal of a late 2019 completion date.

“However, in light of the ongoing permit challenges, the window to achieve these targets is becoming more narrow,” she wrote in an email. “The team has been pursuing options and alternatives that would address the outstanding issues and, if realized within the next few months, would allow for” completion late this year.

When work on the 303-mile pipeline began a year ago, plans were to have it done by late 2018. As for the Nationwide Permit process, Cox said, the next step will be for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to review the modified conditions from West Virginia. Then the Army Corps will do the same.

Pipeline opponents were quick to react to the move, staging a protest early Thursday morning in which a man chained himself to equipment along the pipeline’s construction right of way in Lindside, West Virginia.

“To hell with your permits,” read a banner attached to a piece of welding equipment to which 22-year-old Holden Dometrius had locked himself, according to a news release from Appalachians Against Pipelines. After several hours of blocking work, Dometrius was removed by law enforcement officials.

The organization, which has been affiliated with more than dozen such blockades in West Virginia and Southwest Virginia, said the pipeline “endangers water, ecosystems, and communities along its route, contributes to climate change, increases demand for natural gas (and therefore fracking), and is entrenched in corrupt political processes.”

A clerk in the Monroe County Magistrate’s Court said Dometrius faces a felony charge of threatening terrorism and three misdemeanors: trespassing, obstruction and tampering with equipment. Dometrius, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was being held in jail in lieu of an $8,000 cash bond Thursday afternoon, the clerk said.

In October, the 4th Circuit vacated a Nationwide Permit 12 issued for a portion of the pipeline running through West Virginia. A legal challenge brought by the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations asserted that the Army Corps overlooked a requirement, imposed by the state’s environmental agency, that work on four major river crossings be completed within 72 hours to limit potential environmental harm.

Mountain Valley has said that digging trenches across the river bottoms for its 42-inch diameter pipe would take four to six weeks.

Two similar stream-crossing permits — one for Southwest Virginia and another for a second part of West Virginia — were suspended by the Army Corps days after the court ruling.

But by the time of the court’s opinion, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection had already initiated changes to address the court’s concerns. The department invited public comments in August — after the court had issued a stay to stream crossings in response to the Sierra Club’s lawsuit, which was later lifted — on a number of revisions to state conditions to the Army Corps’ permits, including one that removed the 72-hour time restriction in certain cases.

Concerns by regulators date back to Mountain Valley’s original plan to use a so-called “wet open cut” process to run the pipeline across streams and wetlands. That entails digging a ditch along the bottom of a flowing stream, and can lead to large amounts of sediment and other forms of pollution being washed downstream.

The company has since changed plans. It now proposes to use a dry-cut method, in which a temporary dam diverts the water from half of the river’s width while construction crews dig a trench for the pipe along the exposed river bed. The process is then repeated on the other half of the river.

While the dry-cut method takes longer than 72 hours, it poses less of an environmental risk, the Department of Environmental Protection said in explaining why it was removing the time restriction.

Appalachian Mountain Advocates, a nonprofit law firm that represented the Sierra Club in the 4th Circuit case, objected to the department’s plans during the written public comment period. In the past, a Sierra Club representative did not rule out the possibility of additional litigation if the Army Corps reissues its Nationwide Permit 12.

For Mountain Valley to get the $4.6 billion project fully back on track, it must still win approval from a second federal agency. The U.S. Forest Service had approved the pipeline to pass through about 3.5 miles of the Jefferson National Forest. That authorization was struck down last year by the 4th Circuit, which ruled that the agency failed to take into account expected problems with erosion and sedimentation.

The appeals court ruling sent the permit back to the Forest Service for reconsideration in July. Since then, the agency has said little about the process, other than it was “developing its response” to the issues identified by the court.

The Forest Service has also not responded to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking more information, which was filed in January by The Roanoke Times.

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“Hell With Your Permits — Work Stopped At MVP Site In WV, Protester Charged with Felony” | Blue Virginia, April 25, 2019

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Three (3) Protesters Arrested After Binding to MVP Equipment, WSET, June 5, 2018

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Stream & wetlands disturbances are severe and long lasting

Prepared by the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, Fact Sheet, 2/19

Background Information Summary

The WV Department of Environmental Protection (WV-DEP) agreed to permit the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and Atlantic Coast Pipeline through streams and wetlands according to a Nationwide 12 permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In 2017, WV-DEP established certain special conditions that must be followed for projects subject to a Nationwide 12 permit to protect the environment. Now, WV-DEP is proposing to change those conditions and are accepting public comment on proposed modifications through March 4, 2019. Comment here.

Key Revisions Proposed by the WV-DEP

The following proposed modifications raise concerns for our rivers and streams:

>>> Allowing exemptions to the 72-hour stream crossing restriction. This condition helps to minimize impacts to water quality and aquatic life. Prolonged dewatering of streambeds can have severe impacts to the life in a stream. Agencies like WV Division of Natural Resources rely on this 72-hour restriction to determine if construction during fish spawning seasons will have ill-effects on fish populations.

>>> Allowing temporary impediments to fish passage. This condition helps to minimize impacts to fish species by preventing structures that impede fish passage. WV-DEP is changing this condition to allow structures to impede fish passage as long as they are not permanent; however the length of time that fish passage will be prevented is not defined.

>>> Waiving the requirement for an individual water quality certification for large pipelines. This condition is in place to assure that stream and wetland crossings for large-scale pipelines (over 36” in diameter) get the careful analysis and individualized plans required to better ensure protection of water quality.

>>> Allowing for the removal of any permit conditions with no public scrutiny. Standard and special permit conditions are in place to make sure that when a nationwide permit is used there is a baseline of protections that will be enforced. These conditions become meaningless if the regulatory agency is allowed to remove or waive them, especially without any requirement for public notice and comment.

The WV-DEP states the modifications are necessary so that companies are not prevented from using more environmentally protective methods. This simply is not true. WV-DEP currently has the authority to reject coverage of large-scale projects under a one-size-fits-all Nationwide permit, and can instead come up with protective methods customized to the needs of the project through an individual permit.

How to Comment to the WV Department of Environmental Protection

Comments can be submitted online here, via email at WQSComments@wv.gov, or by mail to:

401 Water Quality Certification Program
ATTN: Nancy Dickson, WV-DEP
601 57th Street SE
Charleston, WV 25304-2345

Mountain Valley Pipeline in Blue Ridge Mountains

From an Article by Ken Ward, Jr., Charleston Gazette-Mail, October 2, 2018

A federal appeals court on Tuesday vacated a key Clean Water Act permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, saying regulators lacked legal authority to “substitute” one kind of construction standard for another that was more friendly to the natural gas pipeline project.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a three-page, unanimous and unsigned order four days after hearing oral arguments in a case brought by the Sierra Club, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and other citizen organizations over federal approval of the 300-mile-long pipeline from Wetzel County, West Virginia, into Pittsylvania County, Virginia.

The order offered few details on the court’s reasoning and said its ruling would “be more fully explained in a forthcoming opinion.”

The court did say that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “lacked authority” to substitute one type of requirement for construction of pipeline river crossings for an existing standard that environmental groups had argued in court could not be used by Mountain Valley Pipeline.

The pipeline’s plans for river crossings that would take four to six weeks to complete — across the Elk, Gauley, Meadow and Greenbrier rivers — violated an existing 72-hour state time limit for such work, the environmental groups said.

Tuesday’s ruling came in one of several cases that the 4th Circuit heard arguments on last week over the MVP project and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, two major natural gas transmission lines the industry says are key for its continued expansion in the Marcellus Shale region of Northern West Virginia.

In August, a joint examination by the Gazette-Mail and the nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica outlined ways in which state and federal regulators were changing their rules to speed pipeline approval and construction when legal issues were raised about the projects.

“Rules and regulations have routinely been waived, changed and ignored to accommodate the pipeline with catastrophic effects to the region’s water, environment safety and property rights,” said Monroe County resident Maury Johnson, a member of several groups opposing the pipeline. “Simply stated, the agencies that are suppose to protect citizens from the overreach of a mega-corporation have failed. They haven’t done their jobs.”

MVP spokeswoman Natalie Cox said the company is disappointed with the court ruling and is “evaluating options” to continue construction activities that don’t include stream crossings.

Officials from the Corps of Engineers and the state Department of Environmental Protection did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday evening.

Nationwide Permits are not appropriate

From the Notice of  Lew Freeman, Allegheny – Blue Ridge Alliance, June 4, 2018

The website of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, which has been down since May 22, is once again operational.  In a notice on the site’s home page (http://www.deq.virginia.gov/) , it indicates that the new deadline for submitting comments on the adequacy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers NWP 12 program for stream crossings of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline is Friday, June 15.

Written comments may be submitted via hand-delivery to VA-DEQ, 1111 East Main Street, Richmond, VA 23219; via postal mail toVA-DEQ, P.O. Box 1105, Richmond, VA 23218; or via e-mail at the following email address(es) ONLY – emails and attachments sent to other email addresses or internet sites will not be considered:

>>> NWP12InfoOnMVP@deq.virginia. gov

>>>  NWP12InfoOnACP@deq.virginia. gov

All ABRA members are urged to file their own comments and encourage their members and constituencies to do so as well.  Wild Virginia has prepared an excellent guide to provide assistance: “Suggestions for Comments to DEQ Public Notice Impacts from Waterbody Crossings and Water Quality Standards.” This is available at:
https://www.abralliance.org/ wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ Comments-in-Response-to-DEQ- Public-Notice-corrected.pdf.

Another helpful resource is an impact table of waters potentially affected by the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.  The document is published by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – Norfolk District and is available at:
https://www.abralliance.org/ wp-content/uploads/2018/05/VA- waters-impacted-by-ACP-U.S.- Corps-of-Engineers-11-30-17. pdf.

​—- Thank you very much, Lew Freeman,

Executive Director, Allegheny-Blue Ridge Alliance

P. O. Box 685, Monterey, VA 24465

www.abralliance.org

Cahas Mountain Road, Franklin Co., VA

Press Release from Appalachian Voices, May 22, 2018

Photo of mud across Cahas Mountain Road near construction of Mountain Valley Pipeline in Franklin County, May 2018. Photo from Roanoke Times.

RICHMOND, VA — Today, lawyers for a coalition of environmental advocates including Appalachian Voices filed a motion for stay, asking the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to put an immediate stop to the construction across waterways of the fracked-gas Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Because MVP’s own documents show it cannot meet the conditions required under its “nationwide 404 permit,” the streamlined permit issued by the Army Corps of Engineers is illegal.

Today’s filing comes less than a month after West Virginia regulators cited MVP for failing to control erosion and just days after several inches of mud ran off MVP construction sites and blocked a road in Franklin County, Virginia.

Under section 404 of the Clean Water Act, the Corps is charged with issuing a permit for the pipeline’s stream crossings that allows the project’s builders to trench through the bottom of those streams, including the Greenbrier, Elk, and Gauley rivers, and fill the crossings with dirt during construction of the pipeline.

The permit issued to MVP by the Corps is commonly known as a “nationwide permit 12,” which takes a one-size-fits-all approach and is generally viewed as fairly limited in scope to be used for projects much smaller than ones the magnitude of the MVP, a 300-mile-long, 42-inch pipeline requiring a 125-foot right-of-way construction zone that would cross streams, rivers and other waters in West Virginia and Virginia more than 1,000 times.

One condition of the nationwide permit is that if even one water crossing in a project is ineligible for the permit, it cannot be used for any of them. Another condition is that MVP cannot take more than 72 hours to complete construction across a stream or river. Since MVP has said the 72-hour limit would not give them enough time to complete construction across four important rivers, they cannot use the permit for any of the other water crossings along the pipeline’s route.

The request for stay was filed by Appalachian Mountain Advocates on behalf of a coalition made up of the Sierra Club, Appalachian Voices, Indian Creek Watershed Association, West Virginia Rivers Coalition and Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Peter Anderson, Virginia Program Manager, Appalachian Voices:

“This is more evidence that state and federal agencies, along with the project applicant, cut corners at every opportunity. We remain adamant that blanket general permits cannot protect water quality from construction impacts of the massive Mountain Valley Pipeline across steep, erodible terrain and hundreds of streams and wetlands as required by law.”

Sierra Club, Organizing Manager, Bill Price:

“We have repeatedly warned the Army Corps of Engineers that their one-size-fits-all approach to this dirty and dangerous project doesn’t even come close to fulfilling their responsibility to protect our people and communities. The fracked gas Mountain Valley Pipeline is already having devastating effects on our water and communities, and all construction on it must be immediately stopped. This unnecessary project serves no purpose except to line the pockets of the polluting corporations that have been exploiting our communities for generations.”

Anne Havemann, General Counsel, Chesapeake Climate Action Network:

“When the state punted to the Army Corps its responsibility to oversee water quality impacts, West Virginia officials assured the public that the pipeline’s “environmental impacts will ultimately be zero.” In reality, the environmental impacts of this unneeded and unnecessary fracked-gas pipeline were felt almost immediately after construction began. The Army Corps’s blanket permit cannot protect West Virginia and construction must be stopped until regulators can ensure that West Virginia’s streams and rivers will be protected.”

CONTACTS:
Doug Jackson, Sierra Club, doug.jackson@sierraclub.org
Cat McCue, Appalachian Voices, cat@appvoices.org

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See also: WDBJ7 story on “Construction concerns for the MVP”: https://twitter.com/NRDC/status/1001511971433435136

US Army Corps Regulates Section 404

Exxon gas subsidiary hit with $2.3 million fine for construction-related damage to West Virginia waterways

From an Article by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams, December 23, 2014

Side-stepping a shifty exemption for fracking pollution known as the “Halliburton loophole,” the Environmental Protection Agency is fining the world’s largest natural gas company for dirtying West Virginia’s waterways.

The EPA, the Justice Department, and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) on Monday charged XTO Energy, a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil, $2.3 million for violating the Clean Water Act for fracking-related activities in West Virginia. The company will also have to pay an additional $3 million to restore eight sites damaged by the unauthorized discharge of fill material into streams and wetlands.

And while a $2.3 million fine is “a very small drop in a very large bucket” for XTO Energy, as Clean Technica reporter Tina Casey points out, this charge is noteworthy because the EPA managed to skirt a loophole that largely exempts oil and gas drilling by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, from the Safe Drinking Water Act or Clean Water Act.

“The EPA has been carefully pussyfooting around the fracking issue for years because its hands are tied by an enormous pollution loophole engineered during the Bush Administration by then-Vice President Dick Cheney, who left his post as CEO of the drilling industry services company Halliburton to run for office in 2000,” Casey writes.

To avoid that loophole, Casey explains, “Instead of making straight for the drilling operation itself, EPA went after XTO/ExxonMobil for ordinary construction-related damage.”

The EPA statement charges, “the company impacted streams and discharged sand, dirt, rocks and other fill material into streams and wetlands without a federal permit in order to construct well pads, road crossings, freshwater pits, and other facilities related to natural gas extraction.”

According to the EPA, the fracking-related activities were in violation of Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, which prohibits the filling or damming of wetlands, rivers, streams, and other waters of the United States without a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

This is the second time the EPA has levied roundabout charges against fracking polluters. Last year, Chesapeake Energy was fined $6.5 million on identical grounds.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net