MVP's violations show 'complete absence of any and all meaningful regulation'

Ever since Mountain Valley Pipeline first proposed to gouge a 303-mile long, 125-foot wide scar across the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, countless experts have warned of the uncontrollable erosion the project would provoke.

These warnings have since proven to be well founded: We have witnessed sediment-laden water flowing off the right-of-way and into adjacent streams, roads buried in up to a foot of mud, and even one erosion event so extreme that two segments of steel pipe – each weighing just over 13,000 pounds – skidded hundreds of feet from a worksite and onto private property.

In spite of the fact that MVP has been sued by both Virginia and West Virginia for hundreds of violations related to failed sediment and erosion control measures, MVP has insisted these are isolated events and largely “the result of unprecedented rainfall through the spring and summer of 2018.” However, new revelations from filings MVP has made with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission confirm erosion is pervasive year-round, and occurring on a project-wide basis.

The non-profit Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights coalition maintains a regularly updated and publicly available database of all “variance” requests MVP has filed with FERC. A variance represents a deviation from the work plan, and MVP must file a variance request any time it wishes to undertake an activity not contained within its original work plan. As such, variances can provide an indication of the problems MVP encounters during construction.

Read more: https://www.virginiamercury.com/2019/07/15/mvp-shows-complete-absence-of-any-and-all-meaningful-regulation/