Forest Service Shows Precisely How We Are Losing America
Jim Willis on NGL Pipelines
Editor & Publisher, Marcellus Drilling News (MDN)
[Editor’s Note: The shrill voices of a few extremists, enabled by corporatists, have successfully intimidated agencies such as the Forest Service and destroyed our rule of law, undermining America as we know it.]
On Dec. 22, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) published a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that allows the nearly-completed Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to finish up construction through 3.5 miles of Jefferson National Forest straddling West Virginia and Virginia (see US Forest Service Floats New Plan to Allow MVP Thur Natl Forest).
This is the third time the Forest Service has issued the same permit. Two previous attempts were overturned by three clown judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The public had until Feb. 6th (yesterday) to file official comments on this latest plan. That is, until the bleating radicals moaned and groaned, asking for more time. So USFS extended the comment period another two weeks, until Feb. 21st.
MVP is a 303-mile pipeline from Wetzel County, WV (northern WV) to Pittsylvania County, VA (southern VA) that will flow 2 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of Marcellus and Utica shale molecules to southeastern markets, including several gas-fired power plants. MVP is a vital link to export M-U molecules out of the northeast to the southeastern U.S.
Let’s take bets on whether the radicals will request a further extension from USFS. It’s right out of the left’s playbook–delay issuing the permit (by hounding the issuing agency), deny the permit (using complicit judges), and then defend the denial (using “mainstream” media stenographers). Check this story:
Those interested in weighing in on a federal proposal to allow the Mountain Valley Pipeline to cross the Jefferson National Forest have more time.
The United States Forest Service has announced a 15-day extension of the comment period for its proposed approval of the pipeline crossing the Jefferson National Forest through Monroe County in West Virginia and Giles and Montgomery counties in Virginia in a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement it released last month.
The 45-day comment period was set to expire Monday but was extended to 11:59 p.m. ET on Feb. 21 in response to public requests, the Forest Service announced Saturday.
The public can submit comments about the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement electronically at https://cara.fs2c.usda.gov/Public/CommentInput?Project=50036, or by mail to George Washington & Jefferson National Forests, MVP Project, 5162 Valleypointe Parkway, Roanoke, VA 24019.
The Forest Service has proposed amending a land and resource management plan for the Jefferson forest as needed to allow the 42-inch-diameter pipeline to cross 3.5 miles of the forest.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit threw out two past Forest Service approvals of the Jefferson National Forest crossing in July 2018 and January 2022, major project setbacks.
Across National Forest Service land covered by the proposed Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, the project would require a 125-foot-wide temporary construction right-of-way affecting 54 acres for pipeline installation and a 50-foot-wide right-of-way for pipeline operation affecting 22 acres.
In January 2022, Fourth Circuit Court Judge Stephanie Thacker wrote in a unanimous decision that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management insufficiently considered sedimentation and erosion effects of the pipeline, prematurely approved the use of a conventional bore method to construct stream crossings, and failed to comply with a Forest Service rule governing forest plan amendments.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection fined Mountain Valley over $560,000 in 2019 and 2021 combined for erosion and sedimentation issues. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality fined Mountain Valley $2.15 million in 2019, resolving a lawsuit the agency and former Virginia attorney general Mark Herring filed alleging the company violated a previously issued water quality certification by not controlling sediment and stormwater runoff.
The Fourth Circuit vacated and remanded the Forest Service’s first Forest Plan amendment to allow the Mountain Valley Pipeline crossing in July 2018, in part citing violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. That law requires federal agencies to evaluate the environmental impacts of proposed major federal actions before making decisions.
Some project construction on National Forest Service land already has taken place. Portions of the right-of-way on National Forest Service land were cleared of trees between March and April 2018. On Sinking Creek and Brush Mountain National Forest Service land, the trees were felled and removed, and the right-of-way was graded. Trees were felled but not removed from the right-of-way on Peters Mountain.
In the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement released last month, the Forest Service acknowledged that it could require Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, the joint venture behind the project, to remove pipes and restore the Jefferson National Forest project area to as close to pre-project condition as possible.
But the Forest Service proposed changing the Jefferson National Forest land and resource management plan to allow the 303-mile pipeline to cross the forest instead, including amendments to accommodate heavy equipment use in the pipeline construction zone with mitigation measures.
The Forest Service cited changes between its previously issued environmental impact statement thrown out by the Fourth Circuit and its latest Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, including regrowth of vegetation within the pipeline right-of-way on Peters Mountain and sediment monitoring in two watersheds off National Forest Service land conducted by Mountain Valley Pipeline.The Forest Service process isn’t the only obstacle blocking the path to completion for the pipeline, which was first announced in 2014. The Fourth Circuit vacated a 2020 biological opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the project last February.
That move prompted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to commit to withholding a key water discharging permit until there is a valid conclusion on the project’s effects on potentially threatened species.
The project cost has soared from $3.5 billion to $6.6 billion amid its many regulatory and legal challenges.
Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., have been outspoken supporters of the pipeline and proposed measures that would mandate completing the project, arguing that it would enhance national energy security.
West Virginia environmentalists have ardently opposed the project, backing legal challenges slowing the project. They’ve cited water quality and pipeline safety concerns and spoken out against introducing more fossil fuel infrastructure into the state as climate change worsens.
More than three-quarters of the Mountain Valley Pipeline route in West Virginia is considered to have a high incidence of and high susceptibility to landslides, according to a separate final environmental impact statement issued by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff.
Mountain Valley Pipeline developers have estimated that total life-cycle emissions from the unfinished 303-mile pipeline slated to cross 11 counties in West Virginia would range from 48 million to 57 million metric tons of greenhouse gases per year.
The project is costing $20 million to $25 million per month, largely for maintenance of rights-of-way, Equitrans chairman and CEO Thomas Karam said in a quarterly earnings call in November.
On the call, Equitrans reported a net loss of $521 million attributable to common shareholders that it said stemmed from the company’s $583 million impairment to its investment in the pipeline.
An impairment is a loss in the value of an asset.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline would transport up to 2 billion cubic feet per day of gas from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in West Virginia to markets in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern United States.
The project’s capacity is fully subscribed under 20-year contracts, according to Equitrans, which would own roughly 48% of the pipeline and operate it.
Just a reminder of who Fourth Circuit Court Judge Stephanie Thacker really is. She is one of three hard-left Democrats who sit on a panel that has ruled against MVP in 12 of 14 cases brought by the Dems’ Big Green accomplices. Thacker was appointed by Barack Hussein Obama. She once wrote an anti-fossil fuel opinion in a case against Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (which competed with MVP), quoting from the Dr. Seuss children’s book The Lorax. Yes, she’s certifiably crazy. And yet she sits in judgment on a project (MVP) she has no business judging. We live in a screwed-up world.
Editor’s Note: The dysfunctional nature of agencies who repeatedly cave to the demands of irate tiny minorities of special interests and courts composed of those who make the law rather than interpret it are profound signs of political decay and loss of the rule of law, which is nothing less than losing America. What isn’t corrupted today?
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